Hi John, thanks for these detailed points and considerations. I’d like to add a few comments of my own (disclosure that I’m co-Director of CSER, although quite a bit of what’s below represents my individual opinion, as flagged).
1) I should note that there isn’t a ‘CSER position’ re: biodiversity loss directly causing an existential risk to humanity, or the extent to which it’s a cause of concern as a contributing factor. I don’t believe I know of anyone holding the former stronger view on current evidence, and the extent to which different people weight the latter differs both between researchers and between advisers.
3) Re: “is biodiversity loss declining in rich countries?” Recent reports do indicate that biodiversity is continuing to decline, and ecosystems continue to be under threat in Europe, despite this being a (comparatively) rich region, and despite strategies intended to combat this—e.g. see
4) Even if not an existential risk, these reports indicate a significant negative impact on the global economy from global biodiversity loss “Policy inaction and failure to halt the loss of global biodiversity could result in annual losses in ecosystem services equivalent to 7 % of world GDP, with the greatest impacts being felt by the poorest nations and the rural poor. ”
5) There are a lot of matters that remain unclear, such as the interrelationship and possible feedback loops between climate change, biodiversity loss, increased resource use etc, that in my view would be useful to understand better in order to better understand the effect of biodiversity loss on human civilisation, and how it fits into the bigger picture of global catastrophic risks to humanity in the coming decades. As I understand it, it remains unclear what the plausible worst case scenario is.
6) My own (non-expert) view is that it’s worth it for the GCR community not to ignore global biodiversity loss, due to the dynamic and unprecedented-in-human-history nature of the change, the interaction with other pressures with other potential GCR significance, and plausible reasons to think this may have large negative consequences for the planet and human civilisation in its current form (which can have destabilising consequences). To your question to Haydn, I don’t think 80K should be recommending it as a top cause area based on current evidence, but I may update on this in future years in light of further evidence. At CSER it’s a small part of our current portfolio and resource use, which I think is appropriate (as indicated by the fraction on the report above it takes up; also worth noting our leading work is currently being done by a non-grant-supported professor). It is of course a particularly influential part in various regards, given that Prof Dasgupta is in an unusually influential position and can achieve a lot of good on a topic of global significance (with potentially significant effects on global human well-being and productivity as noted above).
7) >Secondly, as far as I am aware, evidence for pressure-induced non-linear ecosystem shifts is very limited. This is true for a range of ecosystems.
My understanding is that this is correct. A project currently being written up was looking to review the evidence on this in order to better understand how concerned to be about this possibility, although it’s proven difficult to gather sufficient evidence from the literature. I’ll be better-placed to know what to conclude from this once write up is complete.
Apologies that these comments aren’t in correlated order with your post; I’ll go back and reorder if required. Again, I’d highlight that others associated with CSER may hold stronger (and more expert) views than I on this topic.
3. I have a sceptical prior against EU studies of scientific issues because the EU has taken an anti-science stance on many issues under pressure from the environmental movement—see e.g. the effective prohibition of GMOs. The fact that the report you cite advocates for increased organic farming adds weight to my scepticism. The report also says that the estimate of the economic costs is extremely uncertain and potentially a massive overestimate.
4. There are many things in the world that impose substantial economic costs, including inefficienct taxation, labour market regulation, failure to invest in R&D, etc. While they may indeed create economic costs, I fail to see the connection to existential risk.
5. While it is a small part of your portfolio, there is limited political attention for existential risk, and if CSER does start advocating for the view that biodiversity loss deserves serious consideration as a factor relevant to existential risk, that comes at a cost. In this case, the fact that Partha Dasgupta is an influential person is a negative because he risks distracting policymakers from the genuine risks
Thanks John. With apologies for brevity: I don’t think I’d agree with such broad-strokes scepticism of EU scientific studies on environment, but this is a topic for a longer conversation. Ditto (4).
Re: 5, I don’t expect this to be the framing that Partha adopts in the review in question; rather I expect it will be in line with the kinds of analysis and framings he has adopted in his work in this space in the past years (on the basis of which he was chosen for this appointment). Thanks!
Re 5: To be honest, I doubt that his framing matters much. Whether it’s “influential person says Y should receive attention” or “influential person says Y should receive attention with a lot of caveats” it’s still a distraction if we think Y is not nearly as relevant as X.
I think this point to a wider issue about risk communication and advocacy: should the x-risk community:
1) advocate for many approaches to x-risk and be opportunistic in where policy-makers are responsive, or
2) advocate for addressing the biggest risks only and bullishly pursue only opportunities that address these biggest risks.
This seems to depend on ‘how widely is x-risk distributed over various risk factors?’ and different research organizations seem to hold different opinions. Is CSER’s view that x-risk is widely distributed or narrowly?
>Re 5: To be honest, I doubt that his framing matters much. Whether it’s “influential person says Y should receive attention” or “influential person says Y should receive attention with a lot of caveats” it’s still a distraction if we think Y is not nearly as relevant as X.
From my experience of engaging with policymakers on Xrisk/GCR, I disagree with this way of looking at things (and to an extent John’s related concerns). If Partha was directly pushing biodiversity loss as a direct existential risk to humanity needing policy action, without evidence for this, then yes I would have concerns about this. But that’s not what’s happening here. At most, some ‘potential worst case scenarios’ might be surfaced, and referred to centres like ours for further research to support or rule out.
A few points:
1) I think it’s wrong to view this as a zero sum game. There’s a huge, huge space for policymakers to care more about GCR, Xrisk, and the long-term future than they currently do. Working with them on a global risk-relevant topic they’re already planning to work on (biodiversity and economic growth), as Partha is doing, is not going to result in the space that could be taken up with Xrisk concerns being occupied.
2) What we have here is a leading scholar (with a background specifically in economics and in recent years, biodiversity/sustainability) working in a high-profile fashion on a global risk-relevant topic (biodiversity loss and economics), who also has strong links to an existential risk research centre. This establishes useful links; it demonstrates that scholars associated with existential risk (a flaky-seeming topic not so long ago, and still in some circles) are people who do good work and are useful and trustworthy for governments on risks already within their ‘attention’ overton window; it’s helpful for legitimacy and reputation of existential risk research (e.g. through these links, interactions, and reputable work on related topics, helping to nudge existential risks into the overton window of risks that policymakers take seriously and take active government action on.)
More broadly, and to your later points:
Working on these sorts of processes is also an effective way of understanding how governance and policy around major risk works, and developing the skillset and positioning needed to engage more effectively around other risks (e.g. existential).
We don’t know all the correct actions to take to prevent existential risks right now. In some cases (i) because the xrisks will come to light in future; (ii) in some cases because we know the problem but don’t yet know how to solve; (iii) in some cases because we have a sense of the solution but not a good enough sense of how to action. For all these things, doing some engagement in policy processes where we can work to mitigate global risks currently within the policy overton window can be useful.
I do think the Xrisk community needs ‘purists’, and there will be points at which the community will need to undertake a hard prioritisation action on a particular xrisk with government. But most within the community would agree it’s not the time with transformative AI; it’s not the time with nano; there’s disagreement over whether it is the time with nuclear. With bio, a productive approach is expanding the overton window of risks within current biosecurity and biosafety, which is made easier by being clearly competent and useful within these broader domains.
What it is time for is internally doing the research to develop answers. Externally and with policy communities, developing the expertise to engage with the mechanics of the world, the networks and reputation to be effective, embedding the foresight and risk-scanning/response mechanisms that will allow governments to be more responsive, and so forth. Some of that involves engaging with a wider range of global (but not necessarily existential) risk issues. (As well as other indirect work: e.g. the AI safety/policy community not just working on the control problem and the deployment problem, but also getting into position in a wide range of other ways that often involve broader processes or non-existential risk issues).
To your final question, my own individual view is that mitigating xrisk will involve a small number of big opportunities/actions at the right times, underpinned and made possible by a large number of smaller and more widely distributed ones.
Apologies that I’m now out of time for further engagement online due to other deadlines.
Hi John, thanks for these detailed points and considerations. I’d like to add a few comments of my own (disclosure that I’m co-Director of CSER, although quite a bit of what’s below represents my individual opinion, as flagged).
1) I should note that there isn’t a ‘CSER position’ re: biodiversity loss directly causing an existential risk to humanity, or the extent to which it’s a cause of concern as a contributing factor. I don’t believe I know of anyone holding the former stronger view on current evidence, and the extent to which different people weight the latter differs both between researchers and between advisers.
2) While I note that I’m not a domain expert on biodiversity loss, my own individual view leans towards the Kareiva & Carranza you quote above (from a paper presented at one of our conferences). I’d note that other experts appear to disagree (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/nov/03/stop-biodiversity-loss-or-we-could-face-our-own-extinction-warns-un) though I’m disinclined to weight strong statements from agency heads in public media as strong and reliable evidence.
3) Re: “is biodiversity loss declining in rich countries?” Recent reports do indicate that biodiversity is continuing to decline, and ecosystems continue to be under threat in Europe, despite this being a (comparatively) rich region, and despite strategies intended to combat this—e.g. see
https://www.eea.europa.eu/soer-2015/europe/biodiversity
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52015DC0478
4) Even if not an existential risk, these reports indicate a significant negative impact on the global economy from global biodiversity loss “Policy inaction and failure to halt the loss of global biodiversity could result in annual losses in ecosystem services equivalent to 7 % of world GDP, with the greatest impacts being felt by the poorest nations and the rural poor. ”
5) There are a lot of matters that remain unclear, such as the interrelationship and possible feedback loops between climate change, biodiversity loss, increased resource use etc, that in my view would be useful to understand better in order to better understand the effect of biodiversity loss on human civilisation, and how it fits into the bigger picture of global catastrophic risks to humanity in the coming decades. As I understand it, it remains unclear what the plausible worst case scenario is.
6) My own (non-expert) view is that it’s worth it for the GCR community not to ignore global biodiversity loss, due to the dynamic and unprecedented-in-human-history nature of the change, the interaction with other pressures with other potential GCR significance, and plausible reasons to think this may have large negative consequences for the planet and human civilisation in its current form (which can have destabilising consequences). To your question to Haydn, I don’t think 80K should be recommending it as a top cause area based on current evidence, but I may update on this in future years in light of further evidence. At CSER it’s a small part of our current portfolio and resource use, which I think is appropriate (as indicated by the fraction on the report above it takes up; also worth noting our leading work is currently being done by a non-grant-supported professor). It is of course a particularly influential part in various regards, given that Prof Dasgupta is in an unusually influential position and can achieve a lot of good on a topic of global significance (with potentially significant effects on global human well-being and productivity as noted above).
7) >Secondly, as far as I am aware, evidence for pressure-induced non-linear ecosystem shifts is very limited. This is true for a range of ecosystems.
My understanding is that this is correct. A project currently being written up was looking to review the evidence on this in order to better understand how concerned to be about this possibility, although it’s proven difficult to gather sufficient evidence from the literature. I’ll be better-placed to know what to conclude from this once write up is complete.
Apologies that these comments aren’t in correlated order with your post; I’ll go back and reorder if required. Again, I’d highlight that others associated with CSER may hold stronger (and more expert) views than I on this topic.
3. I have a sceptical prior against EU studies of scientific issues because the EU has taken an anti-science stance on many issues under pressure from the environmental movement—see e.g. the effective prohibition of GMOs. The fact that the report you cite advocates for increased organic farming adds weight to my scepticism. The report also says that the estimate of the economic costs is extremely uncertain and potentially a massive overestimate.
4. There are many things in the world that impose substantial economic costs, including inefficienct taxation, labour market regulation, failure to invest in R&D, etc. While they may indeed create economic costs, I fail to see the connection to existential risk.
5. While it is a small part of your portfolio, there is limited political attention for existential risk, and if CSER does start advocating for the view that biodiversity loss deserves serious consideration as a factor relevant to existential risk, that comes at a cost. In this case, the fact that Partha Dasgupta is an influential person is a negative because he risks distracting policymakers from the genuine risks
Thanks John. With apologies for brevity: I don’t think I’d agree with such broad-strokes scepticism of EU scientific studies on environment, but this is a topic for a longer conversation. Ditto (4).
Re: 5, I don’t expect this to be the framing that Partha adopts in the review in question; rather I expect it will be in line with the kinds of analysis and framings he has adopted in his work in this space in the past years (on the basis of which he was chosen for this appointment). Thanks!
Re 5: To be honest, I doubt that his framing matters much. Whether it’s “influential person says Y should receive attention” or “influential person says Y should receive attention with a lot of caveats” it’s still a distraction if we think Y is not nearly as relevant as X.
I think this point to a wider issue about risk communication and advocacy: should the x-risk community:
1) advocate for many approaches to x-risk and be opportunistic in where policy-makers are responsive, or
2) advocate for addressing the biggest risks only and bullishly pursue only opportunities that address these biggest risks.
This seems to depend on ‘how widely is x-risk distributed over various risk factors?’ and different research organizations seem to hold different opinions. Is CSER’s view that x-risk is widely distributed or narrowly?
>Re 5: To be honest, I doubt that his framing matters much. Whether it’s “influential person says Y should receive attention” or “influential person says Y should receive attention with a lot of caveats” it’s still a distraction if we think Y is not nearly as relevant as X.
From my experience of engaging with policymakers on Xrisk/GCR, I disagree with this way of looking at things (and to an extent John’s related concerns). If Partha was directly pushing biodiversity loss as a direct existential risk to humanity needing policy action, without evidence for this, then yes I would have concerns about this. But that’s not what’s happening here. At most, some ‘potential worst case scenarios’ might be surfaced, and referred to centres like ours for further research to support or rule out.
A few points:
1) I think it’s wrong to view this as a zero sum game. There’s a huge, huge space for policymakers to care more about GCR, Xrisk, and the long-term future than they currently do. Working with them on a global risk-relevant topic they’re already planning to work on (biodiversity and economic growth), as Partha is doing, is not going to result in the space that could be taken up with Xrisk concerns being occupied.
2) What we have here is a leading scholar (with a background specifically in economics and in recent years, biodiversity/sustainability) working in a high-profile fashion on a global risk-relevant topic (biodiversity loss and economics), who also has strong links to an existential risk research centre. This establishes useful links; it demonstrates that scholars associated with existential risk (a flaky-seeming topic not so long ago, and still in some circles) are people who do good work and are useful and trustworthy for governments on risks already within their ‘attention’ overton window; it’s helpful for legitimacy and reputation of existential risk research (e.g. through these links, interactions, and reputable work on related topics, helping to nudge existential risks into the overton window of risks that policymakers take seriously and take active government action on.)
More broadly, and to your later points:
Working on these sorts of processes is also an effective way of understanding how governance and policy around major risk works, and developing the skillset and positioning needed to engage more effectively around other risks (e.g. existential).
We don’t know all the correct actions to take to prevent existential risks right now. In some cases (i) because the xrisks will come to light in future; (ii) in some cases because we know the problem but don’t yet know how to solve; (iii) in some cases because we have a sense of the solution but not a good enough sense of how to action. For all these things, doing some engagement in policy processes where we can work to mitigate global risks currently within the policy overton window can be useful.
I do think the Xrisk community needs ‘purists’, and there will be points at which the community will need to undertake a hard prioritisation action on a particular xrisk with government. But most within the community would agree it’s not the time with transformative AI; it’s not the time with nano; there’s disagreement over whether it is the time with nuclear. With bio, a productive approach is expanding the overton window of risks within current biosecurity and biosafety, which is made easier by being clearly competent and useful within these broader domains.
What it is time for is internally doing the research to develop answers. Externally and with policy communities, developing the expertise to engage with the mechanics of the world, the networks and reputation to be effective, embedding the foresight and risk-scanning/response mechanisms that will allow governments to be more responsive, and so forth. Some of that involves engaging with a wider range of global (but not necessarily existential) risk issues. (As well as other indirect work: e.g. the AI safety/policy community not just working on the control problem and the deployment problem, but also getting into position in a wide range of other ways that often involve broader processes or non-existential risk issues).
To your final question, my own individual view is that mitigating xrisk will involve a small number of big opportunities/actions at the right times, underpinned and made possible by a large number of smaller and more widely distributed ones.
Apologies that I’m now out of time for further engagement online due to other deadlines.