Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45 (2014) 89–91

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Environmental philosophy: From theory to practice Sahotra Sarkar Department of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA

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Article history: Available online 21 November 2013 Keywords: Environmental ethics Environmental philosophy Biodiversity Restoration Sustainability Environmental justice

a b s t r a c t Environmental philosophy is a hybrid discipline drawing extensively from epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of science and analyzing disciplines such as conservation biology, restoration ecology, sustainability studies, and political ecology. The book being discussed both provides an overview of environmental philosophy and develops an anthropocentric framework for it. That framework treats natural values as deep cultural values. Tradeoffs between natural values are analyzed using decision theory to the extent possible, leaving many interesting question for philosophical deliberation. This framework is supposed to be applicable in practical contexts. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences

The goal of this book (Sarkar, 2012) was to give a short but comprehensive introduction to environmental philosophy that broadens its scope. It views the discipline as one in which the techniques of (rigorous) philosophical analysis are brought to bear upon environmental thinking including, especially, the environmental sciences. Thus, environmental philosophy is conceived of as much broader than environmental ethics—in particular, it includes issues emerging from the philosophy of science and especially, as it turns out, formal epistemology (in the guise of decision theory). Some commentators have found this expansion ‘‘startling’’ (Norton, 2013, p. 204). Its rationale lies in the claim that the book tries to demonstrate, that the environmental sciences are philosophically interesting. However, the book excludes discussion of environmental ideologies that do not rely on evidence and argumentation, for instance, many of the religious and spiritual defenses of environmental preservation. For lack of space, the book ignores environmental aesthetics. The book relies heavily on case studies which will not be mentioned, let alone summarized, in these introductory remarks. The book starts by using an operational distinction between what is natural and what is not on the basis of what is of anthropogenic origin and what is not (and not by attempting to distinguish humans from nature). It then defines natural values as those that promote the persistence or increase of non-human biota E-mail address: [email protected] 1369-8486/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.10.010

or enhance non-anthropogenic aspects of the physical environment. Adopting a naturalistic perspective, that is, one that relies on empirical data, and motivated by the paucity of such discussions, Chapter 2 then attempts to classify and organize natural values. The upshot is the realization that some of these values: biodiversity and productivity, wild nature and ecosystem service, etc., may be in conflict with each other. Tradeoffs may be required—this is one of the many reasons why formal epistemology (in this case in the form of multi-criteria decision analysis) becomes centrally relevant to environmental philosophy. The discussion of natural values is followed by a short chapter on environmental ethics. This is the only chapter concerned with justification for environmental concerns. Three options are distinguished: attributions of demand value, transformative power, and intrinsic value. The first two are consistent with a broad anthropocentrism, the last option corresponds to non-anthropocentrism (e.g., biocentrism and ecocentrism). The chapter includes a systematic critique of arguments that attempt to attribute intrinsic value to non-human entities. It argues that these cannot be plausibly attributed especially to entities at higher taxonomic levels than individuals. While demand values are tracked by felt preferences, entities have transformative power if they can alter these preferences— thus they are at a different level than felt preferences. However,

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two problems with transformative power arguments are also noted: a boundary problem (anything can potentially end up with transformative power) and a directionality problem (some transformations may be undesirable). These problems are not fully resolved—rather, it is suggested that each such case should be treated on its own merit, taking contextual factors into account, rather than through the application of some purportedly general rule. The discussion here extends an earlier analysis presented in 2005 (Sarkar, 2005). Decision theory is supposed to help translate ethics into public policy. The treatment of decision theory in the book (which explicitly occupies an entire chapter but is implicitly invoked in many other discussions) is critical, both advocating its use but emphasizing its limitations including its well-known paradoxes. The emphasis on the limitations is motivated by the practice of many environmental sciences today in which software packages for decision support have come to dominate decisions, particularly the selection of biodiversity conservation area networks (Sarkar et al., 2006). These tools have unfortunately come to often be used mechanically with little critical reflection on their aptness. While the chapter illustrates some appropriate uses of such decision support systems, the paradoxes and other limitations emphasize the importance of reflective rather than reflexive use of formal tools. The chapter also emphasizes what should be an obvious point: that the use of formal procedures should not be regarded as an appropriate substitute for rational deliberation. These first four chapters provide the theoretical background for philosophical reflection on environmental issues. The next four turn to practice, that is, the deployment of that framework in individual contexts of environmental concern: biodiversity conservation, ecological restoration, sustainability, and ecological justice and equity. The chapter on biodiversity conservation argues that biodiversity is a normative concept that should not be conflated with descriptive measures of ecological diversity. How ‘‘biodiversity’’ is defined, that is, what the ‘‘constituents’’ of biodiversity are, depends on cultural choices about which natural values to endorse for conservation (Callicott, Crowder, & Mumford, 1999; Norton, 2003; Sarkar, 2008). The chapter proposes a set of adequacy conditions to constrain permissible choices for definitions of biodiversity: these definitions should be limited to biological entities; they should embrace diversity and breadth in the set of relevant entities; and they should include biotic entities on grounds that are not limited to their material use. The adequacy conditions include normative assumptions which is consistent with the view that biodiversity is itself a normative concept. These adequacy conditions still permit a wide variety of entities to be selected as biodiversity constituents. This analysis explains, for instance, how cultural choices have resulted in the United States’ focus on rare and endangered species (through the Endangered Species Act) and the European Union’s focus on habitat types (through Natura 2000). Other permitted choices include that of sacred groves as biodiversity constituents in the cultural context of the Eastern Himalayan cloud forests. Moving on to the science of conservation biology, the chapter focuses on systematic conservation planning, which is taken to be the core of conservation biology because it addresses the critical problem of designating priority areas for biodiversity conservation and devising management protocols for these areas. In particular, systematic conservation planning exemplifies the use of decision-theoretic tools for environmental planning and illustrates the extent to which normative issues pervade such decisions. It is also an exemplary case of the analysis of the limitations of formal decision analysis. The chapter on ecological restoration is more ambitious insofar as it questions what has become the standard model for the practice of restoration, at least in the United States, because of

the definition of ‘‘restoration’’ adopted by the Society for Ecological Restoration (which has ambitiously rechristened itself as the Society for Ecological Restoration International in spite of negligible involvement from the global South). That definition has two components: requirements of historical fidelity and ecological integrity. Both are criticized on practical and conceptual grounds, the former also on normative grounds (following Sarkar [2011]). In particular, it is pointed out that the choice of a prior period to replicate cannot in general be specified on ecological grounds; it is typically a normative choice and, unless the relevant natural values are selected after explicit deliberation (which they rarely are), the choice can be arbitrary. An example is the fascination with the pre-Columbian era in North America. The chapter includes discussions both of attempts to reconstruct habitats that do not rely on historical fidelity and of attempts to operationalize a concept of resilience that would replace ecological integrity by requiring reconstructed habitats being able to persist in the presence of large-scale disturbances. A short chapter on sustainability distinguishes between weak and strong versions of that concept. The former endorses complete fungibility (or possibility of functional replacement) of entities which leads to the view that no particular entity need to be conserved. The latter is much more restrictive, demanding the conservation of individual entities (e.g., old growth forests). At the conceptual level it is argued that, whereas the definition of weak sustainability is reasonably cogent, that of strong sustainability leaves much to be desired in the sense that the arguments in its favor rely on controversial assumptions about values. Moreover, both make implausible empirical assumptions: complete fungibility in the case of weak sustainability and no fungibility in the case of strong sustainability. More important, proponents of strong sustainability can achieve their goals without endorsing that concept. They could merely endorse weak sustainability but resist the (currently popular) view that all desirable natural values can be reduced to sustainability. Rather, if a portfolio of environmental goals is embraced including sustainability, but not limited to it, one can endorse the preservation of sets of entities that deserve protection as such. Thus, what would be endorsed is biodiversity conservation, not as part of sustainability, but as an end on par with it. The same point pertains to wild nature. The fourth ‘‘applied’’ chapter turns to issues of environmental equity and justice. It distinguishes between three positions, environmental fundamentalism, socially responsible environmentalism, and integrative biocultural environmentalism, and endorses the last (which attempts to integrate sociocultural imperatives with the enhancement of natural values). It then includes short discussions of the ethics of climate change, environmental racism, social and political ecology, and ecofeminism. None of these discussions is suggested to be complete in coverage. Rather they are intended to be representative, but even so in a very limited way: they sample the type of issues that are debated by philosophers interested in these areas. Social and political ecology, especially as developed in the global South, gets somewhat more attention than the others simply because it has traditionally been ignored in environmental ethics from the global North. The book ends with an invitation to further philosophical reflection on environmental issues. Not only is the topic of philosophical interest by itself, critical reflection on the relevant issues is claimed to be of value for the practice of environmentalism in the field. Acknowledgments This piece was the introduction of an ‘‘Author Meets Critics’’ session at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association. The three commentators were David Frank, Justin Garson, and Jay Odenbaugh. Thanks are due to

S. Sarkar / Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 45 (2014) 89–91

them and to Anya Plutynski for comments on earlier drafts of this piece. References Callicott, J. B., Crowder, L. B., & Mumford, K. (1999). Current normative concepts in conservation. Conservation Biology, 13, 22–35. Norton, B. G. (2003). Defining biodiversity: Do we know what we are trying to save? Vancouver: University of British Columbia Department of Forestry Namkoong Family Lecture Series. Norton, B. G. (2013). Environmental philosophy: A fresh perspective. BioScience, 63, 404–406.

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Sarkar, S. (2005). Biodiversity and environmental philosophy: An introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press. Sarkar, S. (2008). Norms and the conservation of biodiversity. Resonance, 13, 627–637. Sarkar, S. (2011). Habitat reconstruction: Moving beyond historical fidelity. In K. de Laplante, B. Brown, & K. Peacock (Eds.), Philosophy of ecology. Handbook of the philosophy of science (Vol. 11, pp. 327–361). New York: Elsevier. Sarkar, S. (2012). Environmental philosophy: From theory to practice. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Sarkar, S., Pressey, R. L., Faith, D. P., Margules, C. R., Fuller, T., Stoms, D. M., et al. (2006). Biodiversity conservation planning tools: Present status and challenges for the future. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 31, 123–159.

Environmental philosophy: from theory to practice.

Environmental philosophy is a hybrid discipline drawing extensively from epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of science and analyzing disciplines suc...
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