Why Save the Tiger? They Scratch

Investigating morality, ethics and affect in relation to conservation

ALA Plowden-WardlawFebruary 2014

Background

• Rastogi, A., et al. (2013). Diverging viewpoints on tiger conservation: A Q-method study and survey of conservation professionals in India. Biological Conservation, 161(0), 182-192.

• Tigers as a lens for the enquiry into instrumental v intrinsic value of biodiversity

Practical Problem

• Instrumental arguments for conservation are important– Watersheds– Carbon sinks– Genetic resilience– Possible medical applications– Erosion resistance– Food stuff bank– Recreation

But not very helpful to tigers

Unless you are a • tiger poacher• tiger farmer• reserve hotelier/eco lodge owner or

associate livelihood• conservationist

Deriving direct income from tigers

For most people

• Tigers are dangerous – cf “Tiger widows”

• Livestock/game predation

• Substantial range – hence great resource users with high degree of potential for human wildlife conflict (HWC) (Inskip, 2013)

Intrinsic value and affect

Plurality of terms• “biophilia” coined by Wilson in 1984 and

discussed by numerous commentators including Simaika and Samways (2010),

• “land ethic” (O’Neal, et al.,1995)., • “conservation ethic” (Sagoff, 2007) A cognitive “mask” for a similarity of affect in

relation to a practical resource use problem?

For conservationists

• A charismatic, totemic species

• Supposedly a flagship/umbrella species for fundraising – however species continues to decline, only $34million spent 1998-2003 (Christie, 2006) and $35million/year needed (Walston et al, 2010)

Concensus on moral/ethical reasons?

• Rastogi (op cit) found nearly 90% of his respondents agreed that there were “moral/ethical” reasons for saving tigers, and suggests using this to build concensus on otherwise divergent views as to strategy in a complex debate often in the tiger conservation world characterised as “tribal v tiger”, pitting human use against exclusionary conservation

• “Our results suggest that conservation professionals, irrespective of their position in the tiger–tribal debate, are likely to agree on the moral/ethical grounds for tiger conservation.”

• This study takes this finding as a launchpad to investigate broader issues of morals, ethics and affect in conservation

What do we want to find out?

• Using the Tiger as an example, to determine to what degree respondents from the conservation community consider their conservation efforts to be based on moral/ethical principles (or others).

• To understand what such principles are in detail, and if they are the same as what is commonly described as the “intrinsic value” of biodiversity.

• To understand if there is an affective component to respondents’ conservation activities, and what the specific nature of this component is.

• To locate the results within a wider interdisciplinary literature.

Research Questions

• For what principal reasons (if any) do the respondents consider saving the tiger desirable?

• To what degree are their reasons morally or ethically motivated?

• When engaging with the question, do they experience affective responses? If so, what are they?

• What lessons, if any, can be drawn from the resulting data, and is this approach worthy of further investigation and wider application?

How do we address the questions?

• Unstructured interviews leading to semi-structured interviews, literature review.

• Sampling by approaching a range of conservationists of different views and seniorities through the DICE and other networks

• Thought/choice experiments

Introduction to hypotheticals

• Hypotheticals

• Physical sciences (Galileo and rate of falling objects) (Galileo, 1672)

• Jurisprudence (Rawls and the “veil of ignorance) (Rawls, 1971)

Conservation hypothetical

• An example of a hypothetical used to examine the proposition that

“The intrinsic value of biodiversity is a useless concept?”

might be to ask if the respondent “would be content to sacrifice the bulk of biodiversity if the instrumental value of wealth creation and human happiness could be demonstrably maximised by minimising biodiversity?”

Multidisciplinary approach

• Affective neuroscience

Choosing a model of emotions based on affective neuroscience research rather than simple self reporting grounds the analysis in objective data. Prior to surveying the literature more fully, inclined to utilise Panksepp’s taxonomy SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF and PLAY to parse idiosyncratic responses and varied vocabularies of affect (Panksepp, J., 2011)

Multidisciplinary approach (2)• BioethicsOne of the core issues in dealing with values and conservation is that

of moral considerability.Are we concerned about humans alone – a traditional ethical position –

or should conservationists worry about the individual organism, taxon, ecosystem – or what?

There is a developing body of work concerned with ethics as applied to situations found in nascent genetic engineering – eg the ethics of mixing human and non-human DNA

Sometimes called the “chimera” issue, species boundaries are a key consideration of ethical concern (Robert & Baylis, 2003). As in biology, the fluidity of species boundary raises issues with practical impact as to decisions taken, and qualitative input is unavoidable in the decision process.

Is there anything to be learnt from, or contributed to, this literature?

Conclusions

No data – so can’t conclude. However, conceivable conclusions might be:

• Conservation – good on the how, bad on the why?

• Instrumental approach will always lose to non-conservation instrumentality

• Direct approach to perceived “embarassment” when dealing with intrinsic value issues

• Adaptive value of affect in relation to resource use decisions

ReferencesRobert, J. S., & Baylis, F. (2003). Crossing species boundaries. The American Journal of Bioethics,

3(3), 1–13.Christie S. 2006. NGO investment in tiger conservation units, 1998–2003. In Sanderson E, et al.,

editors. Setting Priorities for the Conservation and Recovery of Wild Tigers: 2005–2015. The Technical Assessment. Washington (DC): WCS, WWF, Smithsonian, and NFWF-STF. p. 116-119.

Galileo, G (1628). Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche. Translated from the Italian and Latin into English by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio. New York: Macmillan, 1914. Accessed online 20th February 2014 at http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=753&layout=html

O’Neal, A. E., Pandian, A.S., Rhodes-Conway, S.V. and Bornbusch, A.H. (1995). Human Economies, the Land Ethic, and Sustainable Conservation. Conservation Biology, 9(1).

Panksepp, J. (2011). Cross-Species Affective Neuroscience Decoding of the Primal Affective Experiences of Humans and Related Animals. Plos One, 6(9), e21236.

Rastogi, A., et al. (2013). Diverging viewpoints on tiger conservation: A Q-method study and survey of conservation professionals in India. Biological Conservation, 161(0), 182-192.

Rawls, J. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Sagoff, M. (2007). On the compatibility of a conservation ethic with biological science. Conservation

Biology, 21(2).Simaika, J. P. and Samways, M. J. (2010). Biophilia as a Universal Ethic for Conserving Biodiversity.

Conservation Biology, 24(3). Walston J., Karanth K.U., and Stokes E.J.. (2010). Avoiding the Unthinkable: What Will it Cost to

Prevent Tigers Becoming Extinct in the Wild? Wildlife Conservation Society, New York. Wilson, Edward O. (1984). Biophilia.Cambridge; Harvard University Press