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This book examines the role of ethics and philosophy in biodiversity conservation.
The objective of Ethics in Biodiversity Conservation is two-fold: on the one hand it offers a detailed and systematic account of central normative concepts often used, but rarely explicated nor justified, within conservation biology. Such concepts include 'values' (both intrinsic, instrumental, and, more recently, relational), 'rights', and 'duties'. The second objective is to emphasize to environmental philosophers and applied ethicists the many interesting decision-making challenges of biodiversity conservation. The book argues that a nuanced account of instrumental values provides a powerful tool for reasoning about the values of biodiversity. It also scrutinizes relational values, the concept of rights of nature, and risk, and show how moral philosophy proves indispensable for these concepts. Consequently, it engages with recent suggestions on normative aspects of biodiversity conservation, and show the need for moral philosophy in biodiversity conservation. The overriding aim of this book is to provide conservation biologists and policy-makers with a systematic overview of concepts and assessments of the reasons for reaching prescriptive conclusions about biodiversity conservation. This will prove instrumental in clarifying the role of applied ethics and a refined understanding of the tools it can provide.
Ethics in Biodiversity Conservation will be of interest to students and scholars of conservation biology, conservation policy, environmental ethics and environmental philosophy.
Part I Introduction and Background
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Background: The normative postulates of conservation biology
Part II Ethics and Biodiversity
Chapter 3. Ethics and the environment: Biodiversity and conservation through the lens of environmental ethics
Chapter 4. Intrinsic and instrumental values, and their relations
Chapter 5. Ethical theories and practical reasoning
Part III Recent Developments: Relations, Rights, and Science
Chapter 6. Recent developments in conservation biology: Ethics through the lens of conservation biology
Chapter 7. Relational values and IPBES Nature’s contribution to people
Chapter 8. Environmental human rights and rights of nature
Chapter 9. Conservation biology, assessments, and the argument from inductive risk
Chapter 10. Concluding thoughts
Patrik Baard is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institution of Global Political Studies, Malmö University, Sweden. He has previously been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Swedish Biodiversity Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Science. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. His research in applied ethics has covered climate change adaptation, sustainable development, biodiversity, and energy justice.
