I thought ZooChatters might appreciate these recent papers exploring ethical interpretations of conservation and the biodiversity crisis. The first focuses on other species, whilst the second addresses potential human costs. Both are brief, open-access, non-technical, and sufficiently controversial to be a good read over your turkey sandwiches. Cafaro, P. (2015). Three ways to think about the sixth mass extinction. Biological Conservation, 192, 387-393. Three ways to think about the sixth mass extinction (PDF Download Available) Kopnina, H. (2016). Half the earth for people (or more)? Addressing ethical questions in conservation. Biological Conservation, 203, 176-185. Half the earth for people (or more)? Addressing ethical questions in conservation (PDF Download Available) Merry Christmas!
Action needed to prevent the mass extinction ! : Radical overhaul needed to halt Earth’s sixth great extinction event
It's taken me a while, but I read and then recently reread the second article (Kopnina). It seems to me that the fundamental problem that the author never really gets around to addressing could be phrased (poorly no doubt) along these lines: 'We recognise that individual humans have rights, whereas we only extend the those rights to whole populations of non-human species'. It is morally obvious to most people that causing a species of frog to go extinct is unacceptable, and yet taken in isolation the death of a single frog for any number of 'good' reasons is perfectly fine. The vast majority of decisions that involve human/animal conflict are resolved in favour of humans because on a microscale those decisions are probably correct. The fact that most poor people live away from conservation areas ignores the fact that a plurality of poor people do live in or next to these areas. It also ignores the fact that those slums or cities are almost invariably located in underdeveloped countries with undeveloped land, so the pressure to utilisie those areas in a more economically productive, but environmentally disasterous, way is the same no matter where the people live. It's very easy to sympathise with the author; of course we need to protect species, and of course we can see that humans are having a negative impact. Maybe simply shouting this loudly from time to time needs to be done, but that is all this article does. It feels like a bare minimum; there is no attempt to investigate or explain how giving nature 'more' can be done in a way that is respectful of human rights and communities.
