Ch 3, Rolston's CNV
Ecosystem Integrity and Health Values

Concepts analyzed and evaluated: ecosystem integrity, health, naturalness, stability, community, sustainability, restoration,

Leopold: "A thing is right if it promotes the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community; it is wrong when it tends otherwise."
Some of the nation's laws refer to protecting, restoring, sustaining ecosystem health and integrity

INTEGRITY AND HEALTH

These concepts have their home applied to organisms (and humans); bit strange to apply them to ecosystems or to human systems (communities)

Are combined fact/value words
Are vague and slippery, but many important value concepts are like that (e.g., freedom, justice, democracy, rights)

(Ecosystem) Integrity (upholding its own character)

In humans, person who has integrity sticks to his/her values, upholds his character (un-corruptible)
Original, native character (unlike health)
Not fake or false (plastic trees/birds)
Complete, wholeness: e.g, has all the original species
Spontaneously self-organizing (like an organism); e.g., the way a rainforest produces own weather/climate
Independence, autonomous (not dependent on us humans), naturalness (see below)
Integrated: tight causal connections that coordinate/blend into a unified whole
ES integrity can be compromised by humans (typically) but also by natural disasters: Volcano (Mt. St. Helens) can destroy the integrity of a forest ecosystem
Ecosystem integrity can reconstitute itself after being lost (naturally) or being destroyed by humans

It can also be restored by humans

(Ecosystem) Health ( Proper functioning of ecosystem)

"Culturally modified biological integrity"
Genetic potentials of component species realized (e.g., cedars not stunted by salt spray)
Resilient (can bounce back after upset; has capacity for self-renewal and self-repair) and resistant to upset (e.g., clear-cut hillside not resilient or resistant to stress of too much rain)

Health and stability closely related (as resilience and resistance part of stability)

Not unhealthy/diseased: E.g., loss of nutrients (nitrogen), diseased organisms, smaller life forms

Distinction between Health and Integrity

Having originality and native species and processes is necessary for ES integrity, but not ES health

E.g., person missing a finger or with artificial limb is healthy, but bodily integrity marred
E.g., An ecosystem missing a redundant species can be healthy, but it has less integrity
A river ecosystem with a dam regulating the water flow can be healthy, but lacks its original integrity (naturalness)

Pristine integrity does not allow for significant human involvement, whereas health does
- Though he does say that a health ecosystem won't require a lot of "doctoring"
Exotics & fakes undermine integrity but might not health:

Snow leopards in Yellowstone may play the exact same functional roles as wolves, so not undermine health, but definitely do integrity

Can improve on natural ecosystem health, but not on pristine natural ecosystem integrity?
Improving Health
- E.g., get rid of a disease in a forest, or add nutrients
- Salvage logging controversy: Does it improve ecosystem health?
Can protect ecosystem integrity (e.g., from an asteroid) or restore it once degraded (though not improve it from its natural state)
Does integrity include ecosystem health?

A culturally modified biological integrity (health?) can be facilitated by humans

E.g., South Platt River Cottonwood example on p. 87-88
E.g., Agricultural integrity (p. 72) (that urban sprawl would destroy)
Not pristine integrity, but integrity of a sort with human involvement

E.g., rural landscape

NATURALNESS (p. 72) (Degree of human involvement in ecosystems)

No pure/pristine naturalness left on earth

E.g., DDT in penguins South Pole

Nor is the earth totally artificial; unnatural (a totally managed planet)
Ecosystems more or less natural to the extent their functioning depends on human participation (e.g., Dam-regulated river, Monoculture farm fields, cows)

What would happen w/o humans involvement?

Collapse? Return to some previous integrity? If the latter, more naturalness remains

How long has it been since historical genesis interrupted by humans?
- Longer time, more naturalness ("washout of humanization")
Naturalness can return (and humans can even help it do so!)

Not futile to maintain relatively pristine natural areas

Some argue that it is for all nature left is used, managed nature
Goal should be to manage them in way can function in relative independence of humanity
E.g., management use of fire: Human involvement that allows native species and ecosystem to continue
- Is this managing for naturalness or biodiversity?

STABILITY (AND HISTORICAL CHANGE)
Is there stability in nature?
Opinions vary:

Environmentalists often talk about the "balance of nature": Nature as stable, at least until humans come along and disrupt this balance

But they also talk about "delicate" and "fragile" ecosystems, which doesn't fit all that well with balance of nature/stability idea

Recently, many ecologists are claiming disturbance/perturbation/flux is key to many ecosystems

Rolston's view:

Yes, there is stability in many (not all) dimensions and scales of nature, but it goes along with historical change over time.
Not sheer randomness (chance) in nature

Nature's stability is dynamic stability
Stable does not mean no change

All ecosystems change and yet are stable in a variety of ways
Animal bodies are constantly changing their cells but are stable
Protecting the stability of ecosystems, doesn't mean preventing them from changing

Critique of the manage to 1492 idea of conservation: Footnote, p. 77

This would mean trying to stop evolution!
Better goal let evolution continue, let natural process flourish on their own

Dimensions of stability

Constancy (on some dimensions and scales), persistent, resistant, elastic (resilient), cyclical stability (wolf/moose stability), succession

How ecosystems develop mechanisms for stability (against disturbance)

Ecosystems have cognitive/information gathering systems with a type of memory
They can develop coping systems in response to disturbances over time (though their species genetic "memories")

E.g. Live oaks with thick trunks that hug ground on barrier island are a result of hurricanes: Forest do better later after species adapt.
Fire adapted species (lodgepole pine cones)

But for some disturbances, ecosystems aren't able to adapt: Storms of 500 year intervals; freak 175 mile windstorm

Such occurrences, though natural, are not good for the integrity and health of the ecosystems (which have no coping mechanisms to adapt to them).

Rule #8: Respect systemic historical change, more than episodic, contingent change (p. 98-99)

I.e., Don't respect all of nature equally

Some events and disturbances in nature are instances of systemic historical change and are more essential to what natural systems are; integral or part of them (fire in a forest of lodgepole pine)
- Ecosystems have built-in mechanisms to respond and adapt to them
- These disturbances contribute to ecosystem integrity and health
Other events in nature are more contingent, episodic, flukey, not part of system and external to it
- Ecosystems can't adapt to, e.g., 500 year windstorms, asteroids, volcanic eruptions
Naturalness would have us value them
Ecosystem integrity and health would have us not value them

COMMUNITY

Are there biotic communities and do we have obligations to them?
Rolston: Yes, though the connections within biotic communities are looser than in organisms, there is enough of the right sort of connections for us to view ecosystems as communities (and ones we should value)
Rejects idea ES too much of a jumble to be called a community
Rejects idea that only individuals in ecosystems are real and not the communities themselves

Rolston is a holist (non-individuals, systems are real and valuable), not individualist (only individual organisms are real and valuable)

Ecosystems are real because they shape the behavior of species in them

Thus exert downward causation and anything that does this is real
Rabbits get quicker, deer become more alert because of

Rejects ideas that

Only human communities generate obligations
All obligation must be reciprocal (only have obligations to those who have it to you)

Obligations to ecological communities based on their great value

Quotes questioning concept of "biotic community" and integrity

Looking at the fossil record of the last 50,000 years, David Jablonski says, "The most important message . . . is that ecological communities do not respond as units to environmental change. . . . Species are highly individualistic in their behavior, so that few, if any, modern terrestrial communities existed in their present form 10,000 years ago." See Jablonski's "Extinction: A Paleontological Perspective," Science 253 (1991): 756.
In a similar vein, Michael Soule suggests that historical "studies are undermining typological concepts of community composition, structure, dynamics, and organization by showing that existing species once constituted quite different groupings or 'communities'." See Soule's, "The Onslaught of Alien Species, and Other Challenges in the Coming Decades
"Certainly the idea that species live in integrated communities is a myth. So-called biotic communities, as misleading term, are constantly changing in membership. The species occurring in any particular place are rarely convivial neighbors; their coexistence in certain places is better explained by individual physiological tolerances. Though in some cases the finer details of spatial distribution may be influenced by positive interspecies interactions, the much more common kinds of interactions are competition, predation, parasitism, and disease. Most interactions between individuals and species are selfish not symbiotic. Current ecological thinking argues that nature at the level of local biotic assemblages has never been homeostatic, The principle of balance has been replaced with the principle of graduation-a continuum of degrees of ... disturbance." Michael Soule "Social Siege"
"J. Baird Callicott points out that, like biotic communities, human communities are neither stable, nor typological, that is, they change over time and do not come and go as units. Human communities are also composed of individualistic, self-promoting, and competitive individuals. Callicott concludes that biotic communities are no less integrated and no harder to demarcate than are human communities, and thus that if human communities are sufficiently coherent to generate obligations to them, then so are biotic communities. One problem with this argument is that human communities are held together by shared purpose and meaning. That people see themselves as part of a human community is essential to its unity. Self-seeking individualism, predatory competition, and parasitism, unchecked by community spirit and identity, tear apart human communities. Sprawl development characterized by vacant strip malls, big-box stores adjacent to diseased local merchants, and aggressive automobile traffic hardly constitutes a community that generates preservationist obligations. Callicott's analogy ignores that the shared purpose and meaning that bind together changing, self-seeking individuals into human communities are lacking in biotic communities." Hettinger/Throop

SUSTAINABILITY

One definition (Brundtland Commission's): "Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs"
Rolston's critique:
Because "sustainability" is regularly coupled with "development" it's often a code world for continued growth
Above definition is anthropocentric: no concern for nonhumans, ignores problem of human population growth, and is hell bent on meeting escalating human needs above all else
Critique of growth: not all growth is good

Good to individuals to develop and experience growth in their knowledge, character, personal relationships
Good for societies to develop more justly, become better educated and gain more scientific knowledge
But: Physical growth for most animals a juvenile phase (adults cease to grow taller, shouldn't get fatter); healthy population in ecosystems are stable not continually growing
Bad to find a cancer growing
Is it good for incomes, business profit, consumption to keep on growing? Ever a time where we need to say " enough?"

Rolston criticizes (Engel's) nonanthropocentric definition of sustainable development as development that benefits the entire community (human and nonhuman) for it fails to see that human interests and nonhuman interests necessarily conflict.
- Can't simultaneously fulfil the human community while fulfilling the whole biotic community
- Iowa example: When Iowa plowed to plant corn, grasslands don't reach historical fulfillment:
  - Bison scatter, fewer bobolinks
  - Sacrificed so Europeans can build their culture on American continent
  - No sustainable development of Iowa agriculture that leaves the natural history unblemished
  - (But Iowa gone too far, no national parks, grasslands, forests, wilderness in the state and bison existing and wetlands destroyed
The sad truth: Legitimate human demands for culture can't be satisfied without the sacrifice of nature
Human society in both developed and developing world is nowhere close to being sustainable
- Pre-Columbus humans lived sustainable on landscape of North America for some 10-20,000 years;
- The 500 years of European rebuilding of the landscape can't continue for another 500 years without tragic loss of natural values that will harm humans as well as nature.

No more sacrifice of nature for culture (absolute or general claim?)

Mix of natural and cultural values ought not to be further skewed
Further expansion of culture at the price of nature will be counterproductive, even for culture (87)
Preserve natural values for own sake, but doing so will also enrich a culture that is impoverished of natural value