{"id":9820,"date":"2022-03-23T04:09:17","date_gmt":"2022-03-23T04:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=9820"},"modified":"2022-03-23T04:09:17","modified_gmt":"2022-03-23T04:09:17","slug":"the-case-against-the-concept-of-biodiversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=9820","title":{"rendered":"The case against the concept of biodiversity"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2017, an evolutionary biologist named R. Alexander Pyron ignited controversy with a Washington Post <\/em>commentary titled \u201cWe don\u2019t need to save endangered species. Extinction is part of evolution.\u201d He wrote: \u201cConserving a species we have helped to kill off, but on which we are not directly dependent, serves to discharge our own guilt, but little else.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pyron\u2019s take challenged the decades-old idea that biodiversity is a good thing \u2014 that humans should strive to preserve all forms of life on Earth and their interconnectedness across ecosystems. It prompted scientist and writer Carl Safina to mount a passionate defense of biodiversity, calling Pyron\u2019s stance \u201cconceptually confused\u201d and containing \u201cjarring assertions.\u201d Safina\u2019s most cutting rebuke was that belittling biodiversity derails environmental conversations. \u201cIt\u2019s like answering \u2018Black lives matter\u2019 with \u2018All lives matter,\u2019\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s a way of intentionally missing the point.\u201d <\/p>\n

Nobel Prize winners co-signed more rebuttals. Professors blogged long meditations on why endangered species need to be saved. There were scientists who had previously questioned a hyperfocus on saving species, to be sure, though none had done so in such a public and broad-sweeping manner as Pyron. Josh Schimel, an ecologist at UC Santa Barbara, wrote: \u201cRemember, you are a scientist \u2014 it is not your job to be right. It is your job to be thoughtful, careful, and analytical.\u201d Pyron declined a request for comment for this story.<\/p>\n

Ginger Allington, a landscape ecologist and professor at George Washington University who tracks the scientific debate around \u201cbiodiversity,\u201d says this scientific back-and-forth reflects increasing conflict about the importance of biodiversity and species loss. <\/p>\n

The most common way to measure biodiversity is to count the number of species in a certain place, also known as \u201cspecies richness.\u201d But critics question the usefulness of this number and argue that the concept has always been fuzzy, even to scientists, akin to a \u201cnew linguistic bottle for the wine of old ideas.\u201d <\/p>\n

A handful of scientists want to do away with the term biodiversity altogether \u2014 and have been trying to do so since the late 1990s. The concept, they say, is hard to quantify, hard to track globally over time, and actually isn\u2019t an indication of what people commonly picture as a \u201chealthy\u201d ecosystem. (Scientists are generally reluctant to describe ecosystems in terms of \u201chealthy\u201d or \u201cunhealthy,\u201d which are value judgments.) <\/p>\n

Last year, the United Nations reported that the world has failed to reach even one of the major biodiversity conservation targets it had set for itself in 2010. In the face of accelerating species and habitat loss, countries are now committing to protecting 30 percent of land and water by 2030. This fall, 193 nations are set to attend the virtual Convention on Biological Diversity to hash out a plan to stop biodiversity loss. (A draft of that plan was published last month.) In the US, the Biden administration has proposed its own game-changing approach to nature conservation. Meanwhile, a coronavirus pandemic that may have begun in animals reminds us that we are fundamentally linked to the animals in these critical habitats. <\/p>\n

Against this backdrop, a new generation of scientists is taking up the debate about what to do about \u201cbiodiversity\u201d itself \u2014 the scientific concept, its popular understanding, and indeed the very word. As Allington told Vox: \u201cThere\u2019s just a lot of drama.\u201d <\/p>\n

The backstory of biodiversity<\/p>\n

Before there was biodiversity, there was BioDiversity. A key moment in the evolution of the word came at the National Forum on BioDiversity, held at the Smithsonian Institution and National Academy of Sciences, in 1986. Speakers included Jared Diamond, who later authored Guns, Germs, and Steel, <\/em>and the biologist E.O. Wilson, who most recently popularized the idea of protecting half the planet. <\/p>\n

Diamond and Wilson \u2014 along with seven other white male scientists in attendance \u2014 dubbed themselves the \u201cClub of Earth\u201d and held a press conference, telling reporters that biodiversity loss was the second-biggest \u201cthreat to civilization.\u201d The first? Thermonuclear war.<\/p>\n

Few women scientists or non-Western experts were featured. And not everyone felt comfortable crowning biodiversity as a scientific silver bullet, for that matter. One news report from the time quoted biologist Dan Janzen, who said at the forum that \u201cone shouldn\u2019t use the number of species as the only criterion for earmarking an area for conservation.\u201d Janzen would later call the forum \u201can explicit political event\u201d and said that the word biodiversity got \u201cpunched into that system at that point [in time] deliberately.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Still, the forum drew 14,000 in-person attendees. Another 10,000 watched a live \u201cteleconference\u201d of key panelists beamed around the world. \u201cBioDiversity: The Videotape,\u201d a campy VHS recording of the teleconference spliced with wildlife footage, sold out. The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and Time all covered the event, marking \u201cthe first time that biological diversity \u2026 had received such a broad public airing,\u201d a December 1986 article in the journal BioScience<\/em> noted. The forum not only streamlined the term \u2014 thanks to a suggestion by biologist Walter Rosen \u2014 but brought the buzzword to the forefront, as the growing rate of global species extinctions was given both a name and an urgency. \u201cThe biodiversity crisis,\u201d Wilson said at the forum, \u201cis a real crisis.\u201d <\/p>\n

Against the odds, the idea of biodiversity spread outside of science and around the world. \u201cI\u2019d compare the market penetration of \u2018biodiversity\u2019 to Madonna,\u201d said Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist at Duke University. <\/p>\n

Pimm witnessed the word\u2019s use rise suddenly in the 1980s as a young associate professor. Before then, Pimm had no simple name for the kind of research he was doing \u2014 now called conservation biology \u2014 and, more problematically, no term for what he was measuring out in the field. And so biodiversity \u201chit several things simultaneously,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to popularize, it captures people\u2019s imagination, and it\u2019s scientifically credible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three ecologists shaped \u201cbiodiversity\u201d into the kind of science that goes mainstream, according to Pimm. Thomas Lovejoy coined the term \u201cbiological diversity\u201d in the 1980s. Elliott Norse defined it as the variety of genes, species, and ecosystems in a given area. And Wilson, who initially deemed the contraction biodiversity \u201ctoo glitzy,\u201d ultimately popularized the word. In 1992, the UN codified the word biodiversity \u2014 and Norse\u2019s definition \u2014 into the Convention on Biological Diversity, a multilateral treaty. <\/p>\n<\/aside>\n

Biodiversity was thus conceived to capture two notions: a world teeming with wildlife, and the political problem of stopping extinctions. The idea had become \u201ca force\u201d capable of influencing global society, as climate and environmental law expert David Takacs wrote in his 1996 book The Idea of Biodiversity<\/em>. \u201cIt is difficult to distinguish biodiversity, a socially constructed idea, from biodiversity, some concrete phenomena,\u201d Takacs wrote.<\/p>\n

But over the years, biodiversity has come to mean many things to different people \u2014 from \u201clocal species\u201d to \u201cwildness\u201d to \u201cnatural balance\u201d to just \u201ca fancy word for nature,\u201d according to a study of public opinion in Scotland. Researcher R.A. Lautenschlager, in a 1997 scientific article titled \u201cBiodiversity is dead,\u201d put it more bluntly: \u201cBiodiversity has become so all-inclusive that it has become meaningless.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be careful about what we are saying\u201d<\/p>\n

A practical question flows from this history: Does saving every species still matter? <\/p>\n

Allington has seen colleagues try to address this kind of question publicly, and their answers, she says, tend to get misinterpreted. \u201cWe need to be careful about what we are saying,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

To unpack this question in her college courses, Allington \u2014 who considers biodiversity to be \u201cmultifaceted\u201d \u2014 passes out bags of mixed candy to her students, illustrating a key point: \u201cThe bags show that not all species play the same role in the ecosystem,\u201d she said. Some species, like oysters, make key contributions to the ecosystem, and their disappearance would threaten all the rest. \u201cThe problem is that we still don\u2019t know what functions the majority of species actually provide,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Scientists in today\u2019s save-all-species debate disagree about where the science ends, and where the subjective idea of right and wrong begins. In this sense, debates about biodiversity may ultimately be debates about ethics, implicit human values, and whose ecological knowledge matters.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes every species matter?\u201d asked Mark Vellend, a plant ecologist at University of Sherbrooke in Canada. \u201cYou cannot even give an answer unless you say, matter for what<\/em>?\u201d<\/p>\n

How to measure \u201cgoodness\u201d<\/p>\n

The late biologist Michael Soul\u00e9, the \u201cfather of conservation biology,\u201d was unequivocal that biodiversity is good \u2014 though its goodness, he wrote, \u201ccannot be tested or proven.\u201d <\/p>\n

But in specific places, biodiversity for biodiversity\u2019s sake is not necessarily good. On islands, for example, plant diversity is generally increasing because non-native species are arriving; some rare island plant species may go extinct as a result, but not always. Biodiversity might also be the wrong lens in ecosystems that weren\u2019t diverse to begin with, like boreal forests close to the Arctic, which have low numbers of species that rarely face extinction even in the face of logging. <\/p>\n

Many scientists recognize biodiversity as an imperfect yardstick. The total number of species, and how it changes, doesn\u2019t capture all the ways that humans and other forces alter landscapes. \u201c\u2018More biodiversity\u2019 is not a universal prescription for conservation,\u201d journalist Michelle Nijhuis writes in Beloved Beasts<\/em>, a history of the conservation movement.<\/p>\n

It also doesn\u2019t capture the human experience of nature. A 2013 study \u2014 \u201cIs biodiversity attractive?\u201d \u2014 found that when it comes to outdoor recreation, visitors don\u2019t actually prefer species-rich urban spaces. \u201cEspecially during the pandemic people [are] flocking to natural, wild spaces,\u201d said Vellend. \u201cWhether in those spaces there are 1,000 species or 100, to me that\u2019s a pretty small part of the overall story.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many people, the on-ramp to nature is not through science. \u201cTheir point of entry is aesthetic,\u201d Barry Lopez, the nature writer and Arctic Dreams<\/em> author, said in a 2001 interview. \u201cIt\u2019s not that they don\u2019t know what biodiversity is, but it doesn\u2019t have the pull,\u201d he added. \u201cThe door for them lies elsewhere.\u201d <\/p>\n

A more measurable dimension of a place\u2019s \u201cgoodness\u201d within the human story, some scientists think, is ecosystem function. Forget the number of species, in other words, and focus on what each does for keeping an ecosystem enjoyable and humming, like the life-supporting role of oak trees \u2014 which support hundreds of species of caterpillars, a mainstay in most songbird diets \u2014 in North American hardwood forests. Using this framework, land managers would focus their conservation efforts on species that appear to play the most crucial role in a given ecosystem. (An 80-page US National Park Service report, called \u201cResist-Accept-Direct,\u201d recently called for this triage approach.)<\/p>\n

Pimm, for his part, thinks this framework is \u201ctotal bullshit\u201d \u2014 and he is not alone in that sentiment. It\u2019s hard to develop a conservation plan around the emerging concept of ecosystem function, according to Pimm, precisely because we still know so little about the role of any given species in a place. \u201cWhat does one even mean by ecosystem function?\u201d he asked. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have any operational meaning.\u201d <\/p>\n

The concept of biodiversity is becoming even more influential in the realm of climate policy: In June, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its first-ever joint report with the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Yet one of its authors, the Paris-Saclay University ecologist Paul Leadley, said while introducing the report that current on-the-ground approaches to saving species are essentially outdated. \u201cWe have to really rethink biodiversity conservation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There is a broader movement to expand the meaning of \u201cbiodiversity\u201d<\/p>\n

So if the idea that saving every species saves the planet is imperfect, should we now abandon biodiversity?<\/p>\n

\u201cA concept can\u2019t truly die until it\u2019s got a replacement,\u201d said Vellend. He says that the 1980s version of biodiversity should be seen as a starting point, with plenty of room for improvement. \u201cUntil somebody comes up with something better, we\u2019re stuck with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even R. Alexander Pyron, the author of the explosive Post piece, cautioned against dropping \u201cbiodiversity\u201d in a mea culpa he posted on his Facebook page after blowback from his peers. \u201cI succumbed to a temptation to sensationalize parts of my argument,\u201d Pyron wrote.<\/p>\n

But others see an opportunity to expand the notion of biodiversity into something more inclusive and more just. Campaigns like #BiodiversityRevisited have created virtual dialogues and in-person workshops where an array of voices discuss ways of breathing new life into \u201cbiodiversity.\u201d These discussions have pushed out possible replacement terms, like \u201cfabric of life,\u201d that might better capture the full range of life on Earth, from thriving trees to prospering pandas to healthy people. <\/p>\n

One starting point might be to broaden the biodiversity concept to include humans, breaking down the barrier between our species and other animals. \u201cMy well-educated scientist colleagues will often slip and say \u2018mammals and humans.\u2019 Every time, I get a chill down my spine,\u201d said Hopi Hoekstra, an evolutionary biologist and curator at Harvard University\u2019s Museum of Comparative Zoology. Humans are <\/em>mammals, after all. That even experts make these slips of the tongue \u201cjust highlights that there is still something to overcome there,\u201d Hoekstra said. <\/p>\n<\/aside>\n

Conservationists could also gain from a broadened notion of biodiversity that centers Indigenous and traditional knowledge, which has long been diminished by establishment science. Research shows that lands managed by Indigenous people are home to much of the world\u2019s biodiversity, and that biodiversity tends to decline more slowly on those lands.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of these Westernized concepts, we don\u2019t see ourselves in them,\u201d Andrea Reid, a fisheries scientist at University of British Columbia and a citizen of the Nisga\u2019a nation, said. Indigenous concepts of conservation \u201cinclude people within the system,\u201d said Reid, who monitors diversity in British Columbia\u2019s coldwater streams by counting species in ways that have cultural meaning to Indigenous people. <\/p>\n

Reid has been working with Indigenous \u201cknowledge keepers\u201d who will go to a stream and look for certain species of dragonfly \u2014 for them, a \u201ccultural indicator\u201d that marks a healthy ecosystem. Other scientists might go to the same place and tally all insect species to measure local species richness. These measures can be used together, Reid says, to assess the overall condition of the stream over time. <\/p>\n

This kind of \u201cpluralistic\u201d perspective, as some scientists call it, aligns with what Reid calls \u201ctwo-eyed seeing\u201d \u2014 a way of bringing together Indigenous and Western understandings. \u201cIt\u2019s not about throwing something out, or just walking away from \u2018biodiversity\u2019 and its metrics,\u201d Reid said. \u201cIt\u2019s about enriching our understanding by bringing multiple perspectives to bear.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In 2017, an evolutionary biologist named R. Alexander Pyron ignited controversy with a Washington Post commentary titled \u201cWe don\u2019t need to save endangered species. Extinction is part of evolution.\u201d He wrote: \u201cConserving a species we have helped to kill off, but on which we are not directly dependent, serves to discharge our own guilt, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}