{"id":50526,"date":"2021-02-23T10:43:09","date_gmt":"2021-02-23T10:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.currentaffairs.org\/2021\/02\/who-is-nature-for\/"},"modified":"2021-02-23T15:20:48","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T15:20:48","slug":"who-is-nature-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/02\/23\/who-is-nature-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Is Nature For?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Conservation often relies on two competing approaches:<\/a> the \u201cwise use of nature,\u201d and the \u201cpreservation of nature.\u201d The wise use of nature presents a clear objective\u2014humans need resources from the natural world, and we ought to acquire and use those resources in sustainable ways, so that future folks don\u2019t have to live without the benefits we have today. But what of preserving nature? The reasons provided for preservation of nature \u201cas is\u201d are varied, and the arguments behind it can be somewhat opaque. Often, preservation goals are set to keep natural spaces unaffected by humans, or to preserve species to maintain biodiversity. But when we take an approach so set on separating humans from nature, we\u2019re often failing to recognize what might be best for the inhabitants of natural spaces\u2014we don\u2019t ask who we are trying to preserve nature for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although conservation aims to keep nature \u201cthe way it is,\u201d nature is always changing. When we protect a natural area, we are usually forming it to our expectations of what nature should be like. While such projects may do important work to protect biodiversity, we also inject some other values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A hardline interpretation of \u201cwhat nature is\u201d doesn\u2019t involve ugly human stuff, like buildings and roads. It also might not involve any human meddling in ecosystem dynamics. Maybe in its purest form, an ecosystem doesn\u2019t have any plants or animals from far away, like invasive species. Acclaimed biologist E.O. Wilson argued that we should reserve half of Earth for nature<\/a>\u2014a human-free utopia where there aren\u2019t any pesky people getting in the way of what is natural.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this view of nature as separate from people, and preservable independent of humans, is a denial of historical fact. Looking just within the U.S., we often frame \u201cwild\u201d spaces as places that don\u2019t have any obvious signs of human activity. But those claims rest on colonial Europe\u2019s assertion that American land was free to be taken and used, and ignores that humans have lived on and modified the landscape of the U.S. for thousands of years. In reality, the forests of the East Coast, for example, grew over previously developed farming areas<\/a> after the indigenous genocide that occured following 1492, leading colonists in the 18th century to mistake farmland for wilderness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our view of an ideal nature often imagines some time in the ambiguous past where the wild was fully pure and natural, and urges us to return the land to that past. But the moment this idea is examined, it starts to break down. Species have gone extinct at an extremely high rate over the last 100 years<\/a>, so wild spaces cannot be made up of the same plants and animals that existed in the past. Invasive species are now embedded in these ecosystems and often are impossible to remove, or are even beneficial<\/a>. For instance, the endangered Southwestern Willow Flycatcher relies on invasive tamarisk shrubs for nesting. The major threat to their continued survival is the Department of Agriculture\u2019s introduction of another invasive species<\/a>, tamarisk leaf beetles, who destroy flycatcher habitat. And these wild spaces haven\u2019t been free of human influence for tens of thousands of years\u2014in North America indigenous people reshaped lands in many ways, building cities and agricultural fields, and even burning massive portions<\/a> of the Great Plains to facilitate the bison harvest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spaces on Earth don\u2019t have the ability to be purely human or wild. We are a global species in every sense of the word, and have been for thousands of years. We have shaped, modified, and built the natural environment around us, and the local changes we make end up impacting far-away ecosystems<\/a>. No part of Earth will avoid the effects of human-caused climate change. And some who take this quest for mythical purity too far land on disturbing conclusions, such as ecofascism\u2019s intellectual roots in the Nazi ideology of \u201cBlood and Soil,\u201d<\/a> which argued for an authoritarian return to rural, environmentally friendly living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We might still pursue conservation in order to foster biodiversity. Biodiversity conservation aims to maintain species. This approach is justified by the interconnectedness of the natural world. Seemingly small changes can have larger ripple effects, so the loss of one species could change the way an ecosystem works\u2014more biodiverse ecosystems are more resilient to changes, making them less likely to collapse. A classic example is Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, which was deforested entirely sometime between the 15th and 17th century. Due to either this deforestation or the introduction of rats by humans<\/a>, by the 18th century the island was devoid of most animal and plant life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While avoiding ecosystem collapse seems like a good goal, it should not be the only<\/em> goal for natural spaces. The view that the best we can aim for in wild spaces is to prevent change has a suppressed premise: that any changes will certainly be bad. But who are these changes bad for? Conservation as it exists today pays little attention to the actual interests or wellbeing of wild animals, like an individual toad, cricket, or giraffe, and instead places value in species. But species do not experience harms\u2014individuals do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So why are species the basic unit of nature? To some extent, this obsession with species is also a colonial European product, derived from a Victorian obsession with classification<\/a>. While biodiversity certainly plays an important role in ecosystem function and biodiversity collapse in the short-term might cause a lot of animal suffering, viewing nature as made of species instead of individuals allows us to gloss over the lives of the inhabitants of wild places, and instead focus on an achievable but ultimately flawed metric that turns living beings into little more than tallies on a spreadsheet. While emphasizing the importance of biodiversity helps protect ecosystems, and probably many animals too, focusing on species preservation means that we often ignore the lives of the animals we are trying to protect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, while conservation efforts might often be good for the welfare of animals, it\u2019s just as often been horrendous for them. In pursuing our vision of what nature ought to be like, we\u2019ve justified absurdities like hunting camels with guns from helicopters<\/a> and airdropping poison pellets across undeveloped regions<\/a> to reduce possum and cat populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clearly, something is off in our conservation ethic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The weaknesses of conservation ethics are recognized, to some extent, within the community. The compassionate conservation<\/a> movement attempts to include animal welfare outcomes in wildlife management, such as by stopping the practice of culling (or mass killing) of invasive species, and some conservationists have rejected a strictly negative sense of \u201cinvasive species<\/a>,\u201d recognizing that ecosystems change over time, that new species and species migrations aren\u2019t always existential threats, and that our sense of nativeness is inherently political<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But these ideas are controversial or even at the fringe of mainstream conservation. The conservation project as a whole continues to primarily focus on protecting what we find beautiful and improving biodiversity. These ideas seem to be tied together. We find the diversity of nature pleasant for various reasons, so we want to protect it. There is also a self-interested motivation at play in preserving nature: we are theoretically protecting humans against the negative ecological effects that might occur if biodiversity continues collapsing. But this single-minded focus on preservation has largely neglected the actual inhabitants of the wild. Conservation could take a more transformative approach, and consider not only human interests, but the lives of all beings impacted by nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, we should focus on making the world better for those who can experience it, both human and non-human\u2014and there are a lot of non-humans out there. Compared to the measly 8 billion humans, there are around 100 billion or so other mammals<\/a>, 10 trillion bony fish<\/a>, and 1 quadrillion ants<\/a>. For scale, that\u2019s about the same difference between an inch (humans) and 2 miles (ants).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\nPreserving Natural Spaces Isn\u2019t as Simple as It Seems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Fostering Biodiversity: A Nice Goal With a Major Catch<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Nature Is for Animals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n