Sentience, Harmony and the Value of Nature

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Many people are concerned both about harms to nature and about the suffering of animals. These two concerns are closely related, even if the the links are not aways fully recognised, for example, within UN frameworks. Animals’ feelings are part of nature and part of what makes nature valuable, diverse and healthy. They also represent how animals evalute nature themselves. They can be recognised and assessed to improve our scientific assessment of environmental impacts, decisions and policies, in ways that go beyond human financial interests and to motivate greater collaboration and transformative action to protect nature. ABSTRACT: Concern for nature and for animal sentience are important public and political moral concerns. Using frameworks such as Harmony for Nature and One Health and the recent IPBES report on the Diverse Values of Nature, this paper considers how the two issues interrelate, in terms of our concepts of sentience and nature, and sentience-based values’ importance in relation to nature-based values. Animals’ sentience is part of nature, and part of its diversity, harmony, health and value. Sentient animals’ feelings represent animals’ evaluations of nature that go beyond valuing nature for solely for market-based and anthropocentric interests. Sentience is therefore relevant for measurement, leveraging and embedding sentience-based values in environmental concerns, including in environmental impact assessments, science-based UN policy-making, interdisciplinary and interagency collaboration, and to strengthen transformative and system-based action for nature.