I’m interested in writing about this with someone; anybody interested in writing arguments with me about why biodiversity matters? I don’t expect it to make the leaderboard of urgent problems, but as a slow important problem I think it’s a contender.
Here’s a sketch of the argument that convinced me: we want our life support system to handle as many challenges as it can on its own, with as little maintenance as possible. Nature is not a closed system, so the challenges are multi-factor and co-occurring. High biodiversity provides already established stabilizing loops, redundant pathways of nutrient cycling, adaptive strategies, and a variety of pre-existing species and ecosystems which can colonize new niches as conditions change. The more parts are available, the more complex and robust nature’s networks can be, hopefully thereby requiring less human management in order to continue to provision and protect life. Loss of biodiversity is a loss of information, resilience, redundancy, and other resources all at once.
I think biodiversity hasn’t gotten as much attention as people might be willing to give it. I don’t know why, but here are some guesses. Maybe...
more clarity is needed about how biodiversity contributes to other goals.
“biodiversity” is at the wrong level: maybe it’s a subproblem or tool, and the cause area has a different name.
“biodiversity” as a concept is too vague or poorly connected to evoke mental imagery or motivate action.
the principles and how they fit together haven’t been articulated clearly/succinctly enough.
it’s hard to get really good at thinking about “biodiversity” because it contains something mentally costly, like patience, perspective-taking, predicting, counterfactualizing, or systems thinking.
more true causal stories are needed explaining how biodiversity contributes to ecosystem services, which lead to personal everyday benefit.
building biodiversity is an upfront investment with a long payoff horizon, so it may not be financially competitive as other projects, except in specific cases with a fast, easy-to-capture payoff.
we’ve still got some biodiversity, so it may be less urgent than other cause areas despite being important.
more post-mortems of failed interventions are needed to address disappointment, counteract the appeal of non-intervention, and reassure funders that ecological interventions can be cost-effective.
more here-now-small-doable localized intervention recommendations are wanted, with a tangible signal for whether the intervention is working (such as water quality, or return of an indicator species). For instance, planting milkweed for monarchs was clear, tangible, and doable, so lots of people planted milkweed (at least suboptimally, possibly counterproductively).
more practice and guiding examples would help about how to compare very different interventions’ possible expected value, and select ones that pay for themselves. For instance, I wonder whether oyster seeding or herbivore exclosures around oaks would support more biodiversity 30 years later per $1,000 spent? Per 100 volunteer hours spent? Which interventions include a way to economically capture part of the increased value of ecosystem services provided? Could beaver reintroduction be paid for with almond futures?
I found this comment (and the post by Danny) really interesting and helpful. I am new to EA and have been persuaded by its arguments to donate to the Malaria Consortium. But I am also an environmental economist and an surprised by the EA communities apparent lack of interest in biodiversity (while acknowledging that some of the other commenters’ points re comparative importance and whether it is overly neglected may have some validity).
One issue that interests me is the potential to make environmental interventions (both investments and regulations) more effective. EA examples like it being 1,000s of times more effective to donate to preventing or curing blindness than donating to training guide dogs are important. I think this scale of improvement in effectiveness is possible with environmental interventions. In both areas wildly inefficient interventions can be supported because people are sometimes satisfied by things that sound good or signal their concern, with little or no thought to maximising impact.
In short, I think that:
the EA community should consider rating the importance of biodiversity more highly
EA-type thinking could be used to make biodiversity interventions much more effective .
I am not sure what would be involved in writing arguments with you about this or whether I would be suited to doing this, but I’m happy to talk .
I’m interested in writing about this with someone; anybody interested in writing arguments with me about why biodiversity matters? I don’t expect it to make the leaderboard of urgent problems, but as a slow important problem I think it’s a contender.
Here’s a sketch of the argument that convinced me: we want our life support system to handle as many challenges as it can on its own, with as little maintenance as possible. Nature is not a closed system, so the challenges are multi-factor and co-occurring. High biodiversity provides already established stabilizing loops, redundant pathways of nutrient cycling, adaptive strategies, and a variety of pre-existing species and ecosystems which can colonize new niches as conditions change. The more parts are available, the more complex and robust nature’s networks can be, hopefully thereby requiring less human management in order to continue to provision and protect life. Loss of biodiversity is a loss of information, resilience, redundancy, and other resources all at once.
I think biodiversity hasn’t gotten as much attention as people might be willing to give it. I don’t know why, but here are some guesses. Maybe...
more clarity is needed about how biodiversity contributes to other goals.
“biodiversity” is at the wrong level: maybe it’s a subproblem or tool, and the cause area has a different name.
“biodiversity” as a concept is too vague or poorly connected to evoke mental imagery or motivate action.
the principles and how they fit together haven’t been articulated clearly/succinctly enough.
it’s hard to get really good at thinking about “biodiversity” because it contains something mentally costly, like patience, perspective-taking, predicting, counterfactualizing, or systems thinking.
more true causal stories are needed explaining how biodiversity contributes to ecosystem services, which lead to personal everyday benefit.
building biodiversity is an upfront investment with a long payoff horizon, so it may not be financially competitive as other projects, except in specific cases with a fast, easy-to-capture payoff.
we’ve still got some biodiversity, so it may be less urgent than other cause areas despite being important.
more post-mortems of failed interventions are needed to address disappointment, counteract the appeal of non-intervention, and reassure funders that ecological interventions can be cost-effective.
more here-now-small-doable localized intervention recommendations are wanted, with a tangible signal for whether the intervention is working (such as water quality, or return of an indicator species). For instance, planting milkweed for monarchs was clear, tangible, and doable, so lots of people planted milkweed (at least suboptimally, possibly counterproductively).
more practice and guiding examples would help about how to compare very different interventions’ possible expected value, and select ones that pay for themselves. For instance, I wonder whether oyster seeding or herbivore exclosures around oaks would support more biodiversity 30 years later per $1,000 spent? Per 100 volunteer hours spent? Which interventions include a way to economically capture part of the increased value of ecosystem services provided? Could beaver reintroduction be paid for with almond futures?
I found this comment (and the post by Danny) really interesting and helpful. I am new to EA and have been persuaded by its arguments to donate to the Malaria Consortium. But I am also an environmental economist and an surprised by the EA communities apparent lack of interest in biodiversity (while acknowledging that some of the other commenters’ points re comparative importance and whether it is overly neglected may have some validity).
One issue that interests me is the potential to make environmental interventions (both investments and regulations) more effective. EA examples like it being 1,000s of times more effective to donate to preventing or curing blindness than donating to training guide dogs are important. I think this scale of improvement in effectiveness is possible with environmental interventions. In both areas wildly inefficient interventions can be supported because people are sometimes satisfied by things that sound good or signal their concern, with little or no thought to maximising impact.
In short, I think that:
the EA community should consider rating the importance of biodiversity more highly
EA-type thinking could be used to make biodiversity interventions much more effective .
I am not sure what would be involved in writing arguments with you about this or whether I would be suited to doing this, but I’m happy to talk .