1 00:00:00,030 --> 00:00:08,640 I believe we're live, and so although I can't see you well, I gather there are many of you watching us at the moment, so welcome. 2 00:00:08,640 --> 00:00:12,420 Also, my understanding, which is limited of the technology, 3 00:00:12,420 --> 00:00:21,900 is that you can see the first of professor usage slides and you can see both himself and myself with tiny vignettes in the corner. 4 00:00:21,900 --> 00:00:25,410 It seems appropriate. So it falls to me. 5 00:00:25,410 --> 00:00:30,060 My name is David MacDonald and I'm the director of the Wildlife Conservation Research 6 00:00:30,060 --> 00:00:36,120 Unit and also one of the leaders of the Martin School Natural Governance Programme, 7 00:00:36,120 --> 00:00:39,480 which is hosting us today. It's false to me. 8 00:00:39,480 --> 00:00:43,440 It's a great pleasure to introduce Jon Stewart. 9 00:00:43,440 --> 00:00:48,240 But before I do so, I've been given some technical instructions. 10 00:00:48,240 --> 00:00:51,570 I think even I am capable of following them. 11 00:00:51,570 --> 00:00:59,820 One is that somewhere towards the bottom right hand side of your screen, there's a little button that says something like Ask a question. 12 00:00:59,820 --> 00:01:04,140 And this is exactly what you should do if if you would like to as we go along. 13 00:01:04,140 --> 00:01:09,240 And after we've heard from John, I'll try and choose some of those questions. 14 00:01:09,240 --> 00:01:16,200 I've really looked at enough because they're accumulating already to realise my task will be easier. 15 00:01:16,200 --> 00:01:23,040 If your question can be reasonably brief, says I have some chance to absorb it while thinking on my feet. 16 00:01:23,040 --> 00:01:37,320 But please do, please do ask a question so I could quite easily spend most of the next hour talking about the remarkable accomplishments of John, who. 17 00:01:37,320 --> 00:01:40,530 But I'll try and confine it instead to just a few seconds. 18 00:01:40,530 --> 00:01:49,590 But he is an extremely unusual person as a scholar because he has had to at least two really successful careers. 19 00:01:49,590 --> 00:01:54,870 He started out as an ecologist studying the wolves of Isle Royale, 20 00:01:54,870 --> 00:02:01,200 very quantitative ecologist who brought many, many insights to wolf population dynamics. 21 00:02:01,200 --> 00:02:10,680 And that led him into a career which was buffeted by interaction with the officials who were making policy about wolves, 22 00:02:10,680 --> 00:02:22,380 their hunting and their conservation in North America, and finding himself in that maelstrom of the interface between evidence and policy. 23 00:02:22,380 --> 00:02:32,130 He progressively realised he was thinking about ethical questions, so he trained himself in a second career that is a conservation ethicist. 24 00:02:32,130 --> 00:02:37,410 It's a rare breed, and John is without doubt paramount amongst them. 25 00:02:37,410 --> 00:02:46,770 So the talk he's going to bring to us today and I've been privileged to know a little bit about what's in it is going to give you a flavour 26 00:02:46,770 --> 00:02:57,180 of really very great expertise in animal ecology and equally great expertise in scholarly ethics and the bringing together of the two. 27 00:02:57,180 --> 00:03:01,680 So I think that's enough of an introduction. 28 00:03:01,680 --> 00:03:07,530 I'm now going to try and turn my camera off, says that I'm not in anybody's way. 29 00:03:07,530 --> 00:03:13,200 And I think next you will hear from John, and that will continue for the better part of 40 minutes. 30 00:03:13,200 --> 00:03:20,580 Whereupon they'll move to a discussion or questions. So John, welcome, were this a different medium? 31 00:03:20,580 --> 00:03:28,800 We would at this moment be enjoying riotous applause. And if you could just imagine that and Lloyd Schwartz, thank you. 32 00:03:28,800 --> 00:03:32,700 Very good. Thank you so much, David, for the great introduction. 33 00:03:32,700 --> 00:03:38,370 And and it's such a pleasure to be here and share some thoughts and ideas with you today. 34 00:03:38,370 --> 00:03:40,380 We'll get straight into things. 35 00:03:40,380 --> 00:03:48,330 I want to make three points today, and the first of the three points is aided by being reminded a little bit of my background. 36 00:03:48,330 --> 00:03:57,480 David touched on that a bit and I'll see just a tiny bit more about it now again, mainly in service of the first point that I want to make today. 37 00:03:57,480 --> 00:04:07,860 My original training is in ecology and a great deal of the field work that I still do to this day takes place at a field site in Lake Superior, 38 00:04:07,860 --> 00:04:12,150 more precisely with an Isle Royale National Park. 39 00:04:12,150 --> 00:04:17,310 This island is inhabited by a population of wolves and moose, 40 00:04:17,310 --> 00:04:24,630 and they are also the subject of the longest continuous study of any predator prey system in the world, 41 00:04:24,630 --> 00:04:28,560 and I've been leading this research now for about two decades. 42 00:04:28,560 --> 00:04:37,860 One of the things that's been appreciated all along the way is how relevant it is that the system takes place on an island and for our interest today, 43 00:04:37,860 --> 00:04:45,570 what that means is that the population of wolves that live there have restricted gene flow with the population of wolves that are on the mainland. 44 00:04:45,570 --> 00:04:51,390 And what we've learnt a few things about the nature of that gene flow and its implications. 45 00:04:51,390 --> 00:04:59,830 One of the things that we learnt is that 1997 was the last time that a wolf immigrated from the mainland. 46 00:04:59,830 --> 00:05:04,390 Who the island population, due to some advances in events, 47 00:05:04,390 --> 00:05:11,980 is at the time that the late 20th century did genetic techniques were used to identify the individual wolf is pictured here right in the middle. 48 00:05:11,980 --> 00:05:17,680 One of the effects that he had is to basically provide a genetic rescue for the population it allowed for 49 00:05:17,680 --> 00:05:24,310 the population to for a brief period of time do better than it had been after those effects wore off. 50 00:05:24,310 --> 00:05:31,700 And then the population sank to near extinction. Now this was interesting for a number of ecological reasons. 51 00:05:31,700 --> 00:05:40,450 We published on those ideas, but one of the other things that happened as a result of these dynamics is that by about 2016, 52 00:05:40,450 --> 00:05:47,980 the population was reduced to just two wolves. And it led to the question should wolf predation be restored on the island? 53 00:05:47,980 --> 00:05:52,270 It was a question that the National Park Service took on. 54 00:05:52,270 --> 00:05:59,320 That's the agency that's responsible for managing this piece of land. And before we think a little bit about this particular question, 55 00:05:59,320 --> 00:06:05,470 should wolves predation be restored in a case like what I'm about to describe or happened describing a bit so far? 56 00:06:05,470 --> 00:06:09,340 It pays to know just a little bit more of the details around it. 57 00:06:09,340 --> 00:06:15,220 First thing to appreciate is how it is that Wolves can possibly get to Isle Royale is basically only by all means. 58 00:06:15,220 --> 00:06:18,730 It's by crossing an ice bridge that forms in some winters, 59 00:06:18,730 --> 00:06:25,990 but not others on the lake's pure waters are too cold and too vast for a wolf to be able to swim. 60 00:06:25,990 --> 00:06:37,420 So ice bridges is it? The other thing that we know is that ice bridges have up over time become much less common over the last several decades. 61 00:06:37,420 --> 00:06:45,370 They occur at a frequency about once every five years or less, whereas previously they used to occur in most years. 62 00:06:45,370 --> 00:06:53,860 For a little bit of context and reference here, that red arrow is pointing to the last time that it wolf immigrated to the island. 63 00:06:53,860 --> 00:07:00,730 So clearly, this is a circumstance that has to do with climate warming, which is the reason ice bridges are less common. 64 00:07:00,730 --> 00:07:09,160 And so what might have seemed like a kind of parochial question about whether wolf predation should be restored on some remote island? 65 00:07:09,160 --> 00:07:20,620 It was understood to be a surrogate for a much broader question, which is should we protect national parks from climate change and to these questions? 66 00:07:20,620 --> 00:07:24,980 There were basically two answers to the question restore wolves or not. 67 00:07:24,980 --> 00:07:29,620 And the first was to say yes, wolves should be restored. 68 00:07:29,620 --> 00:07:34,180 And the reason to do so is to protect the ecosystem health of that national park. 69 00:07:34,180 --> 00:07:41,350 And for that to be a sensible answer, one would have to probe just a little bit deeper and ask, Well, what exactly does one mean by ecosystem health? 70 00:07:41,350 --> 00:07:46,990 And upon inspecting that question, and if one reads the scholarly literature on the topic, they will first find out. 71 00:07:46,990 --> 00:07:52,480 There is many definitions of ecosystem health is there are authors who have written about it, 72 00:07:52,480 --> 00:08:01,090 but rather remarkably, almost all definitions of ecosystem health sit pretty neatly into one or two categories. 73 00:08:01,090 --> 00:08:07,030 One category is that ecosystems are healthy to the extent that they serve our needs. 74 00:08:07,030 --> 00:08:11,620 The other is that they're healthy to the degree that they've been unaffected by humans. 75 00:08:11,620 --> 00:08:16,480 Now the concern here is that the first answer is pretty deeply anthropocentric, 76 00:08:16,480 --> 00:08:23,110 and Anspaugh centrism has a reputation for sometimes causing environmental troubles as opposed to solving them. 77 00:08:23,110 --> 00:08:29,410 And then the other answer being unaffected by humans is essentially misanthropic basically makes humans the bad guys. 78 00:08:29,410 --> 00:08:32,410 If there's an effect, it must be bad. 79 00:08:32,410 --> 00:08:42,340 And so the answer yes has some role, has some challenges and troubles at it, at the basis of what would give rise to that answer. 80 00:08:42,340 --> 00:08:49,210 The other answer that was raised during the discourse surrounding this question about restoring wolves is that the answer should be no, 81 00:08:49,210 --> 00:08:53,410 they shouldn't be restored. And the reason being is to allow nature to take its course. 82 00:08:53,410 --> 00:08:57,070 The reasoning here has to do with the fact that people recognise that Isle Royale is 83 00:08:57,070 --> 00:09:03,310 an island and it's quite natural and normal for populations to go extinct on islands. 84 00:09:03,310 --> 00:09:11,200 And so that led rise to this answer. Now, of course, the challenge with this answer is that it has to kind of shaky foundations. 85 00:09:11,200 --> 00:09:17,950 One is a logical fallacy that's known as appeal to nature, which essentially is that if it's natural, it must be good. 86 00:09:17,950 --> 00:09:27,760 And of course, we know that that's not always the case. And and the other footing for this answer is that it rests on a false dichotomy. 87 00:09:27,760 --> 00:09:34,870 Basically, the question about whether humans in nature are fundamentally separate or whether they are one in the same. 88 00:09:34,870 --> 00:09:43,600 And that dichotomy, really, it's great for cocktail conversations, but it is not especially useful for making real world decisions. 89 00:09:43,600 --> 00:09:53,740 And so if we can just let this argument just be represented by just these blue bits of boxes here so I can make some computation commentary about it. 90 00:09:53,740 --> 00:10:00,120 Basically, I think we have an unanswered question or an inadequately answered question which is based. 91 00:10:00,120 --> 00:10:07,380 What is ecosystem health? And it's sufficiently not well understood such that, you know, 92 00:10:07,380 --> 00:10:12,630 it's a hindrance to answering practical questions like whether we should protect national parks from climate change. 93 00:10:12,630 --> 00:10:18,720 And if one appreciates that conservation is largely about maintaining and restoring ecosystem health, 94 00:10:18,720 --> 00:10:25,410 one would recognise you'd want to have a pretty robust definition of it, and we might be lacking that. 95 00:10:25,410 --> 00:10:31,380 We'll come back to the significance of not being able to answer this question adequately twist the end of the talk. 96 00:10:31,380 --> 00:10:36,000 But now what I want to do is start to shift in to the second point that I would like to make, 97 00:10:36,000 --> 00:10:43,500 and I can make it by referring to some of my experiences with efforts to recover Mexican wolves in North America. 98 00:10:43,500 --> 00:10:50,640 Wolves perhaps come in five different subspecies, and one of the subspecies would be Canis Lupus, be the I, the Mexican wolf. 99 00:10:50,640 --> 00:10:58,830 They're protected by the United States Endangered Species Act, and when a species is protected by the Endangered Species Act, 100 00:10:58,830 --> 00:11:03,240 one of the actions that takes place is the formation of a recovery team. 101 00:11:03,240 --> 00:11:08,250 In one of the recovery team's main jobs is to develop recovery criteria. 102 00:11:08,250 --> 00:11:15,030 These would be conditions under which when they're met, it would be determined that the species is no longer endangered and then therefore 103 00:11:15,030 --> 00:11:19,680 no longer require the special protections of the Endangered Species Act. 104 00:11:19,680 --> 00:11:27,930 Now, recovery teams are usually comprised of species experts and also people with expertise in population biology. 105 00:11:27,930 --> 00:11:36,030 And so a lot of the conversation kind of gravitates around how many of these organisms do there need to be 50 or 500 or 5000? 106 00:11:36,030 --> 00:11:44,670 And a lot of the conversation is about the population biology. Now, when I was first invited to participate on this recovery team in the late 90s, 107 00:11:44,670 --> 00:11:52,110 I had not at that point in my career ever taken the time to read the Endangered Species Act to 60 page long document, 108 00:11:52,110 --> 00:11:54,990 so it takes a little effort to do so. 109 00:11:54,990 --> 00:11:59,500 Upon doing so, one of the things that really struck me is that there's there's a legal definition of an endangered species, 110 00:11:59,500 --> 00:12:06,840 and I've got it presented here. It's it's a species that's at risk of extinction throughout all or any significant portion of its range. 111 00:12:06,840 --> 00:12:14,320 So, so when I had a chance to contribute to this group and I know the maths quite well, but it wasn't the first thing that came to my mind. 112 00:12:14,320 --> 00:12:19,380 My first question is what is an endangered species? I kind of had my own understanding what those words might meant. 113 00:12:19,380 --> 00:12:26,700 But this is a law that at the time was more than 25, five years old, and we figured there was a fair bit of legal interpretation about what it meant. 114 00:12:26,700 --> 00:12:35,130 I quickly learnt that even asking the question What is an endangered species in this kind of an environment was fairly charged sort of circumstance. 115 00:12:35,130 --> 00:12:39,120 I was advised pretty robustly to stop asking the question. 116 00:12:39,120 --> 00:12:43,380 And of course, I didn't understand how we could do our job without asking the question. 117 00:12:43,380 --> 00:12:48,330 And when I'm told to stop talking about something, I usually get my pen out and start writing about it. 118 00:12:48,330 --> 00:12:53,700 And so I wrote a paper in 2006 and several papers since then on on this topic. 119 00:12:53,700 --> 00:12:56,760 And here's here's what's at the heart of the matter. 120 00:12:56,760 --> 00:13:04,020 When ecologists and population biologists think about extinction risk, they usually think about it in probabilistic terms with time horizons. 121 00:13:04,020 --> 00:13:08,370 It can be represented by a graph like this and you can study a population. 122 00:13:08,370 --> 00:13:11,910 It's vital raids and the threats to the population. 123 00:13:11,910 --> 00:13:20,310 And after doing so, you can situated somewhere on this graph so a population might have a 40 percent chance of going extinct over a, 124 00:13:20,310 --> 00:13:26,220 say, a 50 year period of time. And so science can quite readily describe extinction risk. 125 00:13:26,220 --> 00:13:32,280 That's a straightforward thing to do. It's difficult, but it can be done. 126 00:13:32,280 --> 00:13:35,590 But questions about endangerment go considerably further. 127 00:13:35,590 --> 00:13:40,830 What's also being asked is for someone to draw a line on this graph and after drawing a line on the graph, 128 00:13:40,830 --> 00:13:46,390 anything on the left hand side is declared as endangered. Anything on the right hand side is declared, not endangered. 129 00:13:46,390 --> 00:13:51,030 So whether the population is endangered or not depends greatly on where we put that line. 130 00:13:51,030 --> 00:13:58,950 And so this business about what represents an acceptable level of risk, it can be very importantly informed by science. 131 00:13:58,950 --> 00:14:02,430 But it is fundamentally not a science question. 132 00:14:02,430 --> 00:14:10,380 And for some of you that know conservation well, as I'm describing these things, you might be thinking about that IUCN Red List criteria, 133 00:14:10,380 --> 00:14:21,840 and it would seem like they might do what I'm asking for because what they are are sets of criteria, objective, measurable ideas about a population. 134 00:14:21,840 --> 00:14:26,510 And then that allows one to categorise a population as either endangered or critically endangered. 135 00:14:26,510 --> 00:14:33,000 And there are other categories as well. What's really important to appreciate about these criteria, however, though, 136 00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:38,580 is that they were developed to be a tool for assisting in developing priorities. 137 00:14:38,580 --> 00:14:46,140 They really are there just to say this group of species is more endangered, and this group of species over here is less endangered. 138 00:14:46,140 --> 00:14:56,160 That that's really all they weren't intended to be normative judgements about when a species does or does not deserve special protections. 139 00:14:56,160 --> 00:14:59,620 Now if we go back to this graph here and we think. 140 00:14:59,620 --> 00:15:04,060 About, man, what would be involved with placing a red line on this graph? 141 00:15:04,060 --> 00:15:10,000 The first thing is that you have to be fairly mathematically competent because that graph is a kind 142 00:15:10,000 --> 00:15:16,060 of a challenging space to to understand and for a question for which so many people have a stake in. 143 00:15:16,060 --> 00:15:23,440 It would be unfortunate to restrict conversations about it to only those with the kind of proper mathematical initiation. 144 00:15:23,440 --> 00:15:27,490 And this allows us to go back to what we think about wolves. 145 00:15:27,490 --> 00:15:33,070 Grey wolves this time, which involves several different subspecies. This map shows where they used to live. 146 00:15:33,070 --> 00:15:38,230 It shows where they currently live, which is about 15 percent of their historic range. 147 00:15:38,230 --> 00:15:47,710 You can know that the United States government recently declared on the basis of the Endangered Species Act that wolves should be recovered. 148 00:15:47,710 --> 00:15:55,600 They believe that the federal government believes that wolves no longer fit this definition about significant portion of range. 149 00:15:55,600 --> 00:16:01,810 Now, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the federal government in the United States has been sued about a dozen times in the 150 00:16:01,810 --> 00:16:06,580 last 15 or so years on issues exactly like this they've lost on every occasion. 151 00:16:06,580 --> 00:16:15,550 And what I would say is that the Endangered Species Act doesn't actually answer the question about what is an endangered species. 152 00:16:15,550 --> 00:16:20,050 But it does frame the question in an exceedingly useful way, 153 00:16:20,050 --> 00:16:27,250 because looking at maps like this is a way in which quite a few people can kind of come to understand what's going on, 154 00:16:27,250 --> 00:16:31,780 and we can collectively come to answer the question what is an endangered species? 155 00:16:31,780 --> 00:16:34,750 Of course, this is not an issue. There's just about wolves. 156 00:16:34,750 --> 00:16:40,390 It turns out that the average mammal species has lost about 68 percent of its historic range. 157 00:16:40,390 --> 00:16:45,010 And of course, this loss of geographic range is what precedes extinction. 158 00:16:45,010 --> 00:16:52,900 These losses of individual species of individual portions of the range they pile up in individual parts of the planet. 159 00:16:52,900 --> 00:16:57,760 And that means as a result, most regions have lost significant portions of their native mammals. 160 00:16:57,760 --> 00:17:03,940 This is a key connexion between the loss of species and ecosystem health and and so 161 00:17:03,940 --> 00:17:08,830 a lot of it is got to be answered by really kind of confronting a simple question, 162 00:17:08,830 --> 00:17:14,890 which is, you know, over what portion of a former range should a species be allowed to live? 163 00:17:14,890 --> 00:17:19,390 So this is second question what is an endangered species? 164 00:17:19,390 --> 00:17:27,010 To kind of contextualise this, I think we understand that panda bears are endangered and we understand that grey squirrels are in their heart. 165 00:17:27,010 --> 00:17:32,590 But there's an increasing number of cases, and I illustrated one of them with Mexican wolves, 166 00:17:32,590 --> 00:17:37,330 where the boundary between endangered and endangered is is sufficiently fuzzy that 167 00:17:37,330 --> 00:17:42,730 it's an obstacle to knowing how to conduct ourselves with respect to conservation. 168 00:17:42,730 --> 00:17:45,990 Of course, before this, we had this question about ecosystem health. 169 00:17:45,990 --> 00:17:54,490 And to really know how basic these questions are, one only needs to remind themselves that conservation is basically about its entire endeavour, 170 00:17:54,490 --> 00:17:59,260 really is about maintaining a restoring ecosystem health and preventing a recovering 171 00:17:59,260 --> 00:18:08,470 species endangerment and the degree to which we can't answer these questions. If this is the degree to which we don't even know what conservation is. 172 00:18:08,470 --> 00:18:14,260 We'll come back to some of those ideas to kind of wrap them up and tie them up tight towards the end of the presentation. 173 00:18:14,260 --> 00:18:19,210 But now I want to move on to the third point that I would like to make. 174 00:18:19,210 --> 00:18:22,730 It has to do with nature's intrinsic value. 175 00:18:22,730 --> 00:18:32,530 Now my experience conversations about nature's intrinsic value are often confused and often rife with disagreement, 176 00:18:32,530 --> 00:18:38,620 because there's not a common understanding of some vocabulary. And I think the vocabulary is basically deceptively simple. 177 00:18:38,620 --> 00:18:43,840 We all think we know what the words mean, but then we end up using them in slightly different ways and it creates confusion. 178 00:18:43,840 --> 00:18:50,050 And so what I want to do is just be real precise about how am I going to use these three particular terms right now? 179 00:18:50,050 --> 00:18:59,320 First, anthropocentric ideas are those that suppose that only humans possess intrinsic value and that not humans do not. 180 00:18:59,320 --> 00:19:06,130 Not anthropocentric ideas are those that suppose that humans and at least some non-humans possess intrinsic value. 181 00:19:06,130 --> 00:19:14,740 This is a really broad and generic category. It involves different kinds of beliefs depending on what kinds of non-humans we're talking about. 182 00:19:14,740 --> 00:19:23,290 So there's bias in and Zuo Centrism and Egocentrism are speaking to the different kinds of non-humans that may or may not possess intrinsic value. 183 00:19:23,290 --> 00:19:28,210 Now, these two ideas both make reference to intrinsic value, 184 00:19:28,210 --> 00:19:35,660 and this is one of the potentially most confusing, or we should say, deceptively simple kinds of ideas. 185 00:19:35,660 --> 00:19:43,240 Some of the confusion arises because even ethicists, which is the domain in the discipline from which this jargon comes from, 186 00:19:43,240 --> 00:19:48,560 even they don't always use it in the same way, and they're not always clear about how they're using it. 187 00:19:48,560 --> 00:19:52,690 And rather than just give the definition, I don't want to work through the idea. 188 00:19:52,690 --> 00:19:59,720 I think it will help us out here a little bit, and we'll start by referencing a really basic object, a hammer. 189 00:19:59,720 --> 00:20:08,900 Hammers are generally appreciated because of their function, they pound emails, and if we lose a hammer or break one, we just go get another one. 190 00:20:08,900 --> 00:20:12,500 They're replaceable. Hammers are useful for what they do, 191 00:20:12,500 --> 00:20:18,890 and the jargon that's tied to all of this is that it's said that a hammer and objects like it have instrumental value or use. 192 00:20:18,890 --> 00:20:28,370 Value in intrinsic value is usefully contrasted with this kind of a value, and we can think of a young child, young child. 193 00:20:28,370 --> 00:20:33,620 Young children can certainly have use value, but there's more to it. 194 00:20:33,620 --> 00:20:43,040 We say that they're valuable for their own sake. We say they're valuable for who they are and not what they do necessarily, and just what they do, 195 00:20:43,040 --> 00:20:48,710 and it leads us to want to be treating them with concern for their interest. So what I'm using the phrase intrinsic value, 196 00:20:48,710 --> 00:20:58,970 what I mean is the things that are entitled to fair treatment by humans and with at least some concern for their interests and well-being. 197 00:20:58,970 --> 00:21:08,630 If you want to know more about how to dissect that interpretation and definition, you can refer to the paper that's described at the bottom here. 198 00:21:08,630 --> 00:21:16,940 With this idea in mind, we can now ask ourselves, does nature or more properly what parts of nature possess intrinsic value? 199 00:21:16,940 --> 00:21:23,000 And there have been a variety of answers to this question is actually one of the centrepieces of what it is that environmental ethicists 200 00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:31,850 do for much of the kind of 30 or 40 50 years that that field is in existence in its modern form is to try to answer this question. 201 00:21:31,850 --> 00:21:37,730 And one of the most influential lines of reasoning goes something like this. 202 00:21:37,730 --> 00:21:43,490 It starts by asking a question, which is just to say, What is it about humans that imbues us with intrinsic value? 203 00:21:43,490 --> 00:21:52,730 What trait or traits give us that? And one of the answers not the only answer, but one of the answers is that we possess certain interests, 204 00:21:52,730 --> 00:21:57,770 one of which in particular is that we have an interest to avoid pain and suffering. 205 00:21:57,770 --> 00:22:03,650 And so the reasoning goes, anything else that possesses that tree would also possess intrinsic value. 206 00:22:03,650 --> 00:22:08,360 One of the things that's so important here is without this kind of reasoning, 207 00:22:08,360 --> 00:22:13,580 there's a risk that the reason that humans have intrinsic value is merely for some kind of arbitrary 208 00:22:13,580 --> 00:22:18,170 reasons where to find something that's not quite so arbitrary and this is starting to set up for that. 209 00:22:18,170 --> 00:22:24,860 Well, one of the answers one of the next steps in this is to appreciate that homey Gotham's birds and 210 00:22:24,860 --> 00:22:32,000 mammals almost certainly possess these interest and therefore would possess intrinsic value. 211 00:22:32,000 --> 00:22:36,680 What about things like fish and here I intend to be provocative. 212 00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:41,030 Let's imagine that we are back in the year 1980. 213 00:22:41,030 --> 00:22:52,970 I think most fish biologists, based on their understanding of fish physiology, would say that fisheries sufficiently different understanding of. 214 00:22:52,970 --> 00:23:03,090 I'm sorry. Fish have a substantially different excuse me, I'm having a little cracking problem with my voice, your hold on one second. 215 00:23:03,090 --> 00:23:11,240 Back in 1980, most fish biologists would have understood that the physiology of the fish is different enough so that they 216 00:23:11,240 --> 00:23:15,380 don't have the same kind of pain or suffering that we're talking about when we think about a human's. 217 00:23:15,380 --> 00:23:21,380 Now the knowledge has changed since then, and probably most fish physiologists, 218 00:23:21,380 --> 00:23:24,920 or at least an increasing number of them would think differently and they would answer this question. 219 00:23:24,920 --> 00:23:31,760 Yes. But my point from dwelling on fish is to appreciate that this is a flexible argument. 220 00:23:31,760 --> 00:23:36,530 It's one that changes with knowledge. Over time, we can think about other creatures like insects. 221 00:23:36,530 --> 00:23:42,410 Again, we might provocatively answer the question no on the grounds that if they experience pain and suffering, 222 00:23:42,410 --> 00:23:47,150 it's in a way that's quite different than what we're talking about when we think about humans. 223 00:23:47,150 --> 00:23:51,350 And this also makes us realise if we want to think about fish or about insects that we can, 224 00:23:51,350 --> 00:23:54,840 well, maybe think of a different interest that humans have. 225 00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:57,240 But also insects have my whole point. 226 00:23:57,240 --> 00:24:04,970 And kind of working through all this, which is partly heuristic, is to appreciate the flexibility and dynamic nature of this argument. 227 00:24:04,970 --> 00:24:09,440 One of the things that we did we want to keep in mind is we're going in again just to not lose sight of it. 228 00:24:09,440 --> 00:24:15,230 Is it when we talk about intrinsic value, we are talking about this entitlement to fair treatment? 229 00:24:15,230 --> 00:24:21,530 Now let's take this argument and put it up into the corner and so that we can make a few comments about it. 230 00:24:21,530 --> 00:24:28,520 And the first thing that I'd like to comment about is this ending spot right here in this business about birds and mammals. 231 00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:33,200 We might refer to this as minimally anthropocentric. 232 00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:37,880 It would be minimally anthropocentric in roughly three ways. 233 00:24:37,880 --> 00:24:42,320 One is that if you were trying to think about what's the smallest, 234 00:24:42,320 --> 00:24:50,000 most narrow group of non-humans that are most likely to possess intrinsic value, it's unlikely home your thumbs. 235 00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:55,460 The second would be is that the argument for homeostasis possessing intrinsic value is probably one of 236 00:24:55,460 --> 00:25:02,720 the most robust from the perspective of academic ethics and arguments analysis and that sort of thing. 237 00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:10,910 And third, if you were to consult social science literature, we'd find that there's really widespread agreement for this idea. 238 00:25:10,910 --> 00:25:18,080 It's not really a terribly extreme sort of perspective, so it's minimally non-health centric and these kinds of ways. 239 00:25:18,080 --> 00:25:22,440 Now, if you're with me so far or even if you're not with me, 240 00:25:22,440 --> 00:25:28,940 but if you could even just merely accept these things provisionally, what comes next is probably more important. 241 00:25:28,940 --> 00:25:37,340 Which is to say, now what? We have some understanding that some kinds of non-humans are liable to merit intrinsic value. 242 00:25:37,340 --> 00:25:42,680 I think the answer to the question what now is what we need is to have a much better 243 00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:48,500 understanding than is currently the case about minimally non anthropocentric decision making, 244 00:25:48,500 --> 00:25:50,960 especially public decisions. 245 00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:59,360 And this is why I want to turn my attention to now and in doing so and recognising there's many ways to make public decisions. 246 00:25:59,360 --> 00:26:04,400 I want to I think about, you know, one of the most influential, which is economic decision making. 247 00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:07,100 And as we start thinking about economic decision making, 248 00:26:07,100 --> 00:26:12,050 where to start and what might seem to be a really basic and maybe not even an especially expected place. 249 00:26:12,050 --> 00:26:17,330 And that's the think about the different kinds of capital, the taxonomy of capital. 250 00:26:17,330 --> 00:26:20,450 If we inspect this, I think we can get some traction. 251 00:26:20,450 --> 00:26:30,050 The first thing to appreciate is that quite a few economic frameworks involve three and really only three kinds of capital human capital, 252 00:26:30,050 --> 00:26:40,610 natural capital and produce capital. This is not just kind of old fashioned anti-environmental kinds of economics. 253 00:26:40,610 --> 00:26:46,100 This is really progressive. Kinds of economics still have this sort of taxonomy. 254 00:26:46,100 --> 00:26:50,150 Strong sustainability don't add economics the natural capital framework. 255 00:26:50,150 --> 00:26:54,710 The recent review called The Economics of Biodiversity, from which this diagram was taken. 256 00:26:54,710 --> 00:26:58,460 They all suppose a taxonomy of capital like this. 257 00:26:58,460 --> 00:27:08,540 What I'll show you in the next couple of minutes is that it is a fundamentally anthropocentric taxonomy, and in being so it's, I think, wrong, wrong. 258 00:27:08,540 --> 00:27:15,410 Both morally, I think it's wrong logically, and it very likely contributes to the biodiversity crisis. 259 00:27:15,410 --> 00:27:20,960 And to understand how this is the case, what I want to do is focus just a little bit more on the natural capital framework, 260 00:27:20,960 --> 00:27:25,310 just as a way of kind of an entry point into the ideas that I want to think about. 261 00:27:25,310 --> 00:27:30,770 And we can refer to a relatively recent paper published by Ian Bateman and George Mason. 262 00:27:30,770 --> 00:27:38,240 And this diagram represents their kind of representation of the flow of ideas that represents the natural capital framework. 263 00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:43,520 One of the reasons to draw attention to this particular paper is that in Bateman and 264 00:27:43,520 --> 00:27:48,170 Georgina Mayes presented on this topic to this very audience a couple of years ago, 265 00:27:48,170 --> 00:27:56,330 and there will be a point that we can make about that. If you would allow me to kind of redraw this really just kind of artistically redraw 266 00:27:56,330 --> 00:28:00,080 this so that I can suppress some of the details of just how pertinent to us now, 267 00:28:00,080 --> 00:28:05,660 but also kind of emphasise. A few things that are a little bit more pertinent, we end up with this diagram. 268 00:28:05,660 --> 00:28:13,100 Structurally, it's the same thing. It just appears different with different kinds of capital on the left. 269 00:28:13,100 --> 00:28:19,010 They get used in different ways to provide goods and services for well being understood to be human while. 270 00:28:19,010 --> 00:28:24,050 That's followed by different kinds of economic evaluations and various appraisals 271 00:28:24,050 --> 00:28:28,250 of decisions that feed into subsequent uses of those different kinds of capital. 272 00:28:28,250 --> 00:28:37,580 What's missing from this diagram in the previous are something that's kind of understood, I think, but it's good to make it explicit. 273 00:28:37,580 --> 00:28:45,440 And so let's make it explicit right here, which is that there are constraints on the use of all of these capital and in the 274 00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:50,210 constraints precede any kind of economic thinking and their constraints that are in place, 275 00:28:50,210 --> 00:28:57,530 mainly because humans possess intrinsic value. So you can use human capital in lots of ways, but there are limits allowed for slavery, 276 00:28:57,530 --> 00:29:02,720 no matter what any kind of economic evaluation might say, even manufactured capital. 277 00:29:02,720 --> 00:29:07,730 We don't allow for theft. We don't allow for the production of deceptively dangerous products. 278 00:29:07,730 --> 00:29:14,600 And so again, the motivations for these include, pretty importantly, these are wrong ways to treat humans. 279 00:29:14,600 --> 00:29:23,720 And in in more progressive forms of economic thinking, natural capital is also constrained in its use, usually in the context of for sustainable use. 280 00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:29,390 Again, for the well-being of humans. Now right here is where the taxonomic mistake occurs. 281 00:29:29,390 --> 00:29:35,060 The logical error and the basic idea is that this one category is actually comprised of two 282 00:29:35,060 --> 00:29:41,780 categories in the two categories of capital would be natural capital without intrinsic value. 283 00:29:41,780 --> 00:29:48,920 I suppose this would be things like rocks and air and the natural capital with intrinsic value. 284 00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:54,620 At the very least, this would be the whole mealworms and quite possibly quite a bit more. 285 00:29:54,620 --> 00:30:00,920 And the thing to appreciate is that the minute that you admit a different kind of capital that also has intrinsic value, 286 00:30:00,920 --> 00:30:06,030 one has to ask Are there constraints on its use that arise not because of economic interest, 287 00:30:06,030 --> 00:30:11,810 not because of interest of humans, but because of interest to those things themselves? 288 00:30:11,810 --> 00:30:18,350 In principle, this is not foreign to us. We have prohibitions on the cruelty to of animals. 289 00:30:18,350 --> 00:30:24,200 So when cockfighting is abolished in a place, it's not because of some kind of economic analysis. 290 00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:28,040 It's because we believe that's a wrong way to treat those kind of creatures. 291 00:30:28,040 --> 00:30:37,940 And so this is not to suppose that we have all of the necessary or appropriate constraints on capital that has intrinsic value. 292 00:30:37,940 --> 00:30:43,550 But this is just intended to illustrate the idea that in principle, it's not entirely foreign to us. 293 00:30:43,550 --> 00:30:51,770 And in fact, what I would say is that if what we need is more non anthropocentric decision making. 294 00:30:51,770 --> 00:30:55,520 One of the things that will be important is to recognise it when we see it in. 295 00:30:55,520 --> 00:31:00,770 One of the things that struck me have been instances in the published literature 296 00:31:00,770 --> 00:31:04,460 where kind of key bits of 19th centrism have actually been overlooked. 297 00:31:04,460 --> 00:31:11,000 And I'll give you two examples of this. The first has to do with an analysis of the economics of land use in Great Britain. 298 00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:17,120 So we're also published by Ian Bateman in 2013, along with some of his colleagues. 299 00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:21,920 It's a long, complicated and wonderful paper. I want to draw attention to just a part of it. 300 00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:26,240 Basically, land uses were modelled in a particular way in various particular ways. 301 00:31:26,240 --> 00:31:31,100 From that was an estimate of the monetary value of those different kinds of land uses, 302 00:31:31,100 --> 00:31:38,780 and then various hypothetical objectives were set just, for example, you know, to maximise monetary values and then find out on land use. 303 00:31:38,780 --> 00:31:46,040 Wood wood yields that are amongst the scenarios that were considered was basically an external 304 00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:50,750 constraint so that there would be no increase to the endangerment of any bird species, 305 00:31:50,750 --> 00:31:53,090 regardless of the opportunity cost. 306 00:31:53,090 --> 00:31:59,360 Now, the focus on birds was not because birds are more or less important than other creatures have basically had to do with the availability of data. 307 00:31:59,360 --> 00:32:05,990 People involves some really sophisticated and very wonderful modelling of both economics and ecology, 308 00:32:05,990 --> 00:32:09,050 and so too is limited by which data that's available. 309 00:32:09,050 --> 00:32:15,440 But what's important about all this is that the basis for protecting the bird species had nothing to do with human well-being. 310 00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:21,740 It was basically just because what's especially important about this example is that, 311 00:32:21,740 --> 00:32:28,790 as I've mentioned a few minutes ago in Bateman and Georgina Mayes presented on this exact work to this audience a couple of years ago. 312 00:32:28,790 --> 00:32:33,950 And at the end of their talk, there was a fair bit of criticism by the audience about how it's very nice work. 313 00:32:33,950 --> 00:32:37,790 But one of the things that it really fell short on is that it was all anthropocentric, 314 00:32:37,790 --> 00:32:44,210 and we're really not going to do well by the planet by being soft on it or by being so anthropocentric. 315 00:32:44,210 --> 00:32:50,840 And in Bateman's response, as I remember, it was essentially, look, we're doing the best we can. 316 00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:59,630 We're being is progressively we're being as progressive as we possibly think we can get away with with real world decision makers. 317 00:32:59,630 --> 00:33:06,440 And that doesn't include. Being not in the present. And so what happened is that a room full of people, including the people presenting on the work, 318 00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:13,430 didn't recognise something as being fundamentally non anthropocentric when it was second example. 319 00:33:13,430 --> 00:33:20,150 Also about land use this fuzzy images about land use in the Willamette Valley and what the authors of this 320 00:33:20,150 --> 00:33:26,060 paper did is they also modelled different kinds of land use and with those different kinds of modelling. 321 00:33:26,060 --> 00:33:34,130 This is situated on this graph. The first thing to appreciate is that the Willamette Valley, as the land is currently used, 322 00:33:34,130 --> 00:33:40,460 has this kind of economic value across the x axis and in that area with that kind 323 00:33:40,460 --> 00:33:45,740 of land use is expected to be able to support this number of the native species. 324 00:33:45,740 --> 00:33:51,240 Well, with modelling different kinds of land use, it would do faster. 325 00:33:51,240 --> 00:33:57,740 Second, the, you know, found that there could be different kinds of different combinations of land use that would lead to different 326 00:33:57,740 --> 00:34:04,340 combinations of economic value and and different numbers of species that could live on the landscape. 327 00:34:04,340 --> 00:34:12,830 These are just three examples that actually ran many, many scenarios. And this is what economists refer to as an efficiency frontier. 328 00:34:12,830 --> 00:34:18,890 First thing to appreciate is that actually the current situation with the star is actually pretty far from the frontier. 329 00:34:18,890 --> 00:34:24,290 And yet you could do better on both fronts. You can move both up and to the right. 330 00:34:24,290 --> 00:34:31,030 What I want to do is expand this idea to just kind of appreciate its ethical value. 331 00:34:31,030 --> 00:34:35,810 This is a ready-made tool for non anthropocentric decision making. 332 00:34:35,810 --> 00:34:41,060 The one thing that I would say we would want to do is generalise slightly the x axis. 333 00:34:41,060 --> 00:34:45,080 Let's maybe not be so concerned with how many billions of dollars are being made. 334 00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:54,470 But instead, think about how land use decisions affect the capacity for those humans that are affected to live, healthy, meaningful lives. 335 00:34:54,470 --> 00:34:58,040 And you know, this is a sounds like kind of a qualitative idea. 336 00:34:58,040 --> 00:35:07,040 In many ways it is, but there is a science about subjective well-being, and so you can measure important aspects of that x axis. 337 00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:10,880 And what we realised is something that's very simple, which is that there's a trade-off involved. 338 00:35:10,880 --> 00:35:11,930 You can have more of one, 339 00:35:11,930 --> 00:35:19,880 but it's likely to come at the cost of the other in decisions that lie down here are likely to be considered anthropocentric decisions, 340 00:35:19,880 --> 00:35:29,150 decisions that lie up here where there's maybe not enough attention on human well-being and perhaps undue attention on non-human interests. 341 00:35:29,150 --> 00:35:35,600 This we would maybe consider misanthropic somewhere in the in the middle would be non anthropocentric economies. 342 00:35:35,600 --> 00:35:40,010 It's not my interest to pinpoint where the colours would change, 343 00:35:40,010 --> 00:35:46,730 but to point out that there is a trade-off and if not anthropocentric, think is is what's required. 344 00:35:46,730 --> 00:35:50,570 We're going to need a framework, something like this, to work through the decisions. 345 00:35:50,570 --> 00:35:58,640 More precisely, what we're going to have to do is going to have to figure out what would count as a fair trade off in a situation like this. 346 00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:03,380 First thing to do is let's just make sure that that's actually the right question is fairness. 347 00:36:03,380 --> 00:36:05,540 What we're talking about in a situation like this, 348 00:36:05,540 --> 00:36:11,540 I think it is because we're just reviewing things that we've spoken about already, which is number one. 349 00:36:11,540 --> 00:36:17,960 This y axis is expected number of species. It represents animals that have intrinsic value. 350 00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:23,570 And we've already talked about how animals that have intrinsic value. They're entitled to fair treatment. 351 00:36:23,570 --> 00:36:26,480 And so I think fairness is exactly right. 352 00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:36,740 The next thing to appreciate is to work with something that's familiar because humans have conflicts all the time 353 00:36:36,740 --> 00:36:42,290 amongst themselves that involve trade-offs and they need to be a you get adjudicated fairly when that's the case, 354 00:36:42,290 --> 00:36:45,470 what do we do when it's just between humans? 355 00:36:45,470 --> 00:36:52,910 One of the things that we do is that if we're aspiring for a fair adjudication as we appeal to the values of social justice, 356 00:36:52,910 --> 00:36:59,420 according to social justice theory and also supported by social psychology, there's four values that are especially important. 357 00:36:59,420 --> 00:37:08,450 And so if there's a dispute about how to use a particular resource, we appeal to some combination of these values to sort it out. 358 00:37:08,450 --> 00:37:11,360 There is a small group of scholars. 359 00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:20,120 It's really kind of a niche discipline that basically is wondering do those ideas also apply to the relationship between humans and animals? 360 00:37:20,120 --> 00:37:24,020 That field of enquiry is referred to as interspecies distributive justice. 361 00:37:24,020 --> 00:37:28,490 It really isn't a narrow field that many people working in it. 362 00:37:28,490 --> 00:37:37,250 They are a field that finds themselves, I think, mostly making the case that yes, in some way, shape or form. 363 00:37:37,250 --> 00:37:41,600 Those ideas also apply to the relationship between humans and non-humans. 364 00:37:41,600 --> 00:37:45,920 I do think that if we're going to do good by biodiversity, 365 00:37:45,920 --> 00:37:53,270 we probably have to get past the question does it apply and really get quite serious about how does it 366 00:37:53,270 --> 00:38:00,020 apply because it's not likely to apply exactly as it does when it's just between humans or amongst humans? 367 00:38:00,020 --> 00:38:05,700 You know who's going to be? Some differences, and it's going to be pretty important to figure that out sooner rather than later. 368 00:38:05,700 --> 00:38:10,180 And of course, we can't leave it to the what is currently just a small number of scholars working on that. 369 00:38:10,180 --> 00:38:17,530 It's too important of a problem is too many different interests at stake. And so, you know, it's my view that ecologists and economists, 370 00:38:17,530 --> 00:38:22,690 other kinds of decision makers who normally wouldn't be thinking about this sort of stuff, 371 00:38:22,690 --> 00:38:28,690 they do not need to kind of expand their horizons and start to work through these problems. 372 00:38:28,690 --> 00:38:38,110 And almost finally, you know, this approach may be necessary, vitally necessary for lessening biodiversity crisis. 373 00:38:38,110 --> 00:38:47,440 Here's my last slide. You know, these are three unresolved ethical issues that are increasingly an obstacle for the conservation of biodiversity. 374 00:38:47,440 --> 00:38:51,640 How do we make non anthropocentric decisions? What is ecosystem health? 375 00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:57,940 And if you remember to the beginning of the talk, we basically have only two versions of the answer to this question. 376 00:38:57,940 --> 00:39:04,180 One is misanthropic and the other is anthropocentric, and we going to do better than that. 377 00:39:04,180 --> 00:39:08,680 And then what is an endangered species? There's two flanking questions. They're very basic. 378 00:39:08,680 --> 00:39:17,920 Nature is illustrated by just reminding ourselves the very definition of conservation, which is all about ecosystem health and endangerment. 379 00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:25,060 And very finally, the ideas that I've shared with you today are the result of collaboration over a number of years with quite a few different people. 380 00:39:25,060 --> 00:39:31,430 Some of the most important of them are listed here on the screen. And that's what I have to share with us today. 381 00:39:31,430 --> 00:39:39,380 So thank you so much for your time and attention. Very much appreciated. 382 00:39:39,380 --> 00:39:47,000 John, that was marvellous, thank you. Thank you. So I think what's going to happen next is you're going to get rid of your screen. 383 00:39:47,000 --> 00:39:56,090 Oh, that's wonderful. And then we have the opportunity because I'm in the privileged position of chairing this to 384 00:39:56,090 --> 00:40:02,150 have a wee chat about just a couple of things before we try and master the question part of it. 385 00:40:02,150 --> 00:40:04,280 And listening to you speak, 386 00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:11,880 I do have a couple of questions and I choose them because I think they might have arisen in the minds of some, some of the audience. 387 00:40:11,880 --> 00:40:22,700 We've discussed them before you introduced us with tremendous clarity to the argument and idea about intrinsic value. 388 00:40:22,700 --> 00:40:31,460 Could I ask you just to say a few words about whether there can be more or less intrinsic value to? 389 00:40:31,460 --> 00:40:35,690 Some organisms have quite a lot of it, and some of it a bit less of it. 390 00:40:35,690 --> 00:40:39,380 And what might the consequences of your answer be? Yeah. 391 00:40:39,380 --> 00:40:45,200 You know, I think the answer to the question turns out not to be an ethical question, but a logical question. 392 00:40:45,200 --> 00:40:50,720 And the answer to your question is there's such a thing as more or less has to do with the definition. 393 00:40:50,720 --> 00:40:55,730 Let me remind you of the definition of intrinsic value. I'll give you a short one short definition because it helps. 394 00:40:55,730 --> 00:40:58,640 In this particular case, if you have intrinsic value, 395 00:40:58,640 --> 00:41:07,670 it means you are entitled to some consideration for your interest to be entitled to some consideration for your interest. 396 00:41:07,670 --> 00:41:14,990 I think is a yes or no question. You are either not entitled to any consideration or you are entitled to. 397 00:41:14,990 --> 00:41:18,230 Some in some could be a little or a lot. 398 00:41:18,230 --> 00:41:23,870 But the point is is that the moment that you have intrinsic value, there's this business of some consideration. 399 00:41:23,870 --> 00:41:34,340 So I think the there needs to be flexibility and degrees, but the degrees and flexibility does not come into do you have intrinsic value or not? 400 00:41:34,340 --> 00:41:37,370 And it's largely because of the structure of the definition. 401 00:41:37,370 --> 00:41:43,340 Instead, the flexibility comes in with how much consideration do we do we have and into that answer? 402 00:41:43,340 --> 00:41:51,410 You know, that is it's not made by the definition and it's in it's got to be up to the people who are making the decisions to work through that. 403 00:41:51,410 --> 00:41:55,180 Pretty good, and then my second and last one is rather different, 404 00:41:55,180 --> 00:42:04,480 it's about making practical decisions in policy and government, and you began with a fascinating case of the royal moves. 405 00:42:04,480 --> 00:42:09,220 By the way, I have secret ways of knowing you've just written the rather wonderful book about that. 406 00:42:09,220 --> 00:42:14,740 So very soon everybody should be scampering off to Blackwell's or equivalent to hear the real answers. 407 00:42:14,740 --> 00:42:19,480 But you said climate change, of course, was the complicating factor, 408 00:42:19,480 --> 00:42:26,470 complicating because it isn't at the moment just a natural phenomenon like good old geological time. 409 00:42:26,470 --> 00:42:29,200 It's something that has been brought about by humans. 410 00:42:29,200 --> 00:42:37,510 So should it be, or should it not be park policy with respect to the wolves to do something about it? 411 00:42:37,510 --> 00:42:45,760 You said a little bit about the wolves, but is there for the audience some sort of general guidance about the appropriateness 412 00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:53,680 of dealing with climate change in a way brought about by its anthropocentric, 413 00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:57,760 its anthropogenic nature? Well, yeah, my goodness. 414 00:42:57,760 --> 00:43:04,180 I mean, quite a few aspects of environmental ethics and conservation ethics are challenging, 415 00:43:04,180 --> 00:43:08,440 deeply challenging, even when one doesn't have to think about climate change at all. 416 00:43:08,440 --> 00:43:14,860 And when you throw climate change into that, it really makes things that were previously very difficult, even more so. 417 00:43:14,860 --> 00:43:20,170 So I mean, I mean, this is why a reason this is kind of one of the great unanswered questions. 418 00:43:20,170 --> 00:43:25,270 We have to roll our sleeves up collectively, not just me, but the whole community of us to try to figure these things out. 419 00:43:25,270 --> 00:43:31,270 I think a few very basic guidelines are what one is to determine and just appreciate that 420 00:43:31,270 --> 00:43:36,190 there clearly are some cases where you can't protect a protected area from climate change. 421 00:43:36,190 --> 00:43:41,500 It's just so take, for example, glaciers in Glacier National Park in the western part of the United States. 422 00:43:41,500 --> 00:43:46,240 Climate change is going to take those glaciers where I don't think there's much that we can do about it. 423 00:43:46,240 --> 00:43:53,860 I think what becomes challenging would be situations like this thing about the Everglades National Park in southern Florida. 424 00:43:53,860 --> 00:44:02,470 I mean, globally unique ecosystems, and there's a huge effort to restore the hydrology and all that comes with that hydrology. 425 00:44:02,470 --> 00:44:08,020 It's, by some accounts, humanity's most expensive, elaborate kind of restoration project. 426 00:44:08,020 --> 00:44:18,190 It's expected to be finished and the restoration right at about the time that rising oceans are expected to completely consume the Everglades. 427 00:44:18,190 --> 00:44:29,140 And so I think those are the questions that are considerably more challenging because we can do something, but it might not be worth it, I don't know. 428 00:44:29,140 --> 00:44:33,040 And and to that end, I maybe just had one very tiny thing. 429 00:44:33,040 --> 00:44:35,950 There are different schools of thoughts and ethics that help guide these things. 430 00:44:35,950 --> 00:44:42,010 One is to be quite consequentialist about it, which is to say, OK, well, what benefits would come about from two, 431 00:44:42,010 --> 00:44:45,520 usually two humans from trying to do some sort of restoration, 432 00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:50,080 even if it might shortly afterwards be snatched away from us and make decisions that way? 433 00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:56,110 There are also the thoughts that, you know some ways are just the wrong or right way to treat a thing. 434 00:44:56,110 --> 00:44:58,900 I mean, the decisions can be can be guided that way. 435 00:44:58,900 --> 00:45:03,850 So I just point out that there are tools and ethics that can that can help guide some of those thoughts. 436 00:45:03,850 --> 00:45:11,320 But I mean, really difficult stuff that you're raising, of course. So, John, look, now is the moment for us to turn to the questions. 437 00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:21,700 People have radios, some please continue asking them and the system for those who can't see which maybe nobody is that the questions attract votes. 438 00:45:21,700 --> 00:45:28,180 So I'm going to follow the democratic process by going to the most popular question to begin. 439 00:45:28,180 --> 00:45:36,340 It comes from Maggie Knowles and John. I think several of the questions I've been able to see show the general enthusiasm for your talk 440 00:45:36,340 --> 00:45:42,070 that it's caused people to think to the side as well as directly about your talk this week. 441 00:45:42,070 --> 00:45:51,040 So Maggie is concerned about the impact of some wildlife conservation projects on indigenous people, and she mentioned this as an example. 442 00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:58,330 The WWF forcibly driving forest people from their ancestral lands to conserve tigers. 443 00:45:58,330 --> 00:46:06,340 And yet, as she puts it, these people live in harmony with nature, only hunting wildlife for their own needs. 444 00:46:06,340 --> 00:46:12,490 So the question is how can we persuade powerful conservation organisations to recognise the values 445 00:46:12,490 --> 00:46:19,500 of indigenous peoples contributions as guardians of the forests in nature and to work with them? 446 00:46:19,500 --> 00:46:27,750 Yeah. I mean, this is a hugely important concern, and it's one that gets more difficult and worse as time goes on. 447 00:46:27,750 --> 00:46:34,350 I think that, you know, there are a number of scholars and professionals that it indentify themselves as as conservation professionals, 448 00:46:34,350 --> 00:46:42,330 and they're a little sometimes uninformed and sometimes insensitive to the needs of present day humans. 449 00:46:42,330 --> 00:46:51,450 I think also there are some people who would who self-identify with the social justice movements and social justice theories and 450 00:46:51,450 --> 00:46:59,940 and and they sometimes are a little uninformed and maybe a little insensitive about the welfare and well-being of not humans. 451 00:46:59,940 --> 00:47:06,150 And so I think there needs to be a lot more awareness on both sides. 452 00:47:06,150 --> 00:47:11,340 Of course there are. There are groups of people who are well aware of both the concert at the same time. 453 00:47:11,340 --> 00:47:16,260 The next thing that I would say is that when we have these conflicts, 454 00:47:16,260 --> 00:47:20,400 if you don't mind, I'll just make a real simple conflicts between humans and nature. 455 00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:28,350 I think the first thing that has to be figured out is, are we talking about a situation that is possibly a win lose situation like, 456 00:47:28,350 --> 00:47:33,270 you know, either the humans are going to get what they need or nature is going to get what it's need and it can't be both. 457 00:47:33,270 --> 00:47:35,970 Where is it possible to find some kind of a win win situation? 458 00:47:35,970 --> 00:47:43,500 I don't think we're real good at discerning the difference between those two, and there's reason to believe that both cases exist in the world. 459 00:47:43,500 --> 00:47:48,830 Imagine if you misidentify a win win situation as a win lose situation or vice versa. 460 00:47:48,830 --> 00:47:53,490 You know, you can go about it. You're really poor way, I would say. 461 00:47:53,490 --> 00:47:56,910 And so, you know, identifying those things is tough. 462 00:47:56,910 --> 00:48:04,860 And I mean, on these issues, I think my main message is is to is to point out that these are issues that require discourse 463 00:48:04,860 --> 00:48:10,410 by a much broader group of scholars than it is than has previously been in the case. 464 00:48:10,410 --> 00:48:11,640 Yeah. Thank you. 465 00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:22,860 And then the next most popular question is one that that I know that you have written about and have a lot of really very, very important thoughts on. 466 00:48:22,860 --> 00:48:29,250 I'm not going to read all of this. I'm just going to trigger you. It's in and it comes from John Shields, by the way. 467 00:48:29,250 --> 00:48:36,660 So John says in pure conservation terms, well-regulated hunting helps conserve habitats, notable populations. 468 00:48:36,660 --> 00:48:42,810 And yet John points out that societal attitudes to hunting are hardening. 469 00:48:42,810 --> 00:48:52,230 So is the conservation world being honest with itself about the relationship between habitats and wildlife and real world trade offs and that sort? 470 00:48:52,230 --> 00:48:58,410 I don't mean to cut you on this question, sure, but there's a whole cascade of things that I know, you know, for follow from that. 471 00:48:58,410 --> 00:49:02,230 So there's a door open for you to walk through. Yeah. You know, 472 00:49:02,230 --> 00:49:08,400 I think the the first thing to appreciate is to formulate the relationship between hunting 473 00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:13,350 and conservation because there's more in the world than just hunting and conservation. But we can start with just those two things. 474 00:49:13,350 --> 00:49:20,170 Just imagine that the only two things in the world. The first thing is just situate the relationship between the two of them properly, I'd say. 475 00:49:20,170 --> 00:49:24,210 And the way to situate the two of them properly against one another is to ask 476 00:49:24,210 --> 00:49:28,320 the question Do we really think that hunting is necessary for conservation? 477 00:49:28,320 --> 00:49:35,580 Or do we think that hunting can be useful for conservation, which means there's some cases where it isn't useful, 478 00:49:35,580 --> 00:49:40,710 or there's some cases where it can be useful, but it's not necessary. You can achieve conservation in some other way. 479 00:49:40,710 --> 00:49:46,440 And in quite truthfully, I mean, just in my experience, I wouldn't have the time here to to demonstrate it. 480 00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:52,590 But it's really hard to think that hunting is like necessary for conservation. 481 00:49:52,590 --> 00:49:58,200 And it's also, I think, pretty plain to see that there have been many instances where hunting has been bad for conservation, 482 00:49:58,200 --> 00:50:02,400 and there's been many instances where hunting has has been a benefit to conservation. 483 00:50:02,400 --> 00:50:04,980 So all of those things exist. 484 00:50:04,980 --> 00:50:12,960 And then I think the next thing to understand is that hunting and conservation are not the only two values that are important in the world. 485 00:50:12,960 --> 00:50:18,900 And and so a number of people, it has been a large portion of people, 486 00:50:18,900 --> 00:50:25,830 I think for quite some time have believe that it's not right to kill things without an adequate reason. 487 00:50:25,830 --> 00:50:32,590 And I think it's fine for people to just press the question Is this an OK reason to kill something? 488 00:50:32,590 --> 00:50:36,340 And there's a fair bit known about the social psychology of that. 489 00:50:36,340 --> 00:50:42,690 They're a bit known about that, about the ethics of it. And so so I don't I'm not ideological about the role of hunting. 490 00:50:42,690 --> 00:50:49,470 I just think it needs to be considered along with other values that are around and just and just kind of 491 00:50:49,470 --> 00:50:55,410 have a really kind of a keen view about is it really necessary or is it just it can be used for too long? 492 00:50:55,410 --> 00:51:02,400 There are other tools as well. Yeah. So so obviously behind all that, there's there's a part which is about evidence, 493 00:51:02,400 --> 00:51:07,590 the evidence for what actually is the impact of hunting in different circumstances. 494 00:51:07,590 --> 00:51:11,280 And then what do you do? What judgements do you make about that evidence? 495 00:51:11,280 --> 00:51:14,970 And actually with those thoughts in mind, just building on what you've said? 496 00:51:14,970 --> 00:51:19,080 I will stick with John John Shields question for one last minute because it. 497 00:51:19,080 --> 00:51:25,290 It runs up by creating a sort of juxtaposition you might like to to comment on. 498 00:51:25,290 --> 00:51:31,830 John finishes by saying Is this a diplomatic funding battle abroad to impose 499 00:51:31,830 --> 00:51:39,270 moral standards or is it a PR battle at home to educate a sentimental public? 500 00:51:39,270 --> 00:51:45,450 Any thoughts on that juxtaposition? Oh my gosh. Undoubtedly, those. 501 00:51:45,450 --> 00:51:49,680 I mean, I think what I heard are two characterisations about how if I can use the word politics 502 00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:53,760 and kind of a loose way to characterisations of how politics work in the real world. 503 00:51:53,760 --> 00:52:01,920 And I, I would agree those things go on, and I think that there are actors that see it exactly that way. 504 00:52:01,920 --> 00:52:11,190 And I would also imagine that that's a little bit human nature, but it doesn't mean that we're limited to that kind of thinking or behaviour. 505 00:52:11,190 --> 00:52:17,550 And it doesn't mean at present, you know, everyone is thinking about it that way. 506 00:52:17,550 --> 00:52:26,490 And if we want to lift ourselves out of that kind of thinking, you know, we're going to have to answer hard questions about ecosystem health, 507 00:52:26,490 --> 00:52:32,040 an endangered species, how that sometimes conflicts, when it does, if it does with with human interest. 508 00:52:32,040 --> 00:52:42,210 And so I think one can be aware of those kind of brutish kind of political endeavours. 509 00:52:42,210 --> 00:52:45,060 But at this, at the same time, you can also say, all right, 510 00:52:45,060 --> 00:52:51,840 we got to be a little bit more sincere and honest here and kind of get to the bottom of some of these unanswered questions. 511 00:52:51,840 --> 00:53:00,450 Very good. And to broaden out, though, with the help of Jacqueline Hill, this is a very general one. 512 00:53:00,450 --> 00:53:07,260 John, I say to alert both you and me to the fact that we've got about five minutes for this, 513 00:53:07,260 --> 00:53:13,180 this one, and I suspect this question requires a textbook that you can manage it in five minutes. 514 00:53:13,180 --> 00:53:21,810 All right. In your talk, the nub of the question is, whose ethics are we talking about or other in this business? 515 00:53:21,810 --> 00:53:33,210 Any absolutes? Or are ethics simply the common beliefs of a particular group of people which may differ from those of some different groups of people? 516 00:53:33,210 --> 00:53:41,910 Sure. Yeah. I mean, there are there are certainly ethical norms that are particular to individual cultures, 517 00:53:41,910 --> 00:53:50,030 and they include all kinds of things about, you know, what we consider to be proper dress and all kinds of conduct. 518 00:53:50,030 --> 00:53:55,980 And so there's it's unquestionable that there is that kind of cultural variation. 519 00:53:55,980 --> 00:53:58,380 At the same time, 520 00:53:58,380 --> 00:54:08,970 we all live on one planet and there are interests that we all have in common and we need to find ways to sort through those questions. 521 00:54:08,970 --> 00:54:15,670 And so I think that if one focuses on. 522 00:54:15,670 --> 00:54:22,310 Is there one ethic? I don't think it's an especially useful question, 523 00:54:22,310 --> 00:54:31,650 I think the more useful question is that we are all in this together and and we have to find answers. 524 00:54:31,650 --> 00:54:37,950 That are the most sensible for all of us, it's it's really probably better to be thought of in those terms. 525 00:54:37,950 --> 00:54:51,930 I think also that you can, by probing deep enough, find values that are common to really disparate groups of people. 526 00:54:51,930 --> 00:54:57,660 They include things like we've kind of touched on some of them already so far. 527 00:54:57,660 --> 00:55:06,690 They include things like when there's a conflict between over a resource that there's there's a for values that are useful for adjudicating them. 528 00:55:06,690 --> 00:55:11,580 Equality, equity need entitlement. Those are not especially narrow. 529 00:55:11,580 --> 00:55:16,230 Cultural views and different cultures might mean that those different virtues differently. 530 00:55:16,230 --> 00:55:23,760 But that, you know, that's that's fairly universal stuff. The other thing is, it's really kind of a simple thing, 531 00:55:23,760 --> 00:55:28,560 so we shouldn't disregard other things that have interests without having good reason for doing so. 532 00:55:28,560 --> 00:55:34,030 You know, that's a pretty common ethic. I think that exists throughout the world. 533 00:55:34,030 --> 00:55:42,330 And so I think the first thing to appreciate is that if you're having conversations that are quite cross-cultural, 534 00:55:42,330 --> 00:55:49,170 you do have to go to where you're reasonably sure there's common ground and those are a couple of places where there's liable to be common ground. 535 00:55:49,170 --> 00:55:53,680 And then you work, you work upwards to the problem from there. 536 00:55:53,680 --> 00:55:59,820 And after that, what becomes, I would say, more important is not which ethic does one use. 537 00:55:59,820 --> 00:56:06,720 I think what becomes more important is just making sure that the the power dynamics are are appropriately 538 00:56:06,720 --> 00:56:13,900 equitable so that some groups aren't able to impose their will on others more than it is proper. 539 00:56:13,900 --> 00:56:20,550 So know John, I can't resist because suddenly the votes poured in for this last question. 540 00:56:20,550 --> 00:56:26,790 And just over 20 years thinking about it. So you've got just under two minutes to give the answer. 541 00:56:26,790 --> 00:56:36,360 It is using the criteria you discussed at the end. What would you say about introducing more wolves to the island to save their population? 542 00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:41,900 That's a question from somebody whose nom de plume is comment. Sure. 543 00:56:41,900 --> 00:56:49,070 You know, I have two answers. 544 00:56:49,070 --> 00:57:00,060 You know, if if the role that I'm serving to do is to be that of an ethicist and to share what it is that academic ethics can provide. 545 00:57:00,060 --> 00:57:04,820 And you, I hope you appreciate this from the theme that was to my answers to most of the questions. 546 00:57:04,820 --> 00:57:10,040 My job is not to tell you what is right or wrong, or even to tell you what I think is right or wrong. 547 00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:20,090 My much higher calling thing is to draw attention to the fact that there are a class of questions that are fundamentally ethical in nature. 548 00:57:20,090 --> 00:57:28,730 And for a society that is so technology driven and so empirically oriented that these questions that are of an ethical nature, 549 00:57:28,730 --> 00:57:35,210 they are no less important than the other questions were going to ruin stuff in a pretty big way. 550 00:57:35,210 --> 00:57:39,680 If we don't confront the ethical questions and it doesn't matter what I think is the answer to them, 551 00:57:39,680 --> 00:57:47,060 what matters is what we think is the answer to them. And in order to even come close to having a sensible answer to what we think of them, 552 00:57:47,060 --> 00:57:52,340 it actually requires that we become aware of the questions in the first place and their general importance. 553 00:57:52,340 --> 00:58:02,030 And so if you want to know what I think about Wolves on Isle Royale, you can read a book called Restoring the Balance. 554 00:58:02,030 --> 00:58:08,610 It'll be out on bookshelves in October. And you'll find a good long answer to it there, but but really, 555 00:58:08,610 --> 00:58:15,880 today's message is much more basic than that, which is to emphasise the importance of ethical questions. 556 00:58:15,880 --> 00:58:25,240 Very good. With the choreography in your answer is most of all, we I think we get amputated in about a minute and a half in a moment. 557 00:58:25,240 --> 00:58:27,460 John, don't despair in coming back to you. 558 00:58:27,460 --> 00:58:34,120 But yes, before I do so, let me draw everybody's attention to the fact that this afternoon has been wonderful. 559 00:58:34,120 --> 00:58:41,690 And there's another wonderful afternoon lying ahead on the 10th of March, when also from the Wild Crew Mountain School, 560 00:58:41,690 --> 00:58:50,950 an actual governance programme, stable Mohammed Farhadi is going to be telling us about leopards and mountains and politics. 561 00:58:50,950 --> 00:58:55,000 Both John and I know that he's got an amazing story, so please sign up. 562 00:58:55,000 --> 00:59:01,480 And I believe somewhere on your screen there is a button to allow you to join that club straight away. 563 00:59:01,480 --> 00:59:07,810 So do it while the island's hot. Anyway, to conclude, John, that was just marvellous. 564 00:59:07,810 --> 00:59:13,420 Of course, some of us knew it would be new members. Your fans will be looking forward to the next time. 565 00:59:13,420 --> 00:59:16,300 At the moment, you're sitting in Michigan. 566 00:59:16,300 --> 00:59:22,660 One day, the world will turn back to a condition where you can be just sitting in Oxford with us again and in the Martin School. 567 00:59:22,660 --> 00:59:25,660 But for the time being, that was simply super. 568 00:59:25,660 --> 00:59:32,530 There was a time when both you and I were younger, when conservation was about ecology and about biology. 569 00:59:32,530 --> 00:59:36,610 Many people in the audience appreciate that those things are still necessary. 570 00:59:36,610 --> 00:59:39,160 But my goodness me, they're not sufficient. 571 00:59:39,160 --> 00:59:47,470 We have to think more broadly, and we have to think not only more broadly about the things that we can do, but the things that we ought to be doing. 572 00:59:47,470 --> 00:59:55,240 That's been your lesson. So thank you very much and I think greater forces than either you or I or about to turn us off. 573 00:59:55,240 --> 00:59:58,660 Yes. Thank you so much. Is great to have been able to share things. 574 00:59:58,660 --> 01:00:03,310 Thank you, David, for hosting this and thinks that Oxford Art School. Very good. 575 01:00:03,310 --> 01:00:05,037 Bye bye, everybody. Bye.