How to negotiate trade-offs

ONGOING global growth of the human population and its intensifying demands for space, food, water and other natural resources is driving the loss of habitat for native biodiversity, threatening increasing numbers of species with extinction. Conservationists are fighting a rearguard action.

In this column recently, Mike Dickison raised the topic of conservation triage, the process of prioritising which threatened species should receive concerted conservation action and which should be abandoned. This debate is part of a larger one about the nature and direction of conservation itself.

When the term "conservation biology" first gained currency three decades ago, it was built around a number of precepts.

First, many species in communities have co-evolved. Consequently, the loss of keystone species could trigger cascades of further losses. For example, the loss of pollinators would threaten the viability of those plants that they pollinate.

Second, most ecological processes have thresholds or tipping points that, when passed, cause them to function unpredictably. Recovery from such dysfunctional states is difficult.

Third, small populations face genetic and demographic risks: genetic variation is lost and survival becomes a matter of chance.

Fourth, large, linked conservation areas are inherently better than small, isolated ones when it comes to conserving big-bodied, low-density species such as predators.

These principles are backed by some normative ones: species diversity and ecological complexity, underpinned by evolution, are good; biodiversity at all levels has intrinsic value, beyond any instrumental ones.

The often patchy success and frequent failure of conservation to sustain both widespread public support and the funding needed to properly protect habitats and species is causing some to question the generality and utility of these postulates. While still embracing the goal of protecting nature and maintaining those components and processes essential to its functioning, these conservationist scientists argue for greater realism about the challenges ahead, given especially the massive modifications that humans have wrought on every ecosystem globally, and the realities of climate change.

While accepting that nature reserves are necessary to protect species that would otherwise be displaced by people in some way, they argue that protected areas alone are insufficient. We need to move beyond focusing on "fence and defend".

More attention needs to be given to emphasising the benefits to human health and well-being of having functioning ecosystems, including how best to shape the novel ones inadvertently being created by human land use and introduced species. This means focusing more on the delivery of ecosystem services, those outputs from ecosystems that benefit people directly - food, water, fibre and shelter - and indirectly, including cultural, spiritual and aesthetic benefits. It also means protecting those components and processes that support and regulate these outputs.

Without this connection, and given increasing urbanisation and growing isolation from wild nature, public support for conservation will weaken. Such support is needed if society is to continue committing the resources needed for conservation.

The divide between big business and conservation also needs to be bridged. Conservationists have to discuss how resource extraction and use can proceed with minimal impacts on ecosystem services, and how any residual impacts can be offset. Obdurate opposition, unless supported by the wider public, will likely mean that development goes ahead regardless.

We must recognise the reality of conflicting values, attitudes, objectives and priorities. If "win-win" solutions are not possible, then "win more-lose less" outcomes, involving trade-offs and compromises, will have to be negotiated.

Some view this as selling out to big business. But most resources for conservation come ultimately from businesses and those that they employ, either through taxes or through sponsorship and grants. More needs to be done to welcome them as potentially positive forces for conservation.

- Peter Frost is a local environmental scientist with concerns about the sustainability of current conservation initiatives.