Shahab Sabahi
Energy and Environment for Development – Policy Analysis Research Group
Aljazeera news held a panel to discuss a controversial proposition:
“Is it time to consider shifting efforts away from saving some of the world's most famous species?”
The program claims that in a recent survey of nearly six hundred scientists involved in wildlife protection, sixty percent agreed with the idea of shifting efforts away from species that are too difficult or too costly to preserve in the wild.
If this proposition is converted into a policy, it would have both moral and environmental implications. Unsurprisingly opposition rejects the proposition and argues that it is absolutely immoral to make the species survival value judgment basing on the business fundamentals and prefer one species at the expense of another. Inevitably, this view is a perfect and rich-virtue attitude.
From idealistic viewpoint, the best policy is the one that addresses the needs of all or at least majority. However realistic perspective underscores few shortcomings in the counter proposition which may raise a couple of questions such as “how can one make value judgment out of the business fundamentals when the species protection needs resources and resource allocation and would be costly?”
Imagine a situation, having scarce financial resources, morality and environmental conscience level high, many people suffer hungers, famines, and water diseases, climate change and environmental degradation threaten, and extinction of some species imminent and no one wishes to forgo its basic rights and needs, so
where should funds be invested? How should policymakers set priorities? In the real world, is it feasible to adopt and design a collective policy to favor the protection of all species while people are desperately in need?
Perhaps priority setting and value judgments are the most subjective and controversial areas of study in the realm of policy analysis and policy making process. Both significantly influence the implications of policies. Despite this consciousness and the acknowledgment that the international community lacks a universal source for value judgment where international public goods matters, a little, for profoundly understanding them, has been conducted by research community. They deserve more research contributions.
Interesting text, well written, some how well argumentative but somehow short of being well supported by use of refutable evidences.
ReplyDeleteFirst, your claim that " sixty percent agreed with the idea of shifting efforts away from species that are too difficult or too costly to preserve in the wild" is debatable. Aljazeera is not a source of scientific opinion: it is a news broadcast television media biased by the need to maintain/increase its audience in order to survive. Thus, it is not built with regards to scientific methodology, but rather merely built under a marketable logic.
Second, even if it was true - and many may doubt it - that "sixty percent [of scientists "worldwide"!] agreed with the idea of shifting efforts away from species that are too difficult or too costly to preserve in the wild", such a statement does not implies a preference for "business fundamentals". It is your subjective interpretation that is implying this.
The reality is that there is "ethical" questions that must be responded by the international community dealing with people of all "faiths and many different morals guided by those faiths", but whose right to a dignifying life and the respect for this right is surveyed/observed by law by the global governance, and included in many Constitutions and, as according to the wishes of the vast majority of nations worldwide.
The right to a dignified life means many things, one of which is the "right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services [...]" (The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 25)
The question is that many of these "basics" are intrinsically dependent on the health of ecosystems all over the world. An example: medical care is dependent on pharmaceuticals, many of which are dependent on species that are already under the threat of extinction, or that may never be developed - like the cure of cancer - if the species's genetic pool of are already extinct. How would you, or any of those 60% of scientist, justify the impossibility of reaching the cure for a devastating disease because "species [needed for the cure] were too difficult or too costly to preserve in the wild".
Finally,
Which "ethical" standard are you, and these 60% scientists, responding to?
Greetings
The post intends to bring forward, by means of an example, a controversial and unanswered question in the realm of policy design which is "Priority setting". The issue becomes much more complex when the policy is supposed to work in the global scale and context.
ReplyDeleteInevitably, Aljazeera news must not be referred as it is not a body of knowledge. However in its panel discussion, the academics who took part, referred their figures to robust sources
Let me get back to the central concern of the post "Priority Setting". I do believe the ethic and morality are pilars to so-called "value judgments". Value judgments have implicitly and explicitly been included in the body of law. However value judgments differ from place to place and they are subject to "SPACE" and "TIME".
There is no doubt that the international law composes of a series of rules which are globaly conceded and are to guarantee the protection of merits, vrtues and the basic rights of human beings and their ecosystem and etc.
But the global governance(who ought to be an effective institution to enforce the international law) fails WHERE it should adopt priority setting for an environmental policy by deploying value judgments WHILE it faces the limited financial resources (reality)
How should one make a judment and evaluate the situation in which a few species could be spared as the financial resources fall short to save all? How should one fit "Value Judgments" in this decision-making situation? The panel discussion offers the cost-benefit judgment. Is there any alternative to replace it?
Do we need to re-think the existing global governance structure and the way it applies "value judgments"? Despite of my desire, it seems that, for the time being at least, cost-benefit judgment is the sole mean.