But the usual arguments for the good of individual (nonhuman) organisms that hinge on an individual’s rationality, consciousness, sentience, desires, needs, or the individual’s “good of its own” offer no obvious support for the good of the diversity of rational, conscious, sentient, needy, or telic organisms. 1Īs prelude to this survey, I bound the discussion by recalling where biodiversity fits with respect to some other candidates for environmental “goods”: Biodiversity does not have to do with individual organisms except insofar as individuals contribute to genomic diversity. Also, I would say that these constitute a sufficiently diverse sample to give a good general sense of how suitable a peg biodiversity might be for hanging environmental or natural value. But it covers the theories most frequently offered by the scientific and environmentalist communities and the ones that are most robust, in my judgment. It’s time to survey theories of the source of biodiversity’s value. Section 6.13 concludes with an extended discussion of the significance for biodiversity’s value of the history of human impingements on the natural world. These include what conservation biologists call “viability” and “endangerment” as well as conservation “efficiency”. 6.13) with some proposals that are not customarily offered as self-contained theories of biodiversity value, but that are often suggested as still heavily influencing evaluation. 6.11), and as an expression of the natural order (Sect. 6.10), as having experiential value (Sect. 6.8), as having option (and quasi-option) value (Sect. 6.6), as a generator of (more) value (Sect. 6.5), as the progenitor of human biophilic tendencies (Sect. 6.4), as a key to human health, both as pharmacopoeia and as an inoculation against infection (Sect. 6.3), as a sustainer of human life (Sect.

6.1), that it is valuable as a resource (Sect. It does include, among other theories, the theory that biodiversity is valuable for “unspecified moral reasons” (Sect. The selection of these accounts is generous and represents a great majority of discussions on this topic, though it is not all-inclusive.

5 is the final requisite prop for the stage across which this chapter parades accounts of how biodiversity is supposed to be valuable. The discussion of the calculus of biodiversity values in Chap.

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