I Questions
The Value of Phylogenetic Diversity
Christopher Lean and James Maclaurin
Abstract This chapter explores the idea that phylogenetic diversity plays a unique role in underpinning conservation endeavour. The conservation of biodiversity is suffering from a rapid, unguided proliferation of metrics. Confusion is caused by the wide variety of contexts in which we make use of the idea of biodiversity. Characterisations of biodiversity range from all-variety-at-all-levels down to variety with respect to single variables relevant to very specific conservation contexts. Accepting biodiversity as the sum of a large number of individual measures results in an empirically intractable framework. However, large-scale decisions cannot be based on biodiversity variables inferred from local conservation imperatives because the variables relevant to the many systems being compared would be incommensurate with one another. We therefore need some general conception of biodiversity that would make tractable such large-scale environmental decision-marking. We categorise the large array of strategies for the measurement of biodiversity into four broad groups for consideration as general measures of biodiversity. We compare common moral justifications for the conservation of biodiversity and conclude that some form of instrumental value is the most plausible justification for biodiversity conservation. Although this is often interpreted as a reliance on option value, we opt for a broadly consequentialist characterisation of biodiversity conservation. We conclude that the best justified general measure of biodiversity will be some form of phylogenetic diversity.
Keywords Biodiversity • Measurement • Surrogacy • Consequentialism • Justification
Introduction
It is not surprising that there is a bewildering array of tools available to those who would measure biodiversity. There are of course countless respects in which organisms and ecosystems vary. More importantly, there are many types of scientific projects which exploit different aspects of biodiversity. In What is biodiversity? (2008) Maclaurin and Sterelny argue that, although it began as an idea primarily of interest to conservation biologists, there are now many areas of the life sciences in which biodiversity plays an ontological, explanatory or predictive role.
Moreover, within conservation biology the role of biodiversity has become complex. When biodiversity was first envisaged in the 1980s it was intended as a new organising principle for conservation. In many respects it was to be a replacement for the old idea that conservation was fundamentally about preserving species and the even older idea that it is essentially about preserving wilderness (Nash 1990). But alongside this idea of biodiversity as an overarching goal of conservation, our new understanding of the effects of diversity on ecology, genetics, and morphology allows us to harness particular aspects of biodiversity to achieve specific conservation goals. So now biodiversity takes its place both as a goal for policymakers and as a tool for conservation biologists. In both contexts, biodiversity is difficult to measure. For this reason, much of the growth in biodiversity metrics has been in the development of new and more effective biodiversity surrogates.
In this complex theoretical and methodological landscape, is phylogenetic diversity just one more tool to be used as and when appropriate? In this chapter, we focus on conservation biology and argue that phylogenetic diversity plays a unique role in underpinning conservation endeavour.
In the first section we argue that the conservation of biodiversity is suffering from a rapid, unguided proliferation of metrics. These various measures will be categorized by what they aim to pick out and preserve. We then scrutinise the justification for various types of measures as fundamental principles underpinning large-scale conservation (we explain why 'large-scale in the next section) and argue that this role is best performed by phylogenetic diversity.
