Taking an environmental ethics perspective to understand what we should expect from EIA in terms of biodiversity protection
Introduction
Researchers are clear that global biodiversity loss is already severe, and that significant loss is forecast to continue into the future because of human development (Dirzo and Raven, 2003; Pereira et al., 2010; Cardinale et al., 2012; Hooper et al., 2012; Sandbrook et al., 2019). This makes biodiversity protection associated with new development proposals an imperative. To address the ongoing implications of development, Governments have committed to delivering sustainable development which, as a concept, assumes that biodiversity protection is compatible with development (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1992).
Conservation is defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, 2020) as “the protection, care, management and maintenance of ecosystems, habitats, wildlife species and populations, within or outside of their natural environments, in order to safeguard the natural conditions for their long-term permanence” (International Union for Conservation of Nature, undated, p.18). Given that biodiversity was defined in the Convention on Biological Diversity (United Nations, 1992) as incorporating genetic, species and ecosystem levels of ecological organisation (Pimm et al., 2014), it is clear that references to conservation usually mean the conservation of biodiversity. Approaches exist for measuring biodiversity in line with these different metrics (for example, see Weitzman (1998) for a focus on genetic diversity, Wauchope et al. (2019) for a focus on each of taxa/species, regional protection, and protection by designation, and the European Union's Habitats Directive (Council of the European Communities, 1992) for an ecosystem protection approach). Thus it is possible to evaluate the success of conservation efforts, and this success will exist on a spectrum from extinction of species through to no further loss of genetic diversity, species, or ecosystem services. Whilst biodiversity increase is also possible (and does occur in certain cases), our focus is the extent to which EIA can be expected to stem the tide of global biodiversity loss, and therefore the focus is on the protection element of conservation (by which we mean no further development-created loss of biodiversity) rather than any enhancement.
Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is a decision-support tool that was first established in the USA in 1969, and is now legislated in every country in the world (Morgan, 2012; Yang, 2019). EIA was specifically associated with sustainable development in the Rio Earth Summit (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1992) given that the conservation consequences of development decisions need to be understood by decision-makers before consent can be given.
Yet perceived weaknesses with EIA in protecting biodiversity has led to calls for greater inclusion of approaches within EIA to improve biodiversity outcomes; for example: application of trade-off rules within impact assessment (hereafter referred to as “Gibson's trade-off rules” after Gibson et al., 2005; Gibson, 2006); embedding Ecosystem Services Assessment (ESA) within EIA (e.g., Baker et al., 2013; Geneletti, 2013; Karjalainen et al., 2013; Hansen et al., 2018); and including biodiversity offsetting as a mechanism within EIA (Rundcrantz and Skärbäck, 2003; BBOP, 2009; de Witt et al., 2019).
But EIA is not a decision-making tool, and its influence on decisions is known to be context dependent (Kolhoff et al., 2009). Therefore the understanding, and political interpretation, of sustainable development in any jurisdiction (or the relationship between development and conservation where sustainable development is not an explicit policy goal) is an important determinant of the effectiveness of its practice (Lyhne et al., 2017).
The extent to which biodiversity should be protected is a value-laden question that relies on moral views on the intrinsic value of biodiversity. As such it requires ethical reasoning to determine intrinsic value (Van Dyke and Lamb, 2020). Given that degrees of protection are ethical considerations, in this paper we map degrees of biodiversity protection against different ethical positions. This then provides a framework for considering the ethical boundaries which constrain the practice of EIA, and therefore explain the level of support provided to different biodiversity outcomes.
Therefore, the aims of this paper are:
- 1.
to explore what biodiversity protection means from different environmental ethics perspectives;
- 2.
to conceptualise sustainable development from an environmental ethics perspective; and
- 3.
to identify the limits of biodiversity protection that EIA can be expected to underpin in a political context where sustainable development is the goal.
To meet these aims, the paper is structured as follows. The next section briefly introduces sustainable development discourses. Section 3 introduces environmental ethics and conceptualises the level of biodiversity protection afforded at points along that spectrum. Section 4 conceptualises the relationship between two discourses on sustainable development and environmental ethics, and shows where EIA (with and without associated approaches) fits into this picture. The final section discusses the implications of the findings, and concludes on the understanding that has been developed about the degree of biodiversity protection that EIA can support, and what the implication would be of changing EIA to better protect biodiversity.
Section snippets
Sustainable development discourses
Sustainable development means different things to different people depending on world-views held (Bell and Morse, 2008; Bond et al., 2010; Bond and Morrison-Saunders, 2011), leading to different framings, which are termed discourses. Bond and Morrison-Saunders (2009) highlighted some of the sustainable development discourses (defined “as an ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categories through which meaning is given to phenomena” (Hajer, 1993, p.45)) that are relevant to a decision-making context
A spectrum of environmental ethics
We define ethics as standards or social norms that guide human conduct after Chirikure (2014) in decision-making associated with EIA. Verhoog (1992) explores environmental ethics by considering the intrinsic value humans place on different species. A key consideration here is the notion of sentience. A sentient species is one “capable of experiencing positive and negative affective states” (Duncan, 2006, p.11); which in more simple terms means they can experience, for example, hunger, fear,
Conceptualisation: mapping sustainable development discourses and EIA onto environmental ethics
If we return to the economic and ecological discourses of sustainable development, it is clear that both shallow ecology and weak sustainability are anthropocentric concepts. Value attributed to species in either case is viewed in the context of the utilitarian value that is afforded to humans by the existence of that species (in that location). Arguably, in some cases, zoocentric ethics could come into play based on the greater affinity felt by human beings for sentient animals. Nevertheless,
Discussion and conclusions: What does environmental ethics tell us about the ability of EIA to assist in the protection of biodiversity?
Our stated aims were:
- 1.
to explore what biodiversity protection means from different environmental ethics perspectives;
- 2.
to conceptualise sustainable development from an environmental ethics perspective; and
- 3.
to identify the limits of biodiversity protection that EIA can be expected to underpin in a political context where sustainable development is the goal.
The level of biodiversity protection has been shown to increase along the environmental ethics spectrum from anthropocentrism through to
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:
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