Workshop Summary
Integrating ecological sciences and environmental ethics:
New approaches to understanding and conserving frontier ecosystems
Workshop Purpose
The University of North Texas (UNT) and the Chilean Institute of Ecology and Biodiversity (IEB) are holding a workshop March 17-23, 2007 in southern Chile. Participants will consist of 25 researchers (half North American, half South American), plus an equal number of graduate students—mostly South Americans who will have just completed a three week course at IEB on Conservation and Society: Bio-cultural diversity and environmental ethics March 5-18.
Conservation biology is a transdisciplinary field which has succeeded in incorporating environmental economics and restoration into its research and practice. However, it has not been successful thus far in including insights from environmental philosophy. This workshop aims to integrate conservation biology, environmental philosophy, and policy within the context of studying frontier ecosystems at the southern tip of South America. This workshop has two overall goals: to better understand the challenges of managing frontier ecosystems, especially in Chile; and to improve our skills at interdisciplinary problem solving.
Today, just one fifth of the world’s original forest cover remains in large tracts of relatively undisturbed forest, areas which have been called frontier forests. Only 3% of the world’s extant frontier forests are found within the temperate zone; therefore, temperate frontier forests are the most endangered forests of all. The Archipelagoes region of southwestern South America includes the Magellanic sub-Antarctic evergreen rainforest ecoregion (49-56o S), which recently has been identified as one of the world’s 37 most pristine ecoregions. This recognition is based on the region’s characteristics as remote, “virgin,” and possessing a singular biota at the austral extreme of America.
We maintain that to understand and manage frontier forest ecosystems and wilderness areas it is necessary to integrate human dimensions research, including the history of past and present human-forest interactions. Our present and future use of frontier forests raise key questions that today require not only descriptions and/or predictions, but also new types of understanding that can be helpful to making decisions regarding environmental regulations and economic development policies. Significant progress has been made by integrating economic dimensions to assess the social value of ecosystem goods and services. But the integration of other values pertaining to ethical and philosophical dimensions—such as instrumental versus intrinsic values, the relation between aesthetic, symbolic, and scientific values, and criteria for now natural a forest must be to be worth conserving—has not yet been adequately defined and assessed.
In areas where significant tracts of frontier forests remain, such as southern Chile, sensitivities to environmental ethics and values have been rarely integrated into management protocols and are largely ignored by decision-makers responsible for local development. The consequences of such omissions have generally not been addressed by scientists and/or managers or adequately debated in academic circles. Moreover, the conceptual expansion proposed here applies not only to questions surrounding frontier ecosystems but to the entire global ecosystem, encompassing the whole gradient of anthropic influences.
The workshop seeks to produce a scientific and philosophical definition of “ecological frontier” that will clarify questions related to policy and conservation strategies compatible with present and future human well-being in these regions. To accomplish this, the participants in the workshop will analyze and synthesize 1) ecological information about Chilean and other temperate frontier ecosystems and their interfaces with human-dominated systems, 2) perspectives from environmental philosophy, and 3) knowledge about the policy process in order to elaborate a conceptual framework that integrates the ecological and ethical dimensions of these ecosystems. The development of this framework will be relevant to both decisions regarding local, regional and global conservation priorities and to our understanding of the challenges and promise of interdisciplinary research.
Specific Charges
To the scientists:
In consultation with philosophers and policy analysts, we will analyze ecological data to develop a scientific characterization, or definition, of frontier ecosystems. We will also establish priorities for ecological conservation and resource management, which we will incorporate a taxonomy of scientific and human values in order to establish policy recommendations.
To the philosophers:
In consultation with scientists and policy analysts, we will develop an ethical and philosophical assessment of questions related to frontier ecosystems. Such an assessment includes an account of epistemological, ethical, metaphysical, and aesthetic values related to the management of frontier ecosystems. Far from seeking to prescribe values, this approach seeks to promote a societal dialogue.
To the Policy Analysts:
In consultation with scientists and philosophers, we will provide a conceptual framework for understanding the needs of decision makers and how scientific and humanistic information and perspectives can advance the decision making process.
Workshop Outcomes
- Develop a collaborative future research agenda (leading to future grants and articles) for an international group of scientists, philosophers, and policy analysts to critically examine conservation, land use, and values of frontier ecosystems in one of the 37 most pristine, and remote areas remaining in the world.
- Foster stronger institutional linkages between in Chilean and US institutions for addressing interdisciplinary questions encompassing environmental sciences, ethics and values.
- Publish a special issue of Environmental Ethics (already arranged) and a multi-authored article in a broad impact journal such as BioScience.
For more information, please contact Ricardo Rozzi.
