I think biodiversity loss probably does warrant its own cause area. Animal welfare isn’t a particularly compelling cause area for me personally, so I’m making this statement purely based on the risk biodiversity loss could pose to the world economy.
Is it Important?
Our economy is so heavily dependent on wild ecosystems that last year The Economist ran a special report that claimed “Loss of biodiversity poses as great a risk to humanity as climate change”. People havn’t built the models necessary to make that statement quantitatively, but the qualitative arguments and disturbing results from modeling biodiversity loss in smaller ecosystems seem strong enough that we should prioritize building these models to see what we find. For example, in one study discussed in The Economist, scientists studying diverse ecosystems around the world found that once 80% of plant life was gone, entire food chains began to collapse and could not be rebuilt by simply restoring the plants. More than 75% of global food-crop types are pollinated by animals [1]. Could we irreversibly lose a food chain these crops depend on as we dramatically eliminate vegetation to accommodate our growing population and wealth? I don’t want to find out the hard way. Perhaps there are ways of replacing the food chains our economy depends on, but perhaps there are not, or the costs of preservation are dramatically lower than the costs of replacement. Scientists still haven’t figured out what causes Colony Collapse Disorder despite how important bees are to our economy [2]. This makes me nervous about our ability to promptly find a replacement if it comes back much worse or another ecosystem we depend on collapses.
Is it Neglected?
Lots of people seem to care about biodiversity, but they rarely seem do so using the analytical EA approach. Research and outreach that makes it easier for them to target their efforts towards the most effective options as we’ve done in global health and development could be very high impact.
Is it Tractable?
One reason biodiversity models are so far behind climate models is the difficulty of the problem, but researchers do seem to be chipping away at it, so maybe more researchers and funding would chip away at it faster. Furthermore, improvements in AI and sensors have made this problem substantially more tractable in recent years.
The Economist argues that one of the most important interventions right now would be just organizing all the data we’re collecting into central hubs so that researchers and other people interested in using it to help can access it. That seems very tractable compared to many problems in EA.
Whether biodiversity is more high impact than other EA cause areas is beyond my ability to determine. But this special report in The Economist does make it sound similar.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. We definitely view ecosystem collapse as a serious reason to track the state of biodiversity more carefully. While the value of diversity at the species level may not ultimately rank as important, the services ecosystems play in the larger eco-human web are essential in ways few people truly recognize.
I think biodiversity loss probably does warrant its own cause area. Animal welfare isn’t a particularly compelling cause area for me personally, so I’m making this statement purely based on the risk biodiversity loss could pose to the world economy.
Is it Important?
Our economy is so heavily dependent on wild ecosystems that last year The Economist ran a special report that claimed “Loss of biodiversity poses as great a risk to humanity as climate change”. People havn’t built the models necessary to make that statement quantitatively, but the qualitative arguments and disturbing results from modeling biodiversity loss in smaller ecosystems seem strong enough that we should prioritize building these models to see what we find. For example, in one study discussed in The Economist, scientists studying diverse ecosystems around the world found that once 80% of plant life was gone, entire food chains began to collapse and could not be rebuilt by simply restoring the plants. More than 75% of global food-crop types are pollinated by animals [1]. Could we irreversibly lose a food chain these crops depend on as we dramatically eliminate vegetation to accommodate our growing population and wealth? I don’t want to find out the hard way. Perhaps there are ways of replacing the food chains our economy depends on, but perhaps there are not, or the costs of preservation are dramatically lower than the costs of replacement. Scientists still haven’t figured out what causes Colony Collapse Disorder despite how important bees are to our economy [2]. This makes me nervous about our ability to promptly find a replacement if it comes back much worse or another ecosystem we depend on collapses.
Is it Neglected?
Lots of people seem to care about biodiversity, but they rarely seem do so using the analytical EA approach. Research and outreach that makes it easier for them to target their efforts towards the most effective options as we’ve done in global health and development could be very high impact.
Is it Tractable?
One reason biodiversity models are so far behind climate models is the difficulty of the problem, but researchers do seem to be chipping away at it, so maybe more researchers and funding would chip away at it faster. Furthermore, improvements in AI and sensors have made this problem substantially more tractable in recent years.
The Economist argues that one of the most important interventions right now would be just organizing all the data we’re collecting into central hubs so that researchers and other people interested in using it to help can access it. That seems very tractable compared to many problems in EA.
Whether biodiversity is more high impact than other EA cause areas is beyond my ability to determine. But this special report in The Economist does make it sound similar.
[1] https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2021-06-19
[2] https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/colony-collapse-disorder#why%20it%20is%20happening
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. We definitely view ecosystem collapse as a serious reason to track the state of biodiversity more carefully. While the value of diversity at the species level may not ultimately rank as important, the services ecosystems play in the larger eco-human web are essential in ways few people truly recognize.
We did a full write up here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5iuyqnm2uKcutbaku/resilience-and-biodiversity which captures the most salient points our group wanted to make at the time, though there’s so many layers to be considered.