T RADE OFF

often turn out in favour of the “pro-environment” alternative.¹¹⁰ He does not (understandably) attempt to estimate how often this happens, but he draws the relatively modest though very important conclusion that “… commercial interests do not hold a monopoly on economic arguments.”¹¹¹

Norman Myers supplies us with a real life example of a fruit called

‘durian’. It is native to Southeast Asia, and is said to be most exquisite. It contributes (1990) with $100 million a year to the local economies. The problem is that it is pollinated by one particular species of bat, which is threatened by different kinds of human encroachment. The swamps where the bats find most of their food (apart from the nectar from the durian tree), is claimed for human buildings. Human constructions also threaten the caves where the bats live since the caves are exploited for limestone used to make concrete.¹¹²

In order then to find out whether the disappearance of the trees and the bats is a bad thing according to anthropocentric instrumentalism, we have to weigh the positive effects of the buildings against the negative effects of losing the durian fruit. The negative effects for human beings are that many people will no longer be able to enjoy this exquisite fruit, and that the local economies will lose about $100 million a year. The positive effects for human beings are not clearly spelled out by Myers, but there ought to be a non-negligible economic gain.

People in the area will get access to new apartments, and there will be quite a few more jobs available. On the other hand, there ought to be quite a few jobs that get lost if the durian disappears. Given the information we have got, it is not possible to say what the total result will be. It illustrates, however, that it is seldom obvious whether conservation or exploitation is the most rational option in a particular situation from the point of view of anthropocentric instrumentalism.

This is obviously a problem for the usefulness of this theory when it comes to explaining why extinction is generally seen as morally problematic – especially since this intuition often appears as very clear while the outcome of trade-offs are often very unclear.

Some of those who have thought about the subject of trade-offs between preservation and other values are quite pessimistic:

Thomas Lovejoy believes that a choice between the economic value of a particular species and the economic value of an encroachment turning out to favour the species does not happen very often.¹¹³

Petra Andersson considers it “not unbelievable” that if we cut down the forest of the Parc des Volcans national park in Rwanda, and have it cultivated by human beings, the total sum of happiness would be larger than if we keep it protected.¹¹⁴

110 Randall 1986 p.95. “Pro-environment” can of course mean different things, but since the paper is about preservation, I assume that the meaning of the term in the context it appears is not totally irrelevant to our question.

111 Randall 1986 p.95. By ‘commercial’ I assume the author in this context means something like

“exploitative”.

112 Myers 1990 pp.21f

113 Lovejoy 1986 p.22

114 Andersson 2005 p.91

Holmes Rolston III does not believe that the commercial value of nature gives sufficient account for the value of nature, and that win-win situations will not always be possible as long as we talk in purely economic terms.¹¹⁵

The economist Kenneth Hermele believes that there is an opposition between economic growth and species preservation, at least in a short perspective, but he indicates some pessimism even in the long turn.¹¹⁶

On top of that, Bryan G. Norton – who in general is positive towards the idea that anthropocentrism favours species preservation – points out that in a future with more humans, the negative instrumental value of a species that, for example, competes with human beings for food or habitat, will increase and maybe even override its positive instrumental value. Therefore, anthropocentric instrumentalism will, according to Norton, be a continuously weaker reason for preservation.¹¹⁷

The scenarios of the Millennium Assessment report on biodiversity show that many of the things we need to do in order to counter human poverty and enhance development, are likely to further impoverish biodiversity.¹¹⁸ The report indicates that the development paths for relieving today’s poverty, hunger and health problems for human beings during the next 50 years also mean continued loss of biodiversity (even though the worst scenario in terms of achieving the human welfare goals is also worst in terms of species loss).¹¹⁹ This means that in at least some situations where we have to choose between preservation and extinction, the alternative that implies extinction will from an anthropocentric instrumental point of view actually be preferable.

The Millennium assessment group also points out that even though it is often possible for a community to make money through preservation by, for example, ecotourism or a sustainable use of forest products, the communities would in general make more money by exploiting the area in a way that can lead to a loss of species.¹²⁰ They also believe that if we only consider what they call

“utilitarian”¹²¹ reasons for protecting biodiversity, we will actually get by with a lower diversity than we have today.¹²² This means that even though we will need some species, we will apparently not need all of them.

The millennium assessors conclude that win-win situations may not be as common as has been hoped for in situations where both conservation and development is at stake. They also tell us that conflict between the two is more

115 Rolston 1994 pp.126f, 141, 143f

116 Hermele 2002 p.153

117 Norton 1982 pp.18, 21f

118 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005 p.77

119 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005 p.15

120 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005 pp.12, 90 The same thing is indicated by Doole 2005 describing a visit to a Chinese village where the inhabitants have exchanged logging for ecotourism. They manage to make a living from ecotourism but their income had fallen as a result of the change. On the other hand, the number of tourists where growing and the village leader believed that they would gain income in a longer perspective.

121 ‘Utilitarian’ in reports like these generally means ‘instrumental’, and should not be confused with the normal meaning of the term ‘utilitarian’ in ethics.

122 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005 p.7

common than interplay, and they finally claim that it would be naïve to believe that we can always have both. The Millennium assessors therefore advise us to think more of how to make trade-offs between development and species protection.¹²³

This list of pessimistic assessments concerning the outcomes of trade-off situations shows that we may do well in being careful in what we can expect from anthropocentric instrumentalism as a basis for preservation.

Norman Myers writes that our lifestyle with “cheap supplies of hamburger beef, hardwood timber, and other tropical forest products” is a large threat to the rain forest.¹²⁴ This goes not just for the rain forest, but for many other habitats and their species as well. Considering that our demands for food and other utilities from nature historically have been the main cause of human induced extinction (both directly and indirectly through habitat destruction), maybe references to these demands are not the best basis for a defence of biodiversity?

On the other hand, Myers also claims that

the continuing decline of tropical forests [and we might add other ecosystems and species] will eventually levy a heavy price on our temperate-zone lifestyles, through the loss of many potential sources of new foods, drugs, industrial raw materials, even sources of energy.¹²⁵

This is also an important point that seems to be right in line with the statements by Sörlin referred to in the beginning of this chapter. It also underlines the point we have made earlier that it is not necessarily always the case that our wasteful use of natural resources follows from anthropocentric instrumentalism. On the other hand, we could not exclude that what looks shortsighted and wasteful may in some cases actually be the most rational from a strictly anthropocentric instrumental viewpoint. In order to be able to continue to utilise other species we have to be aware not to use them faster than they can reproduce themselves. If we demand large quantities at a low cost of whatever it is that a certain species supplies, and the species cannot sustain that demand in the long term, we have to ask another question: Is it better to satisfy the demand to a high degree for a short time, or to satisfy it to a lower degree for a longer time? The answer is not as obvious as proponents of a sustainable use of natural resources often assume. It looks quite obvious that the latter option is the best one in the long term especially if the total amount of good we can get from the species in the long term is much larger than what we can get if we choose the more “short-sighted” alternative. If we take the actual behaviour by consumers as an indicator of their interests, however, the answer seems to be that they quite often prefer a high degree of satisfaction of a demand for a short time rather than a low degree of satisfaction for a long time. This could of course be explained by saying that people are irrational, but it might at least to some extent also be

123 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005 p.74

124 Myers 1990 p.22

125 Myers 1990 p.22

explained by the instability of people’s preferences – at least of their instrumental preferences. There may be different ways of satisfying our intrinsic preferences, and if the favoured ways of satisfying the consumers’ preferences shift – as we know they do – then our case for conservation will turn out to be weak. The durian fruit mentioned by Myers may be exquisite, but there are many delicious fruits, as well as other means of pleasing our taste buds, and human taste tends to shift. So maybe in some situations it is best from an anthropocentric instrumental point of view to get as much as possible out of a species while it is in fashion even if it means that it will disappear eventually. We also have to remember that technology changes. If we do not use a resource now, it might be worthless or at least worth less in the future when the technology has changed.¹²⁶ On the other hand, a resource that seems worthless today might become valuable later, and resources that today have an instrumental value of a kind that gives most satisfaction if it is utilised quickly may later turn out to have another kind of instrumental value that would give the most value if it is exploited in a more sustainable manner. This further increases the uncertainty we face when we try to make trade-offs between values that support conservation and values that tend to promote extinction.

One aspect that may be important is that the less common something is, the higher the price usually is. This in turn means that when a species becomes threatened, its market value increases and it becomes more economically worthwhile to exploit the species.¹²⁷ On the other hand, the exploitation also often means a larger cost since it takes more effort to collect the last specimens of a species. This is not always true, however. Lovejoy uses whales as an example of this phenomenon, but not all species are scattered over the world’s oceans. Technological improvement should not be underestimated either when it comes to increasing our capacity to exploit smaller and more scattered populations.

It seems that the answer to whether sustainable use or fast exploitation of a species is the best option from an anthropocentric instrumental point of view to a large degree depends on the nature of the instrumental value of the species – and especially on whether it is exchangeable. Some demands can only be satisfied in one way. We should therefore distinguish between exchangeable and non-exchangeable instrumental value. Exchangeable instrumental value comes in degrees. The size of an instrumental value is in part determined by the size of the end value it serves as a means to, and in part of how effective a means it is to promote this value, but it is also determined by the availability and effectiveness of alternative means to promote the same end value. Non-exchangeable instrumental value has only the first dimension: Its value is decided by the size of the end value it is a means to.

Some things of course have both instrumental value and end value, and many things have instrumental value in relation to more than one end value.

Often we are also dealing with chains of instrumental value. Finally, some (or

126 Martinez-Alier 1994 p.xxiii

127 Lovejoy 1986 p.21

most) things seem to have both positive and negative values that have to be weighed together.

The fact that there are non-exchangeable functions does not necessarily mean that there are non-exchangeable species but it is not implausible that there are. To identify the non-exchangeable species will, however, probably be quite difficult and it is uncertain how many species we are talking about. It will certainly not be all species.

One thing that has to be remembered when we talk about exchangeability is that it is not possible to assign monetary value to non-exchangeable entities. To assign monetary value to something implies that we have also decided how many or how much of some other entity it takes to achieve the same value. If we put a monetary value on breathable air, no matter how high, it is always possible to accumulate enough of something that has a lower value per unit but that in sufficiently large amounts can outweigh the value of the air. This would be absurd. If we assign the value of $1 000 000 000 to breathable air we would in fact be able to say that we could substitute the breathable air if we instead manufacture one billion copies of a $1 pen. That would obviously be absurd since, if we do not have any air to breath, we cannot utilise the things we have manufactured anyway and the pen would in effect be worthless. The only thing that could replace breathable air would be something that can produce the same benefit, not something that just produces something else of equal economic value. It is very unlikely that we could find something that can give us the same benefits as clean air.

This complicates further the already complex process of making a rational trade-off according to the principles of anthropocentric instrumentalism. My points are that it is hard to know the outcome of all trade-offs between acts that preserve and acts that contribute to extinction, and in some instances it might not even be practically possible. When it is possible, we can, however, expect that a number of trade-offs might favour encroachments that contribute to extinction if we look at them from a purely anthropocentric instrumental perspective, even though they intuitively seem at least morally problematic, and often as clearly wrong. This in turn seems to weaken the usefulness of anthropocentric instrumentalism as a way of answering our question.

One thing we have to consider though is that there is no consensus in ethics that the rather utilitarian way of calculating we have used in this chapter is the correct way of making ethical decisions. If we accept a more deontological approach to ethics, we have to consider the fact that sometimes the best total trade-off can imply unacceptable costs to certain individuals.¹²⁸ It might, for instance, on some occasions be the case that a project that results in the extinction of a species turns out to give the best total outcome, but also turns out to be a death blow to a small rain forest tribe whose life is dependent on the species. In that case, the extinction might be judged as immoral by a deontological version of anthropocentric instrumentalism even if it is judged as

128 See e.g. Regan, Tom 1983 p. 286f, 360

morally acceptable or even morally required by a utilitarian version. On the other hand, this argument can sometimes also go in the opposite direction. In some cases, private persons or companies may have to pay a high price for the public good of preserving the species,¹²⁹ or it might turn out that a certain insect species supplies humanity on the whole with more positive than negative effects, but at the same time causes great havoc for a local population of humans. In cases like that a deontological ethic based on anthropocentric instrumentalism might in fact be in favour of letting the species go extinct or even of active extermination.

It seems that we have to conclude that it is not possible by means of cost-benefit analyses to say that it is always right to preserve species or that it is always right not to. We clearly have to consider each case separately, and not even in all individual cases will it be possible to answer with an acceptable degree of certainty. As we will soon find out, however, things are even more complicated. There are, for instance, some special cases of instrumental value that are not easily accounted for in a trade-off. In the next two sections we will take a look at two such value types that have been suggested to be important in relation to conservation issues.