Indonesia consists of more than 17,000 islands separated for hundreds of thousands of years making both the biodiversity and culture diverse. Strong connection between people and biodiversity form a vast array of traditional knowledges retaliated to the conservation and use of biological diversity. During the last 3 decades, tremendous advancement on science and technology has been able to uncover the intrinsic value of biodiversity. Many lead chemical compounds have been isolated and identified, and has opened up huge opportunities in developing (...) new business based on biodiversity. International cooperation between Japan and Indonesia successfully isolated more than 1,000 species of actinomycetes from diverse ecosystems and more than 30% are new species. This group of microbe is important for future pharmaceutical industries. The consciousness on intrinsic value of biodiversity is, however, only being understood by countries having high science and technology capacity. The intrinsic value of biodiversity remains abstract to most of the people in the developing and less developed nations. The Convention on Biological Diversity (UN-CBD), Cartagena and Nagoya Protocol are legal documents to ensure conservation, sustainable use and sharing of the benefit from the utilization of biodiversity and its components. There is a high demand for the developed nations on access to biodiversity to uncover its benefit. The mechanism on access, fair and equitable sharing of the benefit from the utilization of biodiversity and its component are certainly full of ethical dilemma. For this, there is a great need for the developing country having rich biodiversity find the most appropriate way to manage biodiversity and traditional knowledge for their prosperity. Trust between countries rich in biodiversity and countries having high science and technology capacity is a crucial factor. Greater transparency and the recognition on comprehensive rights of people providing biodiversity is a key element in maintaining trust. Ethical standards cannot depend solely on rules or guidelines. (shrink)

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) is America's strongest environmental law. Its citizen-suit provisionany personawards implicit intrinsic value, de facto standing, and operational legal rights (sensu Christopher D. Stone) to listed species. Accordingly, some cases had gone forward in the federal courts in the name of various listed species between 1979 (Palila v. Hawaii Dept. of Land & Natural Resources) and 2004 (Cetacean Community v. Bush), when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that animals (...) could not sue in their own name. Because the Supreme Court has interpreted its habitat destruction as the of a listed species, some have argued that enforcement of the ESA's critical-habitat-protection provision is a of private property without just compensation, contrary to the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. The courts have not agreed. The ESA citizen-suit provision appears to waive federal-court standing requirements devolved from Article III of the U.S. Constitution, creating much confusion and mutually contradictory rulings. A series of cases (culminating with Bennett v. Spear) reconciles the ESA's citizen-suit provision with the particularized and concrete standing requirements devolved from Article III. (shrink)

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is America's strongest environmental law. Its citizen-suit provision—permitting “any person” whomsoever to sue on behalf of a threatened or endangered species—awards implicit intrinsic value, de facto standing, and operational legal rights to listed species. Accordingly, some cases had gone forward in the federal courts in the name of various listed species between 1979 and 2004, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that animals could not sue in (...) their own name. Because the Supreme Court has interpreted its habitat destruction as the “taking” of a listed species, some have argued that enforcement of the ESA's critical-habitat-protection provision is a “regulatory taking” of private property without just compensation, contrary to the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. The courts have not agreed. The ESA citizen-suit provision appears to waive federal-court standing requirements devolved from Article III of the U.S. Constitution, creating much confusion and mutually contradictory rulings. A series of cases reconciles the ESA's citizen-suit provision with the particularized and concrete “injury-in-fact” standing requirements devolved from Article III. (shrink)

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) can impose significant limitations on what landowners may do with their property, especially as it pertains to development. These restrictions imposed by the ESA are part of a larger controversy about the reach of the “Takings Clause” of the Fifth Amendment, which says that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation. The question this paper addresses is whether these restrictions require compensation. The paper develops a position on the (...) general question of compensation for regulatory takings and applies it to the ESA. The main argument concludes that compensation should be paid. It is based on the proposition that the goods provided by regulatory takings are typically public goods, and on a principle of fairness, which holds that compensation should be paid when those who benefit from a regulatory taking pay virtually nothing and those who pay receive hardly any benefit. It is argued that this principle is implicit in many of the Court's rulings on regulatory takings. (shrink)

Assuming that both humans and nonhuman organisms have intrinsic value, the concept of a “death with dignity” should extend to the natural world. Recently, an effort has been undertaken to save the razorback sucker, an endangered species of fish in the Colorado River. Razorback are bred and raised in captivity and transferred to the river only when large enough to survive predation by nonnative fish. While this effort is well-intentioned, there is little chance that the razorback will again (...) live unassisted in the Colorado River. There may be human-centered reasons for saving the razorback. However, just as respecting a person sometimes requires limiting his or her life-sustaining medical treatment, so too respecting the razorback may require removing human assistance with its reproductive cycle. (shrink)

Assuming that both humans and nonhuman organisms have intrinsic value, the concept of a “death with dignity” should extend to the natural world. Recently, an effort has been undertaken to save the razorback sucker, an endangered species of fish in the Colorado River. Razorback are bred and raised in captivity and transferred to the river only when large enough to survive predation by nonnative fish. While this effort is well-intentioned, there is little chance that the razorback will again (...) live unassisted in the Colorado River. There may be human-centered reasons for saving the razorback. However, just as respecting a person sometimes requires limiting his or her life-sustaining medical treatment, so too respecting the razorback may require removing human assistance with its reproductive cycle. (shrink)

The endangered species Tokudaia osimensis has the unique chromosome constitution of 2n = 25, with an XO/XO sex chromosome configuration (2n = 25; XO). There is urgency to preserve this species and to elucidate the regulator(s) that can discriminate the males and females arising from the indistinguishable sex chromosome constitution. However, it is not realistic to examine this rare animal species by sacrificing individuals. Recently, true naïve induced pluripotent stem cells were successfully generated from a female (...) T. osimensis, and the sexual plasticity of its germ cells was elucidated. This achievement constitutes the basis of an attractive research area, including embryonic fate determination, sex determination, and factor(s) that can replace the Y chromosome. In this essay, concrete strategies to conserve rare animal species and to reveal their specific characteristics using other compatible and abundant animals are proposed. -/- . (shrink)

I argue against several extant views (Rolston, etc) about the value of endangered species. I argue that the best way to defend a non-anthropocentric view about the value of endangered species is to appeal to the intrinsic value of biological diversity.

Why save endangered species without clear aesthetic, economic, or ecosystemic value? This book takes on this challenging question through an account of the intrinsic goods of species. Ian A. Smith argues that a species’ intrinsic value stems from its ability to flourish—its organisms continuing to reproduce successfully and it avoiding extinction—which helps to demonstrate a further claim, that humans ought to preserve species that we have endangered. He shows our need to exercise humility in (...) our relations with endangered species through the preservation of their intrinsic goods, which in turn rectifies our degradation of their importance. Unique in its appeal to virtue ethics and to species concepts, _The Intrinsic Value of Endangered Species_ is an important resource for scholars working in environmental ethics and the philosophy of biology. (shrink)

Biologists are often placed in the difficult position of defending a threatened habitat or animal with vague reasoning and faulty logic simply because they have no better rationale at their immediate disposal. This places them at a distinct disadvantage and literally at the mercy of resource exploiters and their easily assignable dollar values. Although the initial dollar cost of delaying or precluding “development” may be sigriificant, the long-term benefits of saving the biological entities which might otherwise be destroyed are likewise (...) great and are measurable in concrete terms which society is only now beginning to appreciate. Case histories are presented, a more profound rationale is explained, and the environmentalist is challenged to make his case sufficiently effective to reverse the current exploitive trends which threaten so many of Earth’s life forms. (shrink)

Biologists are often placed in the difficult position of defending a threatened habitat or animal with vague reasoning and faulty logic simply because they have no better rationale at their immediate disposal. This places them at a distinct disadvantage and literally at the mercy of resource exploiters and their easily assignable dollar values. Although the initial dollar cost of delaying or precluding “development” may be sigriificant, the long-term benefits of saving the biological entities which might otherwise be destroyed are likewise (...) great and are measurable in concrete terms which society is only now beginning to appreciate. Case histories are presented, a more profound rationale is explained, and the environmentalist is challenged to make his case sufficiently effective to reverse the current exploitive trends which threaten so many of Earth’s life forms. (shrink)

The Endangered Species Act of 1973 is one of America’s most powerful statutes, not only in American domestic environmental law, but in American domestic law in general. The first part of the ESA gives us the ‘Findings, Purposes, and Policy’ that underlie the Act. In this prefratory language, it is explicit that the ESA is referring to instrumental aesthetic, ecological, educational, historical, recreational, and scientific values. But J. Baird Callicott and Andrew Wetzler argued that the ESA is also (...) implicitly committed to endangered species having intrinsic value. I argue that the best explanation of the seeming tacit intrinsic value in the ESA is not that such value really is implicit in the ESA; rather, the best explanation is that the ESA is committed to instrumental value with a certain feature that has not been carefully considered in the environmental ethics/philosophy literature before, that of incalculable instrumental value, in this case held by endangered species. (shrink)

During the mid-nineteenth century, the eminent British zoologist Alfred Newton recognized that some of the ideas embedded in Origin of Species provided new scientific rationales for the preservation of endangered species. He then embarked on a twenty-five-year-long campaign for law reforms and successfully lobbied Parliament to enact three new statutes for the preservation of endangered wild birds that gave priority to the scientific value of rare species. The account of Newton’s campaign presented in this article (...) helps to locate Newton in the nineteenth century conservation movement, while also shining a side light on the relationship between conservation science and policy-making more generally, including the variety of voices and approaches taken to conservation in the UK and US. Today, as we pursue new regulatory responses to critical environmental issues, such as biodiversity loss and climate change, the history of Newton’s campaign offers an early example of a successful approach to science-based law reform. It also shows how some of the issues that Newton and his contemporaries confronted at the science-policy interface in the nineteenth century are enduring and remain relevant today, including debates about; the role of scientist-advocates in policy-making, the criteria that make science advice effective, and whether the “democratization” of science leads to better policy decisions. (shrink)

After all, ever since the abandonment of the classical curriculum in the mid-nineteenth century, the courses of studies in American colleges have been characterized by ever-increasing diversity, responses to highly particular social and individual demands, spin-offs from traditional disciplines, specializations breeding subspecializations, and the like. Stringent counterrevolutions, such as the one undertaken in the College of the University of Chicago some thirty years ago, have been infrequent and brief. What, then, is so special about the present seductive disarray in literary (...) studies. Chiefly, I think, the importance of this compartmentation lies in the way we are encouraged to think of literary works and to respond to them. If we persuade ourselves that novels and plays and poems are written by members of an identifiable subgroup—whether that group be defined in national, ethnic, sexual, class, or special interest terms—and can be properly understood, and appreciated only by those who know the code of the same subgroup, we should be prepared to accept the implications of the position we are espousing. If, to cite a specific example, what is called the Black Aesthetic points to a mode of artistic apprehension that is not available to non-Blacks, it casts the rest of us, however curious and interested, in the roles of voyeurs and eavesdroppers. Here, as so often, our best writers anticipate and dramatize notions which become solemn critical propositions later on. In Saul Bellow's second novel, The Victim, published thirty years ago, the protagonist, Leventhal, recalls a party at which two of his friends, both Jewish, were singing spirituals and old ballads. They were being needled by a drunken New England WASP named Kirby Albee. "Why do you sing such songs?" he said. "You can't sing them.""Why not, I'd like to know?" said the girl."Oh, you, too," said Albee with his one cornered smile. "it isn't right for you to sing them. You have to be born to them, it's no use trying to sing them." Robert E. Streeter served for many years as Dean of the College and later as Dean of the Humanities at the University of Chicago where he is now Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor. He is one of the editors of Critical Inquiry. "WASPs and Other Endangered Species" was presented as the Nora and Edward Ryerson Lecture at the University of Chicago on 5 April 1977. (shrink)

Herein we examine the theory and practical limits of designing a voluntary incentive scheme to protect endangered species on private land. We consider both an ay-ante scheme, in which a contract to the landholder depends only on what the landholder reports, and an ay-post scheme, in which a contract to the landholder depends on reports from all landowners. Except in special cases, the ex-ante scheme never implements the full information allocation, and can actually set aside too much land. (...) In contrast, expected habitat size under the ex-post scheme is smaller than both the ex-ante and full information allocations. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science (USA). (shrink)

Tragic moral conflicts are situations from within which whatever one does—including abstaining from action—will be seriously wrong; even the overall right decision involves violating a moral responsibility. This article offers an account of recovery predicaments, a particular kind of tragic conflict that characterizes the current extinction crisis. Recovery predicaments occur when the human-caused extinction of a species or population cannot be prevented without breaching moral responsibilities to animals by doing violence to or otherwise severely dominating them. Recognizing the harm (...) of acting from within recovery conflicts adds force to appeals for interrogating and dismantling the systems of thinking, valuing, and acting that bring species to the brink of extinction. (shrink)

This paper aims to establish that time travel into the past is, at best, highly improbable. It does this by first establishing the causal dependency of identity relations for a person or object travelling into the past. The paper then goes on to show how hard it is to avoid a closed causal loop in time travel experiments, and the inherently contradictory nature of said loops. It then raises the question of how such loops could be avoided without affecting the (...) identity requirements of the traveller, thus drawing the conclusion that while, strictly speaking, time travel has not been proved impossible, the combination of circumstance required to avoid contradiction is so unlikely as to render such activity highly improbable. (shrink)

The following lines aim at two goals: firstly, connecting the three blind spots that Katrin Becker's article has identified in the analysis of society promoted by advocates of blockchain technology; secondly, reflecting on the possible hybridization between classical and digital forms of legal procedures. What we are witnessing is a transfer of legality from a spatial and linguistic order to a non-spatial, non-linguistic one which is based on out-of-space lines of written code. The interpretation of what space means for justice (...) becomes therefore a crucial social stake in the possible hybridization of classical and digital procedures. (shrink)

This paper aims to establish that time travel into the past is, at best, highly improbable. It does this by first establishing the causal dependency of identity relations for a person or object travelling into the past. The paper then goes on to show how hard it is to avoid a closed causal loop in time travel experiments, and the inherently contradictory nature of said loops. It then raises the question of how such loops could be avoided without affecting the (...) identity requirements of the traveller, thus drawing the conclusion that while, strictly speaking, time travel has not been proved impossible, the combination of circumstance required to avoid contradiction is so unlikely as to render such activity highly improbable. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is on normative ethical theories and endangered species. To be exact, I examine two theories: the theory of obligation and care ethics, and ask which is better-suited in the case of endangered species. I argue that the aretic, feminist-inspired ethics of care is well-suited in the case of companion animals, but ill-suited in the case of endangered species, especially in the case of “unlovable” species. My argument presupposes that (...) we now live an era where human disturbances to planetary ecosystems are triggering a sixth mass species extinction, and widespread interventions will be needed to save many species from extinction. (shrink)

Abstract:The focus of this paper is on managed relocations and endangered wild species. The main argument is that managed relocations should be a viable policy option in the toolbox of conservation management despite any ecological risks. This argument is defended on the basis of recent research that demonstrates that not all alien species are invasive species, and that not all invasive species have negative ecological impacts. In other words, a nuanced case-by-case approach is needed. This (...) argument is presented within the context of the Bramble Cay Melomys, a rat-like creature and the first mammal to become extinct as a result of anthropogenic climate change. A secondary objective of this paper is to explore some of the future economic and policy challenges likely to face managed relocations. (shrink)

Environmental groups have worked tirelessly to save several species of endangered fish along the Colorado River, including the humpback chub (Gila cypha). The humpback chub does not seem to have any significant instrumental goods, but these environmentalists have championed its cause nonetheless. If the humpback chub has no instrumental goods, then appealing to another kind of goods is needed to show that it should be preserved. Some environmental ethicists have suggested appealing to the intrinsic goods of a (...) class='Hi'>species (or, alternatively, its intrinsic value or inherent value). Drawing on and going beyond John O’Neill’s work, it can be argued that all currently existing (biological) species have their own goods, or intrinsic goods. In terms of the notion of flourishing, the intrinsic goods of a species consist in its abilities to flourish. These goods can be used to construct a defense of the view that a species, even a species such as the humpback chub, ought to be preserved. One way to construct this defense is to appeal to virtue ethics, specifically the virtue of humility. Exercising the virtue of humility in our relations with species that we human beings have endangered involves preserving them along with preserving their intrinsic goods. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In their recent efforts to protect the Southern Resident killer whale population in the Salish Sea and bring ‘Lolita’ home, the Lummi Nation exposed significant limitations to species and habitats as values in Western conservation models. Where Indigenous conservation falls outside this scope, it is often invisible to or actively suppressed by the settler state. The conservation practices of NOAA, in accordance with the federal policy of the ESA, have amounted to extractive colonial enterprises, treating the whales as (...) educational, economic, and environmental possessions while degrading the relationship of the Lummi to the whales as relatives and attacking Lummi sovereignty. (shrink)

An overlooked moral issue is the Trump administration’s plan to finish building a physical wall on the entirety of the United States/Mexico border in terms of how building...

Evans et al. (Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2008) have attempted to enmesh me in their dispute with the Florida Bureau of Invasive Plant Management about a specific system, Kings Bay/Crystal River. In so doing, they repeatedly mischaracterize my positions in order to depict, incorrectly, invasion biology as monolithic and me as a representative of one extreme of a false dichotomy about management of introduced species. In addition, they introduce an issue irrelevant in this case (extinctions) and cite (...) incorrect data. Proposing to manage people, manatees, introduced plants, and cyanobacteria in Kings Bay by participative adaptive management, they ignore the fact that living organisms can both disperse autonomously and hitchhike. Finally, they present few details on any aspect of their management proposal and do not address the myriad problems that have beset previous attempts at scientific adaptive management, especially at large scales. Until such a management approach is fleshed out and implemented, it is impossible to assess its validity for Kings Bay, and it is very premature to suggest it as a general model for dealing with invasive species disputes. (shrink)

This paper describes two frameworks—utilitarian and Kantian—society uses to make decisions concerning environmental management and, in particular, species protection. The utilitarian framework emphasizes the consequences of choices for prior preferences. A perfectly competitive market, on this model, correctly values environmental resources. The Kantian approach identifies rules appropriate to recognized situations given the identity of the decision maker. It relies on democratic political processes and institutions to provide the means by which citizens determine the identity of their community—its moral character (...) and aspirations—and match appropriate rules to recognized situations. This paper argues that markets do not fail in any general way in measuring the economic value of plants and animals. Market prices, in general, correctly represent the marginal or exchange value of species. If society legislates against extinction, this must be understood as an exercise in Kantian decision making in view of the moral value of species, not as an attempt to “correct” a market failure or to promote social welfare or utility. (shrink)

(Selection) In her provocative introduction to the interdisciplinary collection Extinction, Claire Colebrook diagnoses posthumanism as “delusional,” “symptomatic,” and “psychotic.” Now that we live in what geologists informally call the “anthropocene” – a new epoch in which a preponderance of the earth’s systems are irreversibly altered by human activity – she claims that it is dangerous, insane even, to imagine that the traditional, “Cartesian” idea of man as master of nature is invalid. The declaration of the death of man betrays a (...) willful denial of humanity’s destructive capacity. The dream that man is disappearing like a “face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea” is a symptom of a psychosis that protects us from the truth of man’s irretrievable imprint: eroding coral reefs, melting glaciers, gaping ozone, thousands of extinct species, and so much more. Colebrook’s is not only an indictment of French post-structuralism. She issues no less a challenge to feminist posthumanisms, which have launched influential assaults against the Cartesian figure of the self-possessed subject (who, we must admit, has few defenders in Continental philosophy generally). Does the heralding of the anthropocene demand a critical revival of Cartesian humanism? Must we affirm that humans are exceptional after all? (shrink)