I like the idea of “Promoting High-Welfare Ecosystem States”! I’m surprised you put it in the “promising near-term intervention” box, though. Did you get the chance to talk to WAW scientists about this?
Collaborations between ecological restoration actors and WAW scientists seem acutely scarce at the moment.[1] If someone, in a position similar to you and I, wanted to non-trivially influence restoration projects, even assuming they 100% knew what to recommend, this unfortunately feels a bit intractable to me. Do you see reasons for optimism? Is there any relevant work I’m missing? :)
Hi Jim, thanks for pushing back on this! To be honest, this was the intervention I’m least confident. I got the idea from this article by Horta & Teran, where they argue that ecosystems involving large herbivores such as elephants are likely to be higher average welfare than ecosystems without them, since large herbivores break down a lot of biomass, leaving less for smaller, faster-producing animals. I think that they are overconfident in their claim—as I point out in the full paper, it’s not clear that elephants always have this effect. But still, I’m optimistic that within the next 50-100 years we might have enough info to make these kind of calls. Admittedly, not as soon as some of the other interventions.
But is your point more about the social/political challenge? I’m not aware of collaborations between restoration scientists and WAW scientists, so I can’t give you reasons for optimism, but I also don’t have reasons for pessimism! Do you? An intervention doesn’t even need to be framed around WAW either—you could just fund an organization to lobby for desert greening (for example) in a particular area, and they could leverage whatever arguments they’ve got.
Not sure how satisfying that is, I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
*I realize the elephant example is actually from a different paper. In the referenced paper, they give a more general argument:
We may be able to make some rough predictions about the different ecosystems that different decisions would produce in the targeted area. Accordingly, we may be able to guess what kind of animals will be there in each case. Such animals might be among those who have higher survival rates and longer average lifespans, and who reproduce by having small numbers of offspring. Or they may, instead, be among those who reproduce in very large numbers and tend to die in their very early youth. The latter, who unfortunately are the majority in nature, typically have much harder lives. Their lives may be so hard that they often contain more suffering than pleasure.
An intervention doesn’t even need to be framed around WAW either—you could just fund an organization to lobby for desert greening (for example) in a particular area, and they could leverage whatever arguments they’ve got.
That’s good only assuming WAW in the ecosystem you create is net positive tho, right?
I was imagining more like:
some restoration interventions are and will keep happening anyway.
let’s influence those and push for ecosystems with less suffering.
But I just find it hard to make a difference there. For social/political reasons, yes. Not necessarily because people would be against the idea, but just because there’s no/little incentive for the relevant actors (in the restoration process) to do what we’d want there. Why would they bother? I also feel like WAI would have discussed this more if this were tractable? Haven’t thought about this much tho.
The situation I’m thinking of is not necessarily ecosystem restoration. It’s changing one ecosystem to another (although admittedly, most ecological restoration is exactly that). But so the relevant question is whether one ecosystem-type has a higher level of welfare than another.
But yes, some such activities are happening anyway, such as desert greening—and we might be able to promote or oppose them, depending on whether they seem welfare-promoting or not. Since these activities are happening anyway, and usually aren’t heavily politicised, I see no reason why some activism couldn’t influence things one way or the other (e.g. by providing environmental reasons to encourage changes like desert greening, or leveraging conservative valuing of traditional landscapes to oppose it). Are there particular reasons why you’re skeptical?
WAI to my knowledge doesn’t discuss many interventions—they are positioning themselves as a science-promotion organization, not as an advocacy organization. My understanding is they want this to be taken seriously as a field of scientific study, and so they are avoiding promoting interventions for which there isn’t solid data. And this is definitely something for which we don’t yet have good data
I wasn’t thinking about promoting/opposing restoration but about influencing how it is done (without necessarily taking a stance on whether no restoration would be better). And I could very well imagine WAI wanting to advise decision-makers on how to conduct restoration.
I think present and future WAW advocates would fiercely disagree about what ecosystems might be net good/bad, and any intervention aimed at making greening more likely would be highly controversial.
Interventions aimed at, at least tentatively, holding off on restoring would be far less controversial, though. And in that case, yes, I doubt that WAW advocates “leveraging conservative valuing of traditional landscapes to oppose it” would successfully prevent any restoration project. Whatever the incentive for restoration is, it seems far stronger than the incentive to please the few detractors who do not want the landscape restored.
[I realise I misremembered Horta & Teran’s argument, so I edited that comment now]
I agree that people at WAI might have opinions about how one should do ecosystem restoration, but I doubt they would express them publicly because such such opinions are highly speculative at this stage. Maybe @mal_graham🔸 can correct me if I’m mistaken!
I think present and future WAW advocates would fiercely disagree about what ecosystems might be net good/bad, and any intervention aimed at making greening more likely would be highly controversial.
I suppose this is true, given different intuitions about population ethics. But 1) at some point these disagreements need to be overcome—so maybe we just need to take some moral uncertainty approach—and 2) maybe I’m optimistic that progress will even reduce the disagreements on these matters. I also think that a decision will be made on these matters one way or the other, so WAW really ought to make a call about pop. ethics questions and then try to influence the decision in the way that seems best.
But I can also imagine that in other case the decision might be simpler, e.g. promoting indigenous trees in a given area might not radically increase or decrease the number of sentient beings, but might greatly change the welfare profile of the ecosystem.
Whatever the incentive for restoration is, it seems far stronger than the incentive to please the few detractors who do not want the landscape restored.
Incentives will vary depending on the context! For example, the regeneration of forest is actively opposed in much of Central Europe, because people have cultural ideas about what the landscape should look like. So there’s a tension there between environmentalists and traditionalists, and I wouldn’t say that the environmentalists are winning.
For example, the regeneration of forest is actively opposed in much of Central Europe, because people have cultural ideas about what the landscape should look like. So there’s a tension there between environmentalists and traditionalists, and I wouldn’t say that the environmentalists are winning.
Oh I didn’t know that, thanks. There, of course, is still the question of the marginal impact WAW advocates would have in such debates, but helpful example!
I like the idea of “Promoting High-Welfare Ecosystem States”! I’m surprised you put it in the “promising near-term intervention” box, though. Did you get the chance to talk to WAW scientists about this?
Collaborations between ecological restoration actors and WAW scientists seem acutely scarce at the moment.[1] If someone, in a position similar to you and I, wanted to non-trivially influence restoration projects, even assuming they 100% knew what to recommend, this unfortunately feels a bit intractable to me. Do you see reasons for optimism? Is there any relevant work I’m missing? :)
All I’m aware of is:
Capozzelli et al. (2020) arguing that restoration ecology and welfare science “could enjoy a productive union” and a few discussions of colab that emerged after that.
This 2025 grant from WAI that may “inform freshwater systems restoration strategies with a welfare perspective”.
Animal Ethics (2026) asking fow WAW to be accounted for when decidicing whether/how to do rewilding.
Hi Jim, thanks for pushing back on this! To be honest, this was the intervention I’m least confident. I got the idea from this article by Horta & Teran,
where they argue that ecosystems involving large herbivores such as elephants are likely to be higher average welfare than ecosystems without them, since large herbivores break down a lot of biomass, leaving less for smaller, faster-producing animals. I think that they are overconfident in their claim—as I point out in the full paper, it’s not clear that elephants always have this effect. But still, I’m optimistic that within the next 50-100 years we might have enough info to make these kind of calls. Admittedly, not as soon as some of the other interventions.But is your point more about the social/political challenge? I’m not aware of collaborations between restoration scientists and WAW scientists, so I can’t give you reasons for optimism, but I also don’t have reasons for pessimism! Do you? An intervention doesn’t even need to be framed around WAW either—you could just fund an organization to lobby for desert greening (for example) in a particular area, and they could leverage whatever arguments they’ve got.
Not sure how satisfying that is, I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
*I realize the elephant example is actually from a different paper. In the referenced paper, they give a more general argument:
Interesting, thanks!
That’s good only assuming WAW in the ecosystem you create is net positive tho, right?
I was imagining more like:
some restoration interventions are and will keep happening anyway.
let’s influence those and push for ecosystems with less suffering.
But I just find it hard to make a difference there. For social/political reasons, yes. Not necessarily because people would be against the idea, but just because there’s no/little incentive for the relevant actors (in the restoration process) to do what we’d want there. Why would they bother? I also feel like WAI would have discussed this more if this were tractable? Haven’t thought about this much tho.
The situation I’m thinking of is not necessarily ecosystem restoration. It’s changing one ecosystem to another (although admittedly, most ecological restoration is exactly that). But so the relevant question is whether one ecosystem-type has a higher level of welfare than another.
But yes, some such activities are happening anyway, such as desert greening—and we might be able to promote or oppose them, depending on whether they seem welfare-promoting or not. Since these activities are happening anyway, and usually aren’t heavily politicised, I see no reason why some activism couldn’t influence things one way or the other (e.g. by providing environmental reasons to encourage changes like desert greening, or leveraging conservative valuing of traditional landscapes to oppose it). Are there particular reasons why you’re skeptical?
WAI to my knowledge doesn’t discuss many interventions—they are positioning themselves as a science-promotion organization, not as an advocacy organization. My understanding is they want this to be taken seriously as a field of scientific study, and so they are avoiding promoting interventions for which there isn’t solid data. And this is definitely something for which we don’t yet have good data
I wasn’t thinking about promoting/opposing restoration but about influencing how it is done (without necessarily taking a stance on whether no restoration would be better). And I could very well imagine WAI wanting to advise decision-makers on how to conduct restoration.
I think present and future WAW advocates would fiercely disagree about what ecosystems might be net good/bad, and any intervention aimed at making greening more likely would be highly controversial.
Interventions aimed at, at least tentatively, holding off on restoring would be far less controversial, though. And in that case, yes, I doubt that WAW advocates “leveraging conservative valuing of traditional landscapes to oppose it” would successfully prevent any restoration project. Whatever the incentive for restoration is, it seems far stronger than the incentive to please the few detractors who do not want the landscape restored.
[I realise I misremembered Horta & Teran’s argument, so I edited that comment now]
I agree that people at WAI might have opinions about how one should do ecosystem restoration, but I doubt they would express them publicly because such such opinions are highly speculative at this stage. Maybe @mal_graham🔸 can correct me if I’m mistaken!
I suppose this is true, given different intuitions about population ethics. But 1) at some point these disagreements need to be overcome—so maybe we just need to take some moral uncertainty approach—and 2) maybe I’m optimistic that progress will even reduce the disagreements on these matters. I also think that a decision will be made on these matters one way or the other, so WAW really ought to make a call about pop. ethics questions and then try to influence the decision in the way that seems best.
But I can also imagine that in other case the decision might be simpler, e.g. promoting indigenous trees in a given area might not radically increase or decrease the number of sentient beings, but might greatly change the welfare profile of the ecosystem.
Incentives will vary depending on the context! For example, the regeneration of forest is actively opposed in much of Central Europe, because people have cultural ideas about what the landscape should look like. So there’s a tension there between environmentalists and traditionalists, and I wouldn’t say that the environmentalists are winning.
Oh I didn’t know that, thanks. There, of course, is still the question of the marginal impact WAW advocates would have in such debates, but helpful example!