Ronald Bailey
Earlier this month, a "landmark U.N. biodiversity agreement" was adopted by delegates from 190 countries at the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP15) of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal. The chief goal of the new Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is that "the integrity, connectivity and resilience of all ecosystems are maintained, enhanced, or restored, substantially increasing the area of natural ecosystems by 2050." The GBF asserts that around 25 percent of assessed plant and animal species are threatened, suggesting that around 1 million species may already face eventual extinction unless action is taken.
The GBF specifies that by 2030, 30 percent of Earth's lands, oceans, coastal areas, and inland waters are "effectively conserved" and that restoration be completed or underway on at least 30 percent of degraded terrestrial, inland waters, and coastal and marine ecosystems. Currently, 17 percent and 10 percent of the world's terrestrial and marine areas respectively are under protection. In addition, the GBF aims to reduce annual subsidies harmful to biodiversity (e.g., biofuels, fisheries, fossil fuels) by $500 billion; and to cut food waste in half by 2030.
Ecologist Rebecca Nesbit in her new book, Tickets For The Ark: From Wasps to Whales – How Do We Choose What To Save?, launches a sustained frontal attack on the "myth of wild nature." Nesbit hammers home the absolutely correct point that there is no objective scientific standard providing some kind of value-neutral ecological baseline toward which conservation should aim. Since there is no goal or end state toward which any particular ecosystem is heading, who is to say that landscapes and ecosystems modified by human activities are somehow inferior?
"Ideas about pristine nature invoke a state that nature was in before humans affected it," Nesbit notes. "The trouble is that humans have played a role in shaping nature for roughly 2.5 million years." She explains that species and ecosystems do not have intrinsic value. Instead, humans confer value on them. This realization "should be liberating," she argues, because it makes us "free to discuss logically what we should save and why, and not just fight an anti-extinction battle that is doomed to failure." Nesbit notes that "The resources we dedicate to conservation will never be enough to prevent all extinctions, and we are forced to choose our priorities." As she makes plain, it's tradeoffs all of the way down.
Consequently, her goal isn't to tell readers how we should choose what to save. Instead, she provides a series of case studies showing that human choices guided by our ethical and aesthetic values are inevitable regarding biological conservation.
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