Even if the only point that matters at the end of the line is an individual’s conscious experience (which I think is highly debatable), species themselves are inherently valuable in that the complex interplay of species, which we do not fully understand, is a huge part of the whole system that allows any individual consciousness to exist.
We know bees are critical and valuable because of their role in pollinating plants we eat. We know whales are critical and valuable because of their role in fertilizing the ocean so that phytoplankton (who produce most of the world’s oxygen) can flourish. As Ray pointed out, we have a direct example of what happened when we removed a predator from an ecosystem, trying to do good, and actually totally messed things up—and then reintroduced them and helped things get back into balance (wolves in Yellowstone).
Piggybacking off Naryan, we generally have no idea which nodes of this system of species would cause the whole thing to collapse if they went extinct, and as more and more biodiversity is lost, we are eliminating redundancies and robustness in the system.
I’m reminded of Chesterton’s fence:
‘There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”’
There are hundreds of bee species and most of them contribute very little to crop pollination, see here. So pollination is not a good argument to support bee diversity conservation.
threatened wild bees are not observed on crops because those wild species are threatened, and so are less common and less likely to appear on crops.
choice to conserve the more common wild species will be cheaper because those wild species are not threatened and do well in agricultural environments.
the authors of the paper believe:
protecting common wild species that pollinate crops is cheaper than protecting threatened wild species that no longer pollinate crops.
other arguments than protecting pollinators should be made to protect biodiversity because threatened pollinator species don’t do much for crops.
if no ecosystem service can be clearly identified for most threatened species, the only argument available to protect biodiversity is a moral one.
It’s a clean argument but I it presumes that we can ignore the impacts on our ecosystems of species extinction in general (biodiversity loss).
The function of pollinators is to pollinate plants. Some pollinators have exclusive relationships with plants, for example, the few species of chocolate midge. Unfortunately, pollinator habitats require biodiversity. Without the health of the habitat, which biodiversity ensures, the function of the wild species that provide the known ecosystem service will halt. The end result will be the loss of the pollinator and its plants from the planet. This is the fundamental problem with relying on wild species in the first place. How many threats to chocolate midges exist because of biodiversity loss within their habitat? If we lose the wrong rainforest species, we would then lose chocolate midges, and then we will lose chocolate.
Returning to the bees, though..., the articles’s authors seem to think that biodiversity declines are irrelevant to food crop pollinators. They have theories about how to protect the few wild species that still pollinate food crops, though it’s important to recognize that those species populations are still large.
What threats to those species do the authors identify that they have special defenses against, particularly once biodiversity declines reach new levels of species losses and habitat destruction? I didn’t read any. I think ecosystem services remain a valid frame within which to argue for biodiversity maintenance.
To be clear, I expect multiple pressures to threaten all agricultural crops over the next few decades, and to the extent that agricultural areas serve wild bee populations, those bees will suffer anything that threatens the crops themselves.
“Ecosystem services” is not a useful frame and does not support biodiversity maintenance (read my summary or the relevant section in Maier’s book). Biodiversity comes with many disservices (think of pollinators of noxious weeds, crop pests, diseases...) and its conservation can stand in the way of services. Any unbiased assessment of the question whether biodiversity is valuable on ecosystem grounds must include those disservices and the context of non-ecosystem services. More importantly, it is not diversity (of species, functions or other categories) that performs valuable services, but particular species or populations. It is a category mistake to confuse biodiversity with individual species.
To let you know, I don’t believe ecosystem services matter beyond the fact that we depend on those services, directly or indirectly, and don’t have readily available substitutes. Nature can be inconvenient and messy, but I think humanity has to protect it in order to get any good from it. Biodiversity supports provision of services through protection of habitats of known service providers and through additional services from unidentified (or poorly known) service providers.
The acknowledgement of services that ecosystems provide is an act of intellectual honesty or of using the scout mindset. We don’t have a way to replace services if we judge them imperfect or even inadequate, thus the inconvenience of having to accommodate demands to protect biodiversity. For example, once bees stop pollinating crops because of heat waves destroying crops and the rest of bee habitats, we will suffer lackluster service from those few wild bee species that we acknowledge as direct ecosystem service providers. I could then criticize the lack of value of wild bees in general (for example, accuse bee species of being costly to maintain and fickle providers of pollinator services) or wish humanity had protected them better.
Rainforests are another inconvenient part of Earth’s biosphere. I could make appeals to protect the habitat of the Chocolate Midge or discuss the benefits of moisture provided by rainforest local climate or the carbon sink service provided by rainforest biomass or the undiscovered rainforest plants that could have medicinal value but the truth is I don’t eat chocolate and I don’t live near a rainforest and I’m not sick with any dread disease and I believe that climate change is self-amplifying now. Plus the only thing that would happen to me in a rainforest is a bite from some poisonous animal. I’d like to stay as far away from rainforests as I can. But do I think rainforest biodiversity provides services and has obvious value? Yes I do.
Even if the only point that matters at the end of the line is an individual’s conscious experience (which I think is highly debatable), species themselves are inherently valuable in that the complex interplay of species, which we do not fully understand, is a huge part of the whole system that allows any individual consciousness to exist.
We know bees are critical and valuable because of their role in pollinating plants we eat. We know whales are critical and valuable because of their role in fertilizing the ocean so that phytoplankton (who produce most of the world’s oxygen) can flourish. As Ray pointed out, we have a direct example of what happened when we removed a predator from an ecosystem, trying to do good, and actually totally messed things up—and then reintroduced them and helped things get back into balance (wolves in Yellowstone).
Piggybacking off Naryan, we generally have no idea which nodes of this system of species would cause the whole thing to collapse if they went extinct, and as more and more biodiversity is lost, we are eliminating redundancies and robustness in the system.
I’m reminded of Chesterton’s fence:
‘There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”’
There are hundreds of bee species and most of them contribute very little to crop pollination, see here. So pollination is not a good argument to support bee diversity conservation.
Interpreting the paper’s claims:
threatened wild bees are not observed on crops because those wild species are threatened, and so are less common and less likely to appear on crops.
choice to conserve the more common wild species will be cheaper because those wild species are not threatened and do well in agricultural environments.
the authors of the paper believe:
protecting common wild species that pollinate crops is cheaper than protecting threatened wild species that no longer pollinate crops.
other arguments than protecting pollinators should be made to protect biodiversity because threatened pollinator species don’t do much for crops.
if no ecosystem service can be clearly identified for most threatened species, the only argument available to protect biodiversity is a moral one.
It’s a clean argument but I it presumes that we can ignore the impacts on our ecosystems of species extinction in general (biodiversity loss).
The function of pollinators is to pollinate plants. Some pollinators have exclusive relationships with plants, for example, the few species of chocolate midge. Unfortunately, pollinator habitats require biodiversity. Without the health of the habitat, which biodiversity ensures, the function of the wild species that provide the known ecosystem service will halt. The end result will be the loss of the pollinator and its plants from the planet. This is the fundamental problem with relying on wild species in the first place. How many threats to chocolate midges exist because of biodiversity loss within their habitat? If we lose the wrong rainforest species, we would then lose chocolate midges, and then we will lose chocolate.
Returning to the bees, though..., the articles’s authors seem to think that biodiversity declines are irrelevant to food crop pollinators. They have theories about how to protect the few wild species that still pollinate food crops, though it’s important to recognize that those species populations are still large.
What threats to those species do the authors identify that they have special defenses against, particularly once biodiversity declines reach new levels of species losses and habitat destruction? I didn’t read any. I think ecosystem services remain a valid frame within which to argue for biodiversity maintenance.
To be clear, I expect multiple pressures to threaten all agricultural crops over the next few decades, and to the extent that agricultural areas serve wild bee populations, those bees will suffer anything that threatens the crops themselves.
“Ecosystem services” is not a useful frame and does not support biodiversity maintenance (read my summary or the relevant section in Maier’s book). Biodiversity comes with many disservices (think of pollinators of noxious weeds, crop pests, diseases...) and its conservation can stand in the way of services. Any unbiased assessment of the question whether biodiversity is valuable on ecosystem grounds must include those disservices and the context of non-ecosystem services. More importantly, it is not diversity (of species, functions or other categories) that performs valuable services, but particular species or populations. It is a category mistake to confuse biodiversity with individual species.
To let you know, I don’t believe ecosystem services matter beyond the fact that we depend on those services, directly or indirectly, and don’t have readily available substitutes. Nature can be inconvenient and messy, but I think humanity has to protect it in order to get any good from it. Biodiversity supports provision of services through protection of habitats of known service providers and through additional services from unidentified (or poorly known) service providers.
The acknowledgement of services that ecosystems provide is an act of intellectual honesty or of using the scout mindset. We don’t have a way to replace services if we judge them imperfect or even inadequate, thus the inconvenience of having to accommodate demands to protect biodiversity. For example, once bees stop pollinating crops because of heat waves destroying crops and the rest of bee habitats, we will suffer lackluster service from those few wild bee species that we acknowledge as direct ecosystem service providers. I could then criticize the lack of value of wild bees in general (for example, accuse bee species of being costly to maintain and fickle providers of pollinator services) or wish humanity had protected them better.
Rainforests are another inconvenient part of Earth’s biosphere. I could make appeals to protect the habitat of the Chocolate Midge or discuss the benefits of moisture provided by rainforest local climate or the carbon sink service provided by rainforest biomass or the undiscovered rainforest plants that could have medicinal value but the truth is I don’t eat chocolate and I don’t live near a rainforest and I’m not sick with any dread disease and I believe that climate change is self-amplifying now. Plus the only thing that would happen to me in a rainforest is a bite from some poisonous animal. I’d like to stay as far away from rainforests as I can. But do I think rainforest biodiversity provides services and has obvious value? Yes I do.