Quaderni Communication, technologies, pouvoir

76 | Automne 2011 Les promesses de la biodiversité

The rise of the idea of : crises, responses and expertise

Libby Robin

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/quaderni/92 DOI: 10.4000/quaderni.92 ISSN: 2105-2956

Publisher Les éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’Homme

Printed version Date of publication: 1 September 2011 Number of pages: 25-37

Electronic reference Libby Robin, « The rise of the idea of biodiversity: crises, responses and expertise », Quaderni [Online], 76 | Automne 2011, Online since 01 September 2014, connection on 30 April 2019. URL : http:// journals.openedition.org/quaderni/92 ; DOI : 10.4000/quaderni.92

Tous droits réservés D o s s i e r

the rise of Background Biodiversity is a fundamental concept in global the idea of environmental management today. It is usually regarded as an ecological idea, but it is also a political idea and a tool for managing non-hu- biodiversity : man nature. A series of historical crises have reshaped the way the western world considers, deines and manages biodiversity. This paper crises, responses uses the methods of cultural history to analyse the emergence of biodiversity as a driver and and expertise shaper of policies and international conservation conventions, particularly where the conventions are responding to alarm or .

‘Biodiversity’ here includes diversity, ge- netic diversity and diversity, as deined by the peak expert group, the International Union Libby for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (Farnham 2007: 2). The IUCN, originally founded in 1948, Robin claims to be the world’s irst ‘global environmen- tal organization’. Its international headquarters Australian National University, are in Gland, Switzerland. Sponsored by the Canberra / Royal Institute of Technology United Nations, IUCN now describes itself as (KTH), Stockholm a democratic network that connects over 1,000 government and non-government organisations (IUCN 2011). It is a major authority on biodiver- sity. ‘ (the number of species in a given area) represents a single but important metric that is valuable as the common currency of the diversity of life’, its website states, but it also considers genetic diversity and ecosystem diversity as part of its brief.

The central argument of this paper is that a crisis itself frames its own solution. Responding to a crisis depends on the understanding of the under- lying problem. This understanding also identiies

QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY .25 appropriate ‘expert’ problem-solvers. Thus it is 1973). Ecosystem health and biodiversity are helpful to consider the historical construction of therefore seen to be mutually supportive. environmental crisis in parallel with the develop- ment of scientiic ideas about biodiversity, and the Biodiversity is a framework for understanding role the concept of biodiversity might play in any both ‘the phenomenon of life’ and the impact solution to the environmental crisis. It is also use- the activities of humans put on it. While the ful follow the history of the particular expertise term biodiversity carries a veneer of scientiic that is called on for speciic crises in different eras. independence, its emergence as a ‘buzzword’ in the 1980s was because of its usefulness in Biological diversity is a construct of the discipline environmental activist circles: it became more of biology, usually ecology, genetics or evolu- than a mere measure of nature: it became a moral tionary biology. A response to environmental entreaty to respond to the ‘environmental crisis’ crisis, however, is not necessarily scientiic. It that was understood and deined in terms of loss is just as likely to be political, or provided by a of natural variety. (Farnham 2007). management or policy framework. Thus biodi- versity may be simultaneously both a scientiic The idea of biological diversity could be seen to and a social tool, and a key concept for science, the earliest ideas about ordering and classifying management and governance. Any drive to plan nature, if not Aristotelian world views, then at an environmental future (or to ‘solve’ the crisis) least back to the 18th century Swedish natural draws on basic science, but it also depends on philosopher, Carl von Linné, whose Systema practical action and ways to measure response natura (1753, 1758) still shapes the binomial to, or outcomes from, that action. classiications system used to name plants and animals throughout the world. The European Biodiversity as the Measure of Environmental vision of enlightenment science provided the Crisis dominant narrative for nomenclature, for naming and differentiating the species we count when we Biodiversity is more than a ‘new name for nature’ talk about ‘biodiversity’. (Farnham 2007:2). It provides a way to measure change in nature, human-induced and otherwise. The next major step was to make biological diver- Biologists quantify species, measure genetic va- sity urgent, rather than merely descriptive. A new riation and consider the pressures on the health sub-discipline, conservation biology, emerged in of whole . The goal of conservation is the 1980s, which founder Michael Soulé (1985) a healthy ecosystem. How this may be achieved dubbed a ‘science of crisis’. In this moment of demands a variety of specialist expertise and a crisis, the media-friendly term ‘biodiversity’ good measure of political will. Managers and emerged. Thomas Lovejoy and Edward O. Wil- scientists agree that more biologically diverse son have both been claimed as the originator of systems are more complex and therefore better the term biodiversity (Farnham 2007; Wilson able to withstand shock and change (Holling 1992): it was a word of the 1980s environmen-

26. THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 tal crisis. Biological diversity had been used as is some basis for David Takacs’s strong assertion a political concept before: for example, it was that biodiversity became a ‘tool for a zealous de- used in parliament in defence of wild country fense of a particular social construction of nature’ in the Little Desert, in Australia in 1969. (Robin in the 1980s. This term was undoubtedly a claim 1998). But biodiversity had a grand ‘international for power by conservation biologists (Takacs moment’ when the ecological crisis met politics 1996: 1-2). But if we are to understand the full in the United States, and its applications became international implications, and to get beyond increasingly global, with funding from national the narrowly North American frame adopted governments, international lobby groups and by Farnham, Takacs and the self-proclaimed non-government organisations. biodiversity experts themselves, it is helpful to historicise and internationalise the nature of the The environmental crisis about threatened species environmental crisis itself and step outside the and their brought policy and ecology white hot politics of the 1980s. While there is a together. The future of the biota depended on dominant narrative that argues that biodiversity politics and people, ecologists realised: they were emerged in the 1980s with ‘the’ environmental no longer documenting species in the wild, but crisis, there are clearly earlier environmental rather performing triage under emergency condi- crises, where ideas of biological diversity also tions and bigger scales than ever before. The crisis played a part. These offer perspective on how that Soulé (1985) identiied demanded concerted the 1980s ‘moment’ emerged, and allow us to action on more than just local and regional scales: move on from it and consider where the idea of this was emergency management for the planet. biodiversity has travelled since.

Farnham documented the rise of the term ‘biolo- Environmental crises and ecology for mana- gical diversity’ in the Institute for Scientiic Infor- gement mation database. It hardly appeared at all in the early 1980s. There were, he noted, zero references There were a series of environmental crises in the to biodiversity in 1980 and 1981 and just 7 in western world that shaped the relations between 1982, but by the there were thousands ecological science, natural resource management – over 4,000 references in 2004 (Farnham 2007: and in the half-century 1-3). The database is grounded in only North between the 1930s and the 1980s. Here, I consider American data and it only counts ‘scientiic infor- just three of these, in roughly chronological order: mation’, but Farnham’s analysis relects the rapid desertiication, the national parks movement and rise in international currency of the term biodiver- environmental health. sity (or biological diversity) in just three decades. The crisis of desertiication When ‘experts’ like Wilson coin the term bio- diversity, and then the term shapes deines the The dramatic dust storms of the American mid- understanding of ‘the environmental crisis’, there west in 1935 darkened the skies of New York and

QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY .27 signalled the devastation of agricultural crops. of ‘sand drift’ that year. He concluded that pasto- Ecologist, Paul Sears’ Deserts on the March ral development needed to be more attuned with was written during these storms, all about the the limits of the arid country (Ratcliffe 1949). Soil limits of the land and his science. ‘We have been conservation authorities were established soon deceived by the glib statement that science has after these storms in New South Wales (1938) given man control over nature… We do not and and Victoria (1940). Ratcliffe, like Sears, had a cannot manipulate nature from the outside. We wider readership than just scientists. His popular must work our will by knowing laws and confor- book Flying Fox and Drifting Sand relected on ming to them, never forgetting that we are a part the limits of both his science and the outback of that upon which we work.’(Sears 1949: 167). regions of Australia for the pastoral enterprise. The establishment of the US Soil Conservation Such limits of the land were most keenly felt in Service in 1935 was emblematic of crisis-framed post-industrial settlements, where agricultural management thinking in this period (Wilkening and industrial revolutions were simultaneous 2011). as in Australia and the mid-west United States. Sears commented that ‘mechanical invention Desertiication is the crisis that drives a ‘land plus exuberant vitality have accomplished the ethic’, promoted by Sears (1949) and more pro- conquest of a continent with unparalleled speed’, minently by Aldo Leopold (1949). In the later but the cost of breaking nature’s rules is too high edition of Deserts on the March, Sears went (Sears 1949: 10). beyond soil conservation. He called for an in- tegration of conservation and natural resources: In 1951, the United Nations launched an inter- rather than pressing ‘for a solution of an indivi- national program in Arid Zone Research (Robin dual problem’. He also considered the ‘common 2007: 112-13). It aimed to halt ‘desertiication’, pattern of relationships’ between renewable na- advocating science to restore ecological health to tural resources argued for conserving the whole, lands needed for food and ibre, particularly in including the people (Sears 1949: 165-6). Israel and India, the new post-war nations with extensive tracts of arid land. Soil conservation Dust storms also struck the mallee country of was an important element of this work, a branch south eastern Australia in the summer of 1934-35. of which later became ‘’. They were part of decades of dust storms that had darkened the skies of the cities and even reddened National Parks: Saving nature and national the snowields of New Zealand. Some dust storms identity blew as early as the 1890s, but the ‘dirty thirties’ Dust Bowl of the United States provided addi- Wilderness was an important part of national tional impetus and a model for government res- identity in the United States, most prominently ponse. The Council for Scientiic and Industrial expressed in the idea of a National Park as a Research (CSIR) sent ecologist Francis Ratcliffe place ‘free from human interference’ (Nash out to the affected areas to report on the problem 1982). From the 1960s onwards, the national

28. THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 park concept was part of a series of international Conference of National Parks. The spring without events. Beginning with the irst World Conference birdsong heralded another, more sinister envi- of National Parks, held in Seattle in 1962, the ronmental ‘cause’, the pollution of the world by National Park idea, present in a number of places excessive use of industrial pesticides. Carson’s (including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and manifesto suggested the connection between loss Sweden) since before World War I, was reined to of biological diversity and human health, and become more explicitly focused on the protection how this could occur quickly over a few short of biological diversity through the exclusion of generations. Pesticides polluted the environment, people. National Parks were sometimes lauded as then were ‘biomagniied’ as they moved up the “America’s Best Idea”, a rhetoric that still conti- and down the generations. The idea nues in some circles (Public Lands History Center of biomagniication lent weight to the idea of 2011). John Muir, founder in 1892 of the Sierra understanding whole ecosystems and how they Club, was regarded as the ‘father of wilderness worked: the pesticide that killed the ‘pest’ animal thinking’ and an American hero. In 1970, the year also killed its predator, and as it moved up the of Earth Day, an event often touted by US writers food chain became increasingly dangerous to ‘top as the ‘dawn of the environmental revolution’ (eg predators’, including humans. It was a powerful Nash 1982), the United States Congress voted image, and a powerful way to popularise a crucial a large sum in support of a World Centennial insight of ecosystem ecology. Such pollution of National Parks to celebrate the foundation could not be conined within national borders, of Yellowstone National Park. This Centennial and quickly became an issue of international cemented America’s nationalist National Parks concern. This crisis authorised both ecosystem Idea into international consciousness. The moral expertise and international diplomacy throughout claim to the world’s irst national park lent au- the western world, where chemical pesticides thority to the American model for conservation were widespread. and biodiversity management. The model suited scientiic national parks managers in a range of Big ecology: Global scales and international places including Canada, Australia and New collaborations Zealand. Canadian, J.G. Nelson, for example, in 1978 advocated that ‘ideally a national park Other global initiatives were a foot in ecological contains few signs of man’ (Nelson et al 1978: science, supported by concerns about biological 5). In a place without humans, an expertise in diversity and the emerging computer techno- nature is suficient. This view of national parks logies. The International Biological Program was criticised within a decade. (IBP) (1960s-70s) brought together another way to consider the world’s biodiversity through Biomagniication and human health ‘ecosystem science’. (Coleman 2010). In an important recent book, Big Ecology, Daniel Co- Rachel Carson’s best-selling book, Silent Spring leman considers the history of the institutional was published in 1962, the year of the irst World framework, particularly America’s National

QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY .29 Science Foundation (NSF) that bankrolled glo- alongside the history of power gives us a space bal Big Science projects in biology modelled on to look at the national and the global together. the successful International Geophysical Year It reveals how the global aspirations of IBP in (1957-58) in Earth sciences. IBP was the irst the 1970s had narrowed to national lobbying for of the NSF’s programs. Long-Term Ecological funds in the 1980s. While the IBP had a truly Research (LTER) followed in the 1980s, and in global aspiration, this was actually achieved by the present NSF supports a National Ecological competition between nations to be at the “table of Observatory Network (NEON) (which has a more ongoing research” as Coleman called it. national and less global scope than IBP). The outcome of re-nationalising the biodiver- IBP marked the emergence of widespread ma- sity enterprise in the 1980s resulted in renewed thematical modelling in ecology that reshaped efforts in the United States and its nationally the ecosystem concept (as deined by Tansley strategic neighbours (for example, South and in 1935), taking it beyond local and regional Central America), rather than a global approach. applications to comparative international and Major conservation biology journals relected even planetary scales (Golley 1993). Frank Gol- nationalist biases, even into the new millennium, ley, another scientist who relected historically not least because of research funding arrange- on this era, was a director of research in NSF. ments. A major survey of these journals at the ‘Ecosystem science’ was, in his terms, the most turn of the millennium revealed that biodiversity important framework for setting up large-scale research tends to be undertaken in the country and global research programs, and NSF funding of the author. It also revealed that most authors followed this principle. His own training in the came from irst-world countries, and most often energetics of the food chain came from Eugene biological survey-focus is in national parks and P. Odum, with whom he worked at the University protected areas in those irst-world countries. of Georgia. The Odum connection directly shaped Thus most of the work to protect species and the NSF’s thinking, and Odum’s Principles of ecological communities is being done in the Ecology textbook, irst published in 1953, and places where biodiversity in a planetary sense still being revised in 2005 (Coleman 2010), was is least threatened (Fazey et al. 2005a; 2005b). an internationally important tool in the training of These literature surveys were alarming for a professional ecologists and in framing ecological planet where typically global threats are to biota ‘expertise’ from the 1950s onwards. in developing world economies, and in places not protected by biodiversity legislation. The great success of IBP, in Golley’s view, was not its capacity to meet the goals that were set by Beyond just governments its original organisers, but rather the fact that it led to the institutional structures that supported Meanwhile a global agenda that considered permanent ecosystem studies through the NSF. biological diversity and human development (Golley 1993: 2) Reading the history of ideas together in places that included Africa, Asia and

30. THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 Oceania, was increasingly being pursued in other rature of the 1980s, it was being operationalized ways, especially via international organisations differently by the state and international groups such as the IUCN. The growth of the not-for- such as the United Nations, and by environmen- proit sector in conservation biology follows the tal activists and non-government organisations trajectory of the rising popularity of the idea of (NGOs). From the mid-1980s, the idea of bio- biodiversity. The IUCN’s benchmarks and its diversity is redeined through concepts such as Convention for Biodiversity, drafted for Rio in Threatened Species, Megadiversity and Invasion 1992, and enforced since 29 December 1993, Biology, which are dynamic responses to crisis drive government natural resource management and prescriptive of action. These carry a moral policy in 160 countries. But its own organisation import to engage with change and to acknowledge is a union of over 1,000 government and non- the role of human activities in altering nature. government organisation (NGO) members with democratic voting rights. In 2011, it also has Threatened species 11,000 ‘volunteer scientists’ working in more than 160 countries. They are not just volunteers. The IUCN published The Red List of Threatened They are also scientists. Species in 1986 at the ‘science of crisis’ moment in conservation biology. This was not the irst list Sometimes environmental managers too, are of endangered species to be published by IUCN, scientists, but they must grapple with the social but it was marketed in a different way. The Red and human dimensions of preserving the non-hu- List was not just a list, but also Red, the colour man biota that are beyond their scientiic exper- of alarm. It aimed to represent a crisis that could tise. As one Australian natural resource manager, shift policy and politics. The Red List provided a R.A. Kenchington, put it: ‘We do not manage the baseline for global assessments of the conserva- environment, only the human behaviours that tion status of species. It is regularly updated and affect its structure and processes’ (Kenchington scientiic, but also practical, in keeping with the 1994). The 1980s reinvention of the idea of bio- IUCN’s international codes of ‘best practice’ for diversity changed ecological science and redei- managing biodiversity and key statistical summa- ned the expertise required to achieve its aims. It ries. For example, from a recent Red List we know also embedded biodiversity and into that between 1500 and 2009, 875 extinctions have broader management imperatives. The IUCN been documented. In this endeavour, the IUCN and other international environmental organisa- enabled a model for reporting on the success tions with scientiic roots have had to grow new of ‘public private partnerships’ that go beyond branches to provide policy for managers and to governments and international diplomacy. motivate different sorts of political action. Megadiversity is a powerful motivator for political action and public fundraising. Even as the idea Conservation International (CI) is a non-proit or- of biodiversity gathered pace in the scientiic lite- ganisation established in 1987, headquartered in

QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY .31 Arlington, Virginia, near Washington DC, USA. ‘approaches, indings, controversies and conclu- CI claims to be part of the shift from conservation sions in the ield’, not a report on . as ‘preserving natural areas as untouched relics It is highly relective on the mutuality of practical of the past’. Instead, ‘it envision[s] conservation conservation and the trajectory of the discipline. as a working model of the future’ (CI 2011). In particular, CI urges the reconnection of people Understanding Global Change in the Anthro- and nature. Its mission is ‘to protect the health pocene of humanity by protecting Earth’s ecosystems and biodiversity’. One of its important decisions In the late 18th century, as the industrial revolution was to declare a ‘Group of 17 Megadiversity gathered pace, we entered a new geological era, countries’. These countries harbour more than the , where the activities of the two thirds of the planet’s biological wealth. human species came to affect all aspects of our This was an economic practicality: it was a biophysical environment (Crutzen 2002; Robin way of justifying the spending strategies of the and Steffen 2007). Since the 1950s, sometimes limited conservation dollar. Strikingly, of the 17 termed the Great Acceleration, global change countries, only Australia and the United States has magniied further, and markedly. The power have irst world economies and western traditions of our species over nature on an evolutionary of management. Thus this concept has driven CI scale, suggests a precautionary principle in our to prioritise money and effort into ‘megadiverse’ consideration of planetary futures, and the setting places that have not had the beneit of local scien- of ‘planetary limits’ (Rockström et al 2009). tiic biodiversity expertise. Three concepts are crucial to setting such limits: resilience, social-ecological systems and an en- Invasion Biology vironmental justice that recognises that the wes- tern scientiic framework has disproportionately Invasion biology is the science that responds affected ecological systems at the expense of the to ‘threats’ to biodiversity. It is an example of less industrialised traditions. a symbiosis between the technical experts and the enthusiastic volunteers for biodiversity. Its Resilience origins came from the 1950s, particularly a book by ecologist Charles Elton, Ecology of invasions Resilience was a key concept in shifting ecosys- by animals and plants (1958), which started as a tem thinking from science into management in popular radio program before it became a book. the 1970s. Holling (1973: 14) deined the notion Mark Davis comments that biological invasions of resilience as a ‘measure of the persistence of have received more attention in recent years ‘both systems and their ability to absorb change and from ecologists and the public-at-large than any disturbance’ while maintaining their systemic other ecological topic’ except . structure. The Odum generation of ecologists (Davis 2009: 1) His account of the discipline (of worked with whole ecosystems, rather than invasion biology) is an expert’s account of the focusing on single elements, and linked not

32. THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 just biological, but also physical environments. come part of the global economy (through such The physiology of the animal was nested in a concepts as ‘ecological services’) it is now em- cycle that depended on plants, soils, climate and bedded in ‘triple bottom line’ accounting systems: other abiotic factors, and converted these phy- society, economy and ecology are all weighted sical elements into energy. In the same period, together, in the rhetoric of since the increasingly mathematical representations (for Brundtland Report (UNWCED 1987). example, predator-prey curves) became the basis for modelling and created a hierarchy of elements Environmental justice of the ecosystem. But the focus on ‘persistence’: it was not about maximizing either eficiency Is it still true that ‘Biodiversity is a whitefella or a particular reward, but one which maintains word’, as one 1990s bumper sticker declared? ‘lexibility above all else.’ (Holling 1973: 18). Prominent Aboriginal professor Marcia Langton This was a strategy for times of uncertainty. Ins- was one of many Indigenous Australian thinkers tead of a focus on predicting futures, managers in the 1990s who argued that the institutions of of natural resources should rather maximize the biodiversity bypassed local Indigenous knowle- range of possible futures, given the complexity dge. US Journalist Mark Dowie reported tensions of the system under unknown future conditions building between indigenous peoples, who felt (Walker and Salt 2006). themselves to be conservation refugees, and bio- diversity activists. One indigenous activist said Social-ecological systems that ‘while extractive industries were still a se- rious threat to their welfare and cultural integrity, The task of management demands balancing their new and biggest enemy was “conservation”’ scientiic ideals with economically viable and (Dowie 2005: 18). The black-list of ‘culture- socially just outcomes. Scientiically-directed wrecking institutions’ (keeping company with conservation philosophy, with a focus on pure Shell, Texaco etc.) included CI and the IUCN nature ‘captured’ much of the biodiversity conser- itself. These BINGOs (Big International Non- vation agenda from the 1960s to the 1980s. More Government Organisations) ‘wrecked cultures’ recently, however, social communities are now by adopting a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to included along with ecological, and integrated as biodiversity conservation (Dowie 2005). social-ecological systems (SES). ‘Biodiversity’ is thus a more complex concept as it embraces the Anthropologist Paige West noted that WWF people alongside nature. It demands expertise (established in 1961 as the World Wide Fund for in social systems, as well as natural systems. Nature) spends more in New Guinea than their na- Resilience of the whole social-ecological system tional government’s whole environment budget, is a fully integrated idea: it describes how lands- making them disproportionately inluential (West capes and communities can absorb disturbance 2006). She found the WWF biologists based at the and maintain their function in a changing world. Crater Mountain reserve, while they helped her (Walker and Salt, 2006) As biodiversity has be- with her work, seldom listened to her expertise

QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY .33 as a ield anthropologist or to the expertise of the the value of biodiversity (TEEB, the Economics local people, as she suggested ways to include of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) as part of the local people’s knowledge into the conservation IPBES (International Platform on Biodiversity initiative. West did not suggest that indigenous and Ecosystem Services) (IUCN 2011). This sort peoples are better ecologists than western sci- of assessment brings biodiversity into line with entists, but like Langton, she was concerned economic assessments more familiar to western that western scientiic institutions are a form governments and large corporations, and endorses of cultural invasion. Cultural displacements for a new expertise of ecological economics. The conservation are not new. For example, in 1969, drive to price ecological services has the potential the Makuleke people were forcibly removed from to integrate ecological ideas and international their land to expand the Kruger National Park markets (Daily 1997). (Carruthers 1997). But as conservation urgency has become more global, people displaced are If ecosystems shift in response to climate change, increasingly distant from those who govern the boundaries of national parks and protected biodiversity decisions. The poorest people often areas may no longer contain the habitats for depend on ‘wild’ or under-developed nature, and threatened species. The world outside parks, the conservation priorities must accommodate liveli- ‘matrix’, is increasingly important to biodiversity hoods for vulnerable people. (Lindenmayer & Fischer 2006). Ecologists and conservationists now work together to connect lands through whole-landscape planning, so- The Sixth Mass Extinction mething that has long been successful in densely populated places like England and Wales, where Since life began on Earth, ive major mass ex- national parks have never excluded people. Aus- tinctions and several minor events have led to tralia is a wealthy place, where megadiversity large and sudden drops in biodiversity. We have underpins both the economy and national identity perhaps entered the ‘sixth mass extinction’, the and science is highly respected (Robin 2007). No- irst anthropogenic , this one netheless, biodiversity is in decline everywhere being caused by avoidable human behaviour. It from the pressure of threats such as is the biggest crisis for biodiversity ever – and it loss and invasive species (Steffen et al. 2009). is ‘unnatural’. The roots of the ‘ecologic crisis’ Australia still leads the world in small mammal (as Lynn White Jr called it in 1967) are based in extinctions. Ecologists ind that increasingly their deeply-held cultural beliefs and in the culture of work is in ‘climate change adaptation’. While science itself. Threats to the diversity of life on funding for climate change science is increasing, earth have been accelerating since the onset in that for invasive species eradication, an important the industrial revolution. focus for specialist biodiversity scientists since the 1980s, has declined markedly. Following the Millennium Assessment, the IUCN is now working on an economic assessment of Global change has many facets, all of which

34. THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 interact: there is no ‘one size its all’ approach to R . É . F . É . R . E . N . C . E . S biodiversity conservation that works even within politically stable irst economies, let alone in rapidly developing countries where economic im- CARRUTHERS, Jane. 1997. ‘Nationhood and peratives overwhelm planning, and in war zones national parks’ in Ecology and Empire. Ed. Grif- without civil order. In the new millennium, as we iths T. & Robin L. Edinburgh: Keele UP: 125-38. come to the end of yet another ‘hottest decade CARSON, R. 1962. Silent Spring NY: Houghton in planetary history’, biodiversity is just one of Miflin. many aspects of concern. The idea of ‘expertise CI 2011 – website: http://www.conservation.org/ for biodiversity’ is becoming more diffuse. COLEMAN, D. C. 2010. Big Ecology. Berkeley, U Cal. Press. International NGOs like CI still focus on Biodi- CRUTZEN, P.J. 2002. ‘Geology of Mankind’, versity, but it is number six in the initiatives on Nature, 415: 23. their website, behind Climate, Freshwater, Food, DAILY, G.C. 1997. Nature’s Services. Washing- Health and Cultural Services. Global change has ton: Island Press. brought a demand for new expertise. Biodiversity DAVIS M.A. 2009. Invasion Biology. Oxford: experts still have a place at the big global table OUP. of ‘global change science’, but the fundamental DOWIE, M. 2005. ‘Conservation Refugees’ methods and purposes of science itself are shif- Orion Magazine (Nov-Dec) 16-27. ting under this pressure. Sheila Jasanoff’s ‘social FARNHAM, T. 2007. Saving Nature’s Legacy: technologies of humility’ that ‘give combined The Origins of the Idea of Biodiversity, New attention to substance and process, and stress deli- Haven: Yale UP. beration as well as analysis’ (Jasanoff 2003: 243) FAZEY, I. et al. 2005a. Who does all the re- are needed to complement traditional scientiic search in conservation biology? Biodiversity and expertise. Ecology is a necessary, but no longer Conservation 14: 917–934. suficient, expertise for biodiversity in the crisis FAZEY I. et al. 2005b. ‘What do conservation of the sixth mass extinction. biologists publish?’ Biological Conservation 124: 63–73. GOLLEY, F.B. 1993. History of the Ecosystem Concept in Ecology. New Haven: Yale UP. HOLLING, C.S. 1973. ‘Resilience and stability in ecological systems’, Ann. Rev. Ecol. System. 4 : 1-23. IUCN website 2011: http://www.iucn.org/about/ JASANOFF, S. 2003, ‘Technologies of humility’, Minerva 41: 233-44. KENCHINGTON, R.A. 1994., ‘Conservation and Coastal Zone Management’, In Conservation

QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY .35 Biology in Australia, [Ed. Moritz, C. & Kikkawa ing Washington: Island Press. J.] Sydney: Surrey Beatty. WEST, Paige 2006. Conservation is our Govern- LINDENMAYER, D. B. and Fischer J. 2006. ment Now, Durham: Duke UP. Habitat Fragmentation and Landscape Change, WILSON, E.O. 1992. The Diversity of Life, Melbourne: CSIRO Publishing. Camb. Mass.: Harvard UP. NASH, Roderick 1982. Wilderness and the Ame- WILKENING, K. 2011. ‘Intercontinental trans- rican Mind. 3rd ed. (irst ed. 1967), New Haven: port of dust’, Environment and History 17(2): Yale UP. 313-39. NELSON, J.G. et al. 1978. International Expe- UNWCED 1987 Our Common Future (Brundtland rience with National Parks, Ontario: Geography, Report), Oxford: OUP. Univ. Waterloo. ODUM, Eugene P. 1953. Fundamentals of Eco- logy, Philadelphia: Saunders. PUBLIC LANDS HISTORY CENTER (Univ. Colorado) 2011. National Parks Beyond the Nation: http://nationalparksbeyondthenation. wordpress.com/ . ROBIN, L. 1997. ‘Ecology: A Science of Em- pire?’ In Grifiths and Robin: 63-75. ROBIN, L. 1998. Defending the Little Desert, Carlton: Melbourne UP. ROBIN, L. 2007. How a Continent Created a Nation, Sydney: UNSW Press. ROBIN, L. and Steffen W. 2007. ‘History for the Anthropocene’, History Compass, 5(5): 1694–1719. ROCKSTRÖM, J et al. 2009. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, 472–475. SEARS, P. 1949. Deserts on the March. [1st ed. 1935] London: Routledge. SOULÉ, M.E. 1985. ‘What is Conservation Biology?’, Bioscience, 35(11), December, 727. STEFFEN, W. et al. 2009. Australia’s Biodiver- sity and Climate Change. Melbourne: CSIRO Publishing. TAKACS, D. The Idea of Biodiversity: Philoso- Key words: biodiversity, ecosystem, Big Eco- phies of Paradise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. logy, resilience, IBP, IUCN, CI, environmental WALKER, B. and Salt D. 2006. Resilience Think- justice.

36. THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 R . É . S . U . M . É

The idea of biodiversity has often changed or deve- loped in response to crisis or alarm. New developments seemingly control the crisis, and they also entrench par- ticular expertise. This paper presents a historical view of the development of biodiversity and conservation biology, the ‘science of crisis’. Biodiversity has de- veloped from crises in science, practical management challenges and political activism, and all contribute to shaping the concept as it plays out in global change science in the 21st century. Ecology, the ‘fundamen- tal’ science underpinning the concept, is a necessary, but not a suficient expertise for understanding and managing the planet’s biodiversity in the era of the Anthropocene.

QUADERNI N°76 - AUTOMNE 2011 THE RISE OF THE IDEA OF BIODIVERSITY .37