Theories of Biodiversity Value

The discussion of the calculus of biodiversity values in Chap. 5 is the final requisite prop for the stage across which this chapter parades accounts of how biodiversity is supposed to be valuable. The selection of these accounts is generous and represents a great majority of discussions on this topic, though it is not all-inclusive. It does include, among other theories, the theory that biodiversity is valuable for “unspecified moral reasons” (Sect. 6.1), that it is valuable as a resource (Sect. 6.2), as a service provider (Sect. 6.3), as a sustainer of human life (Sect. 6.4), as a key to human health, both as pharmacopoeia and as an inoculation against infection (Sect. 6.5), as the progenitor of human biophilic tendencies (Sect. 6.6), as a generator of (more) value (Sect. 6.7), as font of knowledge (Sect. 6.8), as having option (and quasi-option) value (Sect. 6.9), as transformative (Sect. 6.10), as having experiential value (Sect. 6.11), and as an expression of the natural order (Sect. 6.12). The chapter concludes (Sect. 6.13) with some proposals that are not customarily offered as self-contained theories of biodiversity value, but that are often suggested as still heavily influencing evaluation. These include what conservation biologists call “viability” and “endangerment” as well as conservation “efficiency”. Section 6.13 concludes with an extended discussion of the significance for biodiversity’s value of the history of human impingements on the natural world.