I’m skeptical about the biodiversity point, at least at that level of generality. It makes sense there are some species that are important for human welfare, maybe in ways that are not initially appreciated, but it seems like a big jump to go from this to biodiversity in general being important.
The improvements to flooring and noise pollution make a lot of sense to me. One interesting intervention I’ve heard of for the latter is improving the regulations about backup warning alarms on trucks and other vehicles.
I have the opposite intuition for biodiversity. People have been studying ecosystem services for decades and higher biodiversity is associated with increased ecosystem services, such as clean water, air purification, and waste management. Higher biodiversity is also associated with reduce transmission of infectious diseases by creating more complex ecosystems limiting pathogen spread. Then we have the actual and possible discovery of medicinal compounds and links with biodiversity and mental health. These are high level examples of the benefits. The linked article gives the possibility of impact by considering two effects from bats and vultures. Multiply that effect by 1000+ other species, include all the other impacts previously mentioned and I can see how this could be high impact.
The point is, there are 8.7 million species alive today, therefore there is a possibility that a significant number of these play important, high impact, roles.
I’m not seeing where Deena wrote that biodiversity in general was important?
Both studies suggest that protecting certain animal populations might have large, direct effects on human health that we’re overlooking. But there are good reasons to be cautious. These are outlier results; there isn’t much else in the way of evidence for estimates of this magnitude for the impact of biodiversity loss on human mortality. There’s also the possibility of publication bias. In particular, since both papers come from the same author, this may be driven by a file drawer effect, where a researcher looks at many potential similar cases but the null findings are less likely to see the light of day.
Still, if these effects are real, they could change how we think about conservation. Saving vultures or bats wouldn’t just be about biodiversity—it could also be a form of public health policy.
I think ‘biodiversity’ generally implies a commitment to maintaining a very large number of species, over and above the identifiable value each one provides. It’s not about protecting specifically identified valuable species.
I think you’re right in general, you’re just pointing to a different thing than Deena is, so maybe tabooing “biodiversity” might be useful here. They’re at OP GHD so unsurprisingly the part of conservation loss they care about is human mortality impact.
We are orienting to this issue at the ‘local systems’ level (see below). We acknowledge that many organizations are tackling related issues at the earth systems level (climate change) and individual level (animal welfare). We feel there are important, tractable and neglected strategies that emerge when operating at this level.
This table visualizes the relationships between ecosystems and other aspects of our world and core systems we speak to throughout this proposal.
Quantifying species diversity is an interesting mathematical problem in its own right. Tom Leinster’s slides make the case that the three popular measures of species diversity (species richness, Shannon entropy, Gini–Simpson index) all problematically diverge from intuitively-desired behavior in edge cases of consequence, so the formalisation you really want is Hill numbers, which depend on a so-called “viewpoint parameter” q that changes how the former are sensitive to rare species. (Your professed stance corresponds to low q; it’d be useful to know if your interlocutors prefer high q; Tom’s charts visualise this.) You can then extend this line of reasoning in ways that affect actual conservation policy.
Thanks for sharing, some very interesting ideas.
I’m skeptical about the biodiversity point, at least at that level of generality. It makes sense there are some species that are important for human welfare, maybe in ways that are not initially appreciated, but it seems like a big jump to go from this to biodiversity in general being important.
The improvements to flooring and noise pollution make a lot of sense to me. One interesting intervention I’ve heard of for the latter is improving the regulations about backup warning alarms on trucks and other vehicles.
I have the opposite intuition for biodiversity. People have been studying ecosystem services for decades and higher biodiversity is associated with increased ecosystem services, such as clean water, air purification, and waste management. Higher biodiversity is also associated with reduce transmission of infectious diseases by creating more complex ecosystems limiting pathogen spread. Then we have the actual and possible discovery of medicinal compounds and links with biodiversity and mental health. These are high level examples of the benefits. The linked article gives the possibility of impact by considering two effects from bats and vultures. Multiply that effect by 1000+ other species, include all the other impacts previously mentioned and I can see how this could be high impact.
I don’t see how you can ‘multiply by 1000+ other species’ given these two examples were likely selected for being unusually large.
The point is, there are 8.7 million species alive today, therefore there is a possibility that a significant number of these play important, high impact, roles.
I’m not seeing where Deena wrote that biodiversity in general was important?
I think ‘biodiversity’ generally implies a commitment to maintaining a very large number of species, over and above the identifiable value each one provides. It’s not about protecting specifically identified valuable species.
I think you’re right in general, you’re just pointing to a different thing than Deena is, so maybe tabooing “biodiversity” might be useful here. They’re at OP GHD so unsurprisingly the part of conservation loss they care about is human mortality impact.
A more biodiversity-as-you-said line of thinking fleshed out would probably look like this:
Quantifying species diversity is an interesting mathematical problem in its own right. Tom Leinster’s slides make the case that the three popular measures of species diversity (species richness, Shannon entropy, Gini–Simpson index) all problematically diverge from intuitively-desired behavior in edge cases of consequence, so the formalisation you really want is Hill numbers, which depend on a so-called “viewpoint parameter” q that changes how the former are sensitive to rare species. (Your professed stance corresponds to low q; it’d be useful to know if your interlocutors prefer high q; Tom’s charts visualise this.) You can then extend this line of reasoning in ways that affect actual conservation policy.