London
The Idea of Biodiversity by David Takacs, Johns Hopkins
University Press, 拢25, ISBN 0 8018 5400 8
VARIETY, they say, is the spice of life, and has recently become the
watchword of the conservation movement. The word 鈥渂iodiversity鈥� is now almost
compulsory in the title of grant applications and papers submitted to
conservation journals. But what does it mean? And should it be the primarily aim
of all our management efforts in the landscape?
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It is said that we only start to appreciate the value of something when it
disappears, and maybe this explains today鈥檚 fad for biodiversity.
Each of us views nature with different eyes, so it is natural that we have
our own reasons for the value we place on its amazing variety. Our response may
be based on science, but it also contains subjective elements that are
essentially personal. Yes, even scientists have personal feelings, which becomes
clear as you read The Idea of Biodiversity, a collection of interviews
with the world鈥檚 leading conservation biologists. Here they lay their souls bare
and hard science shares the stage with gut feelings.
David Takacs interviews many great names from the New World, including Paul
Ehrlich, Dan Janzen, Gordon Orians, David Pimentel, Peter Raven and Edward
Wilson. But he goes beyond the simple interview by reordering the material from
these discussions under topics, such as the meaning of the term biodiversity,
how it can be measured, and why we place such high value on it today. The
outcome is thought-provoking.
Take definitions, for example. Each interviewee has a different approach.
Hugh Iltis takes the straightforward line, discussing the 鈥渘umber of species鈥� on
the face of the Earth, while to Janzen the variety comprises more than just the
sum of species鈥斺�漷he whole package of genes, populations, species, and the
cluster of interactions that they manifest鈥濃�攐ne of the best definitions of
biodiversity I have come across. G. Carleton Ray adds time as a dimension when
he speaks of biodiversity as 鈥渢he history of biology, the history of life in all
of its forms over the entire time it鈥檚 existed on our planet鈥�.
Definitions aside, why do we value biodiversity? Raven takes the attractive
and easily understood view that biodiversity ultimately holds the key to human
prosperity. It is, he feels, an 鈥渆ssential resource for sustainable
development鈥�. Wilson offers what appears superficially to be a similarly
utilitarian outlook: 鈥淲e really can鈥檛 afford to lose any species; they are a
crucible of future human creative effort.鈥�
But there is more to this than the simple question of potential usefulness in
agriculture, pharmacology, medicine and so on. There is the possibility that our
love for nature (biophilia, in Wilson鈥檚 lexicon) is embedded in our genes and
arose because it confers a selective advantage for survival. A biophiliac is a
fitter person. Here is an engaging concept that provides a Gaia-style feedback
of environmental preservation.
If this is so, is the role of the ecologist to encourage the development of
global biophilia, encouraging the peoples of the world to find out, as Erlich
suggests, 鈥渉ow good it feels to get out in nature鈥� and to 鈥済ive them a sense of
wonder鈥�? Does this approach herald the development of new religions, such as the
Deep Ecology movement, or the resuscitation of those elements of traditional
religions in which the natural world is regarded as an inspiration of worship
for a Creator?
Takacs concludes that whatever else the biodiversity debate has done, it has
brought environmental scientists down from their ivory philosophical
towers, forcing them to abandon the 鈥渕etaphysical notion of an objective,
value-neutral search for knowledge鈥�. This book teaches us a little more of what
it is to be human as well as something of the actual meaning of
biodiversity.