Bioproportionality: a necessary norm for conservation?

In the early stages of the environment movement, one of the principal objects of conservation was wilderness. In the 1980s, the category of wilderness gave way to that of biodiversity: conservation was reconceived as biodiversity conservation. With this change of categories, the focus of conservati...

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Autor principal:	Freya Mathews
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	The White Horse Press 2019
Materias:	anthropocentrism biodiversity bioproportionality environmental ethics optimal population wilderness Environmental sciences GE1-350 Demography. Population. Vital events HB848-3697
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/cd8b59a38e0942eebfafb544376a2051
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:cd8b59a38e0942eebfafb544376a20512021-12-02T17:50:23ZBioproportionality: a necessary norm for conservation?2398-54882398-5496https://doaj.org/article/cd8b59a38e0942eebfafb544376a20512019-12-01T00:00:00Zhttps://whp-journals.co.uk/JPS/article/view/642https://doaj.org/toc/2398-5488https://doaj.org/toc/2398-5496 In the early stages of the environment movement, one of the principal objects of conservation was wilderness. In the 1980s, the category of wilderness gave way to that of biodiversity: conservation was reconceived as biodiversity conservation. With this change of categories, the focus of conservation shifted from the saving of vast and abundant terrains of life to the saving of types of living thing, particularly species. A little-noted consequence of this reframing was a reduction in scale: minimum viable populations of species, which set targets under the new biodiversity-based conception of conservation, were often orders of magnitude lower than the populations that might have occurred in wilderness areas. Exclusive focus on the value of diversity thus tended to lead conservationists to lose sight of the value of abundance. To correct this disastrous miscarriage of environmental intentions, a new complementary category is here proposed: bioproportionality. It is not enough to conserve minimum viable populations of all species. The aim should be to optimize such populations. Optimized targets will be estimated by reference to the principle of bioproportionality: the population of each species should be as abundant as is consistent with an ecologically proportionate abundance of adjoining populations of other species. Applied to the human population, this principle will require a dramatic reduction. Freya MathewsThe White Horse Pressarticleanthropocentrismbiodiversitybioproportionalityenvironmental ethicsoptimal populationwildernessEnvironmental sciencesGE1-350Demography. Population. Vital eventsHB848-3697ENThe Journal of Population and Sustainability, Vol 4, Iss 1 (2019)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	anthropocentrism biodiversity bioproportionality environmental ethics optimal population wilderness Environmental sciences GE1-350 Demography. Population. Vital events HB848-3697
spellingShingle	anthropocentrism biodiversity bioproportionality environmental ethics optimal population wilderness Environmental sciences GE1-350 Demography. Population. Vital events HB848-3697 Freya Mathews Bioproportionality: a necessary norm for conservation?
description	In the early stages of the environment movement, one of the principal objects of conservation was wilderness. In the 1980s, the category of wilderness gave way to that of biodiversity: conservation was reconceived as biodiversity conservation. With this change of categories, the focus of conservation shifted from the saving of vast and abundant terrains of life to the saving of types of living thing, particularly species. A little-noted consequence of this reframing was a reduction in scale: minimum viable populations of species, which set targets under the new biodiversity-based conception of conservation, were often orders of magnitude lower than the populations that might have occurred in wilderness areas. Exclusive focus on the value of diversity thus tended to lead conservationists to lose sight of the value of abundance. To correct this disastrous miscarriage of environmental intentions, a new complementary category is here proposed: bioproportionality. It is not enough to conserve minimum viable populations of all species. The aim should be to optimize such populations. Optimized targets will be estimated by reference to the principle of bioproportionality: the population of each species should be as abundant as is consistent with an ecologically proportionate abundance of adjoining populations of other species. Applied to the human population, this principle will require a dramatic reduction.
format	article
author	Freya Mathews
author_facet	Freya Mathews
author_sort	Freya Mathews
title	Bioproportionality: a necessary norm for conservation?
title_short	Bioproportionality: a necessary norm for conservation?
title_full	Bioproportionality: a necessary norm for conservation?
title_fullStr	Bioproportionality: a necessary norm for conservation?
title_full_unstemmed	Bioproportionality: a necessary norm for conservation?
title_sort	bioproportionality: a necessary norm for conservation?
publisher	The White Horse Press
publishDate	2019
url	https://doaj.org/article/cd8b59a38e0942eebfafb544376a2051
work_keys_str_mv	AT freyamathews bioproportionalityanecessarynormforconservation
_version_	1718379314812026880

Bioproportionality: a necessary norm for conservation?

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