Ignoring Nature No More

The Case for Compassionate Conservation

Marc Bekoff

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780226925363
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

For far too long humans have been ignoring nature. As the most dominant, overproducing, overconsuming, big-brained, big-footed, arrogant, and invasive species ever known, we are wrecking the planet at an unprecedented rate. And while science is important to our understanding of the impact we have on our environment, it alone does not hold the answers to the current crisis, nor does it get people to act. In Ignoring Nature No More, Marc Bekoff and a host of renowned contributors argue that we need a new mind-set about nature, one that centers on empathy, compassion, and being proactive.            
This collection of diverse essays is the first book devoted to compassionate conservation, a growing global movement that translates discussions and concerns about the well-being of individuals, species, populations, and ecosystems into action. Written by leading scholars in a host of disciplines, including biology, psychology, sociology, social work, economics, political science, and philosophy, as well as by locals doing fieldwork in their own countries, the essays combine the most creative aspects of the current science of animal conservation with analyses of important psychological and sociocultural issues that encourage or vex stewardship. The contributors tackle topics including the costs and benefits of conservation, behavioral biology, media coverage of animal welfare, conservation psychology, and scales of conservation from the local to the global. Taken together, the essays make a strong case for why we must replace our habits of domination and exploitation with compassionate conservation if we are to make the world a better place for nonhuman and human animals alike.

PART ONE

ETHICS, CONSERVATION, AND ANIMAL PROTECTION

TRYING TO MAKE DIFFICULT DECISIONS EASIER

The essays in this part are concerned with various topics that fall under the general category of ethics, what are the “right” and “wrong” things to do in a given situation. Of course, given the difficult decisions we have to make involving diverse animals living in different habitats in a wide variety of cultures, there has to be some flexibility. However, without a firm and consistent framework of general guiding principles that would obtain in the best of all possible worlds (which this isn’t), it’s impossible to make the difficult decisions with which we’re faced daily. Modifying or overriding these principles in certain circumstances, for example, first do no harm, would require strong arguments for why this should be done. I often wish I didn’t have to make some of the choices that need to be made, but they won’t go away if they’re ignored. For better or worse we are the surrogate decision makers for other individual animals and for a wide variety of species and ecosystems, and given who we are, we can do just about anything we want. The essays in this section provide the foundation for much of what follows later in this collection.

John Vucetich and Michael Nelson set the stage for much-needed, wide-ranging discussions concerning ethical foundations of conservation. They note that life and nature manifest themselves in different ways, as individual creatures, populations, and ecosystems. Concerns for populations and ecosystems are the focus of conservation, and concerns for individual creatures are the focus of animal welfare ethics. Both are important, but each has a tendency to ignore the other. Their chapter is an attempt to develop an ethic that transcends both perspectives. Further discussion of these issues can be found in Aitken (2004), Bekoff (2006, 2010), and Fraser (2010).

Vucetich and Nelson go on to argue that the ethical foundation of conservation is a shambles and that we can’t even provide good answers to the most important unanswered questions in conservation—namely, (1) What is population viability and ecosystem health? (2) How does conservation relate to and sometimes conflict with other legitimate values in life, such as social justice, human liberty, and concern for the welfare of individual nonhuman animals? How should we resolve such conflicts? (3) Do populations and ecosystems have direct moral considerations? These challenging questions have direct on-the-ground consequences for conservation, and the authors argue that we need ethical consensus, not individual decisions, on the matters at hand. These questions are also philosophical or ethical in nature, not purely scientific. Vucetich and Nelson also show the importance of empathy, not only for sentient animals but also with nonsentient beings and ecological collectives. They show how important education is, a theme echoed in many other essays in this collection. Conservation science and humane education need to generate a sense of wonder for nature rather than emphasize prediction and control and must emphasize the ways in which nature is morally relevant.

Paul Waldau also emphasizes the importance of education and empathy and notes that the animal protection and conservation movements are really social movements and that members of each will have to work together in the future if we’re to make meaningful progress. He writes, “Conservation and animal protection both call upon fundamental human abilities to recognize realities of other living beings.” Waldau draws a powerful and hopeful conclusion: “Conservation insights are also driven by our great need to connect to the meaning of life. The two movements discussed in this chapter can, when working together, offer a very special hope—namely, that we now live in a time in which we can name war, genocide, habitat destruction, countless unnecessary murders of living beings, and global climate change as our heritage and our predicament, but also as problems we can choose to face squarely. In a world in which our political systems have slipped into an appalling lack of civility, and religious traditions struggle to gain the spiritual character to promote peace rather than division, the prospect of conservation’s protective, constructive, healing insights being linked to the animal movement’s power to instill and nurture individuals’ ethical character is a soothing one. This can happen if the active citizens in each of these movements will choose to work together. This is one choice we can make as a way to celebrate the world we want to live in and leave for our children.” Education and empathy can lead to large and significant positive changes in how we treat other animals and the habitats in which they reside. We are obliged to do this for future generations who will have to live with our decisions about who lives and who dies.

Clearly, we do what we do to other animals and ecosystems because we can, and we don’t have to answer to individuals of other species who might be wondering what in the world are we doing. Eileen Crist argues that we humans have devastated the natural world because of our sense of entitlement to other species and animals in particular, and our sense that losses of animals and animal suffering do not really matter. She investigates the intellectual and historical roots of the belief in human superiority, or “human supremacy” as she refers to it. Her analysis invites us to scrutinize our hierarchical speciesist assumptions about humans and animals and to recognize the destructive way of life those assumptions support. Our tragic planetary predicament calls for a radical transformation of our understanding of ourselves in relation to our animal kin. We need to pay more attention to Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolutionary continuity in which differences among species are recognized as differences in degree, not kind. Crist argues convincingly and powerfully “the long-standing denial or disparagement of animal minds is causally implicated in the devastation of the biosphere. Through the portrayal of animals as inferior beings, and eventually even as mechanical entities, the objectification of the natural world and its transformation into a domain of resources was vastly facilitated.” Judith Benz-Schwarzburg and Andrew Knight (2011) correctly note that our relationships with other animals show clearly that while we’re cognitive relatives we act as if we’re moral strangers, alienated from whom other animals truly are.

Dale Peterson and Ben Minteer consider the very complicated bushmeat crisis from different perspectives while echoing some of Vucetich and Nelson’s and Waldaus’s themes about how concern for individuals comes into conflict with concern for larger entities such as species and ecosystems. Bushmeat, meat from a wide variety of wild terrestrial animals including chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos, is harvested unsustainably and is a common source of protein throughout West and Central Africa, where there is an impending food shortage (recent data show that humans also eat almost ninety species of marine mammals; Robards and Reeves 2011). But there is much more here in that cultural differences among of those working on this crisis and the poverty and economic needs of those who benefit from the bushmeat industry means that local interests must be factored into any reasonable or practical solution. There are many stakeholders with different views on the issues at hand. There aren’t any quick and simple solutions.

Dale Peterson’s essay “Talking about Bushmeat,” introduces one of the most urgent and least understood conservation issues, the industrialized killing and selling of wild animals for meat in Central Africa. He begins with a riveting account of what it’s like to walk through a bushmeat market. Noting the horrors he also tells how one of his friends rescued a small duiker who had been bound and left to rot in a small cage. The enormous commerce in bushmeat currently removes as much as five million metric tons of wild animal biomass per year from the Congo Basin ecosystem, which is a completely unsustainable take. The bushmeat commerce immediately threatens the well-being and indeed the very existence of the three African great apes (gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos), whose numbers are small to begin with, and who are profoundly vulnerable to hunting largely because of their low reproduction rates. We must not ignore this assault on nature, but what can we do about it? As Peterson suggests, we can begin a “cultural conversation” about the problem and nature of bushmeat. He would promote arguments for controlling the bushmeat commerce based on human self-interest (such as protection from some serious public health threats) and human other-interest. The other-interest argument for protecting some species such as the great apes would identify a moral hierarchy based on either an evolutionary closeness to humans or a reasoned calculation of the animal’s psychological presence, or both.

Bushmeat appeals to many people in an historical way. Peterson writes, “The big city markets in Central and West Africa have plenty of the boring domestic meats, if you happen to prefer that. But if you want meat that will recall when your family lived out in the village, meat with real flavor from an interesting wild animal, meat taken by skilled hunters from the forest and often cured by a flavorful process of smoking, meat with a real story behind it—bushmeat, in other words—you will have to pay a premium, as you would for any other luxury item.” Peterson also is sensitive to westerners arrogantly barging into other countries and telling local people what to do. Responding to an accusation posed as a question, “How dare you, a rich westerner, talk of limiting development, which represents the rightful economic advance of impoverished peoples in the Third World?” Peterson agrees that westerners who want to influence conservation elsewhere in the world should be prepared to pay. He also notes that most ordinary Africans do not benefit from the bushmeat trade. Cross-cultural discussions and give and take among the various stakeholders is sorely needed if we’re ever to make headway on this challenging crisis.

Also focusing on the bushmeat crisis and discussing various ethical positions, Ben Minteer begins by noting that even if there are disagreements among those people interested in animal protection and those interested in conservation issues such as the bushmeat crisis, they would all agree that the brutal slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan, the wanton killing of mountain gorillas in the war-torn Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the slaughter of tigers in the wildlife trade is morally wrong. This “compatibilist” understanding of environmental and animal ethics is much needed in the real world of animal abuse, and it’s encouraging that people with different views are talking with one another more and more.

Concerning the bushmeat crisis, Minteer notes, “The intersection of animal rights/welfare and conservation ethics is particularly intriguing in the case of what has become known as the ‘bushmeat crisis,’ a subject of increasing concern in both the nature conservation and development communities. . . . The bushmeat problem raises an intricate complex of ecological, economic, cultural, and most fundamentally, ethical challenges regarding the survival of species and the welfare of animals, as well as the health and livelihood of some of the poorest and most vulnerable peoples on the planet.” And, stressing ethical pragmatism, also needed in the real work of animal abuse, Minteer concludes, “the bushmeat problem appears to be a case in which both animal rights/welfare and a strong nature-centered ethic of conservation would be supported by a strict ban on bushmeat harvest and trade, the establishment of more tightly managed (for biodiversity preservation) protected areas in bushmeat regions, and increased enforcement and interdiction efforts. . . . The upshot is that a feasible, effective, and ethically inclusive policy response to the bushmeat dilemma will require balancing a complex of values and interests, as well as accommodating diverse stakeholders in workable, multilevel partnerships that can reduce human impact on wildlife species and tropical forest systems while improving the food security and livelihood prospects of poor rural people.”

The five essays in this section raise many different issues concerning who we are and what we do to other animals and to ecosystems. They highlight, once again, the central role humans play in deciding who lives and who dies. While the problems at hand seem daunting and insoluble, decisions have to be made. The status quo is unacceptable. The real challenge is to come to terms with which, if any, compromises and trade-offs are permissible, and which are not. Flexibility and pluralism are needed in discussions among the human stakeholders. One thing is clear, Western standards will not be easily pushed on to other cultures. Nor should they be, a theme that is taken up in part 5.

References

Aitken, Gill. 2004. A New Approach to Conservation: The Importance of the Individual through Wildlife Rehabilitation. Hants, UK: Ashgate.

Bekoff, Marc. 2006. Animal Emotions and Beastly Virtues: Reflections on Redecorating Nature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

. 2010. The Animal Manifesto: Six Reasons for Expanding Our Compassion Footprint. Novato, CA: New World Library.

Benz-Schwarzburg, Judith, and Andrew Knight. 2011. “Cognitive Relatives Yet Moral Strangers?” Journal of Applied Ethics 1: 9–36.

Fraser, David, ed. 2004. “Conservation and Animal Welfare.” Animal Welfare 19 (2): 121–95.

Robards, Martin, and Randall Reeves. 2011. “The Global Extent and Character of Marine Mammal Consumption by Humans: 1970–2009.” Biological Conservation 144: 2770–86. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320711002977.

1

The Infirm Ethical Foundations of Conservation

John A. Vucetich and Michael P. Nelson

Introduction

That conservation has an ethical foundation is widely appreciated. Less appreciated is the shambled condition of that ethical foundation. This condition is revealed by our inability to answer questions like, What is population viability and ecosystem health? and, Is conservation motivated only to meet the so-called needs of humans, or also by respect for nonhuman populations and ecosystems? Some argue that this ethical uncertainty does not impede the effectiveness of conservation. We provide examples that suggest otherwise. We also explain how the source of ethical uncertainty is our mistaken tendency to think that the morality of our behavior should be judged more on the consequences of our actions and less on the motivations that underlie our actions.

Conservation’s aim is often thought or said to be to maintain and restore population viability and ecosystem health. Achieving conservation is difficult, but the framework for conservation’s goals seems in place: Use the best available science and the precautionary principle as input for a decision-making process that will suggest which actions will most likely lead to the most desirable outcomes; use politico-legal force to turn desired actions into law or policy; and include some environmental education (e.g., media and formal curricula) to build social support. That education almost always reduces to describing how humans affect natural systems, as if that will shock or shame us into supporting conservation.

This framework rests, unfortunately, on an infirm foundation that casts doubt on whether we really understand the aim of conservation. The answers to three questions illuminate the inadequacies of the foundation of conservation:

1. What is population viability and ecosystem health?

2. How does conservation relate to and sometimes conflict with other legitimate values in life, such as social justice, human liberty, and concern for the welfare of individuals, nonhuman animals? How should we resolve such conflicts?

3. Do populations and ecosystems deserve direct moral consideration?

These are the most important unanswered questions in conservation. Not having answers that are well defended and widely agreed upon has practical, on-the-ground consequences for conservation. Moreover, none of these questions are purely science questions. They are all philosophical or ethical in nature. This is disturbing because the ethics and philosophy of conservation may well be the most undertreated aspects of conservation. The very nature of conservation is, therefore, up for grabs because its ethical foundation is up for grabs. All the while, few people seem concerned. The need is not for each individual to answer the question in his or her own way; what is needed is the development of ethical consensus, which arises from ethical discourse (Nelson and Vucetich 2011).

An...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface. Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why: It Shouldn’t Be All about Us
• Acknowledgments
• Part One. Ethics, Conservation, and Animal Protection: Trying to Make Difficult Decisions Easier
• Part Two. Conservation Behavior and “Enlightened Management”: Guidelines for Restoring, Recreating, and Redecorating Nature
• Part Three. Conservation Economics and Politics: It All Comes Down to Money
• Part Four. Human Dimensions of Social Justice, Empathy, and Compassion for Animals and Other Nature
• Part Five. Culture, Religion, and Spirituality: Using Empathy and Compassion to Develop a Unified Global Movement to Protect Animals and Their Homes
• Some Closing Words: Moving Ahead with Heart, Peace, and Compassion
• About the Contributors
• Contributors’ Contact Information
• Index