Catherine Larrère
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Man is a rope stretched between
the animal and the Superman — a rope over an abyss.
Friedrich
Nietzsche, German philosopher
(1844-1900)
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 The giant
panda and the blue whale are symbols of a wildlife whose richness and diversity we
want to preserve, for the protection of threatened species is one of the oldest ways
of protecting nature itself.
But we now know that biological diversity, or biodiversity, is a concept that refers
not only to species but to the entire living world, from genes to the biosphere,
the regions of the earth’s crust and atmosphere occupied by living organisms.
Biodiversity is not static. It can be defined as a constantly evolving system. Scientists
say it allows living organisms to adapt to environments that change over time, thus
ensuring the continuity of evolutionary processes.
Today, human activities are acknowledged to be part of this, but for a long time
people were seen mainly as agents external to nature, ones that upset biodiversity.
Efforts were made to preserve “virgin” or “wild” natural spaces by keeping them separate
from all human activity.
The
power to destroy and sustain
It is a fact
that human beings are the source of clear threats to nature. Pollution, excessive
harvesting of living species, the extermination of “harmful” species, and the fragmentation
or destruction of habitats cause species to disappear and speed up the erosion of
biodiversity. But since biodiversity has been conceived from a dynamic standpoint,
humans have also come to be regarded as capable of sustaining biodiversity, as has
been shown in France in the wooded pasturelands of Normandy and Brittany. Even tropical
forests are often the fruit of a lengthy co-evolution between indigenous populations
and their natural environment.
This power to both destroy and sustain biodiversity emphasizes the breadth of our
responsibility. Human beings are just one species among others, but one that exercises
a particularly demanding process of selection. No part of the planet can now escape
human activity, so the idea of conserving nature as a whole is no longer tenable.
However, we have to weigh up the consequences of our actions on the evolutionary
process so that we can regulate them. The principle of the “sustainable management”
of biodiversity springs from this necessary partnership between human beings and
nature.
But what are the yardsticks for such regulation? Perhaps the instrumental value of
biodiversity–the goods and services it provides and the knowledge scientists draw
from it. But since we enjoy nature’s beauty, we have to add in the aesthetic or religious
feelings it inspires.
The
intrinsic value of nature
This leads
us to the intrinsic or ethical value of biodiversity. Nature has its own worth, independently
of how it can serve people. All living organisms, through their existence and their
use of complex, non-mechanical strategies to survive and reproduce, have their own
value. Beyond that, biological diversity itself, because it is the product of evolution
and also the condition for its continuation, has its own intrinsic value, as the
opening lines of the Convention on Biological Diversity (Rio, 1992) acknowledge.
The human bias behind the instrumentalist approach has often been set against the
ecological bias underlying the intrinsic value approach, as if a choice had to be
made, as if everyone had to die for the last wolf to be saved, or vice-versa. But
apart from the fact that such options are entirely artificial, the two approaches
can coexist, as soon as there is agreement about a dynamic and integrated view of
biodiversity as an evolving system that includes people.
However, the rise of genetic engineering, which treats genes as raw material, has
put biodiversity in quite a new light. It is now seen as an enormous pool of resources
to be speedily tapped. As such, genetic biodiversity is no longer about the wise
management of nature. It becomes a source of profit and of conflict among those seeking
to control it.
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