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Assisted Evolution, De-Extinction, and Ecological Restoration Technologies

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Assisted Evolution, De-Extinction, and Ecological Restoration Technologies Research Articles Nature 4.0: Assisted Evolution, De-extinction, and Ecological Restoration Technologies • Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/20/3/9/1859717/glep_a_00559.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Leslie Paul Thiele Abstract Humans have served their needs and interests by modifying plants, animals, and ecosys- tems for millennia. Technology has expanded, accelerated, and intensified the impact. Experimental efforts are now under way to rescue or re-create nature employing highly sophisticated technologies. These endeavors are not aimed at satisfying basic human needs or serving economic interests; their goal is the conservation of biodiversity and ecological restoration. At the same time, they fundamentally alter the fabric of life and guarantee unintended consequences. An examination of the ecological and cultural risks, benefits, and costs of employing synthetic biology to assist evolution and de-extinct species provides a valuable test case for environmentalists and conservationists grappling with the implications of ecological restoration technologies. Human beings modify nature to serve their needs. In this respect, they are no different from ants making hills, beavers constructing dams, and elephants dig- ging water holes. What distinguishes our species from all others are the scale, speed, and impact of our modifications. That is the product of technology. Of course, many animals use tools. Chimpanzees throw stones at antagonists and extract termites from mounds with sticks. Otters employ stones to pry abalone from rocks, and woodpecker finches wield cactus spines to impale their prey. The list goes on. While many other species use tools, none craft complex implements and machines. Human technology is unparalleled in its sophistication, power, and ecological repercussions. Over the millennia, humans have utilized implements and machines to deplete the planet’s species and severely degrade its biomes. Currently efforts to rescue and resuscitate the natural world employing highly sophisticated technol- ogies are under way. Artificial intelligence, often coupled with drones, is used to monitor wildlife, identify poachers, exterminate invasive species, and power Global Environmental Politics 20:3, August 2020, https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00559 © 2020 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 9 10 • Nature 4.0 “precision agriculture” that grows more food without usurping natural habitats. Geoengineering technologies are proposed as crucial means to conserve ecosystems threatened by global warming, and synthetic biology is being deployed to assist evolution and de-extinct species. These technologies aim to benefit nature. While they are anthropogenic (caused by humans), they are not anthropocentric (holding human needs and interests supreme). Advocates argue that ecological restoration technologies will provide a second life for the natural world in an age of environmental devastation. Critics believe they will precipitate the end of nature—extending, amplifying, and Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/20/3/9/1859717/glep_a_00559.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 intensifying our species’ conquest of the biosphere. The controversy is fueled by the paradox of engineering nature to save it. This essay grapples with the implications of ecological restoration technologies. Specifically, it focuses on the use of synthetic biology for assisted evolution and de-extinction. To date, nature conservation has mostly been backward looking, with the aim of reducing ecological loss or maintaining the status quo. Notwithstanding heroic efforts and many notable achievements, this approach has not conserved aggregate planetary biodiversity. And future prospects are dim given the impacts of climate change. Synthetic biology might reverse the trend. However, once the taboo of releasing genetically engineered species into the wild is thoroughly broken, albeit for the best of conservation reasons, there may be no stopping, or even slowing down, the undiscriminating proliferation of synthetic life-forms. I focus on assisted evolution and de-extinction for several reasons. Unlike geoengineering, these ecological restoration technologies have left the drawing board to enter the biosphere. They are currently being deployed. Unlike artificial intelligence, they have received widespread attention from conservationists and have produced heated debate. In turn, assisted evolution and de-extinction are the ecological restoration technologies most consistently depicted and justified as non-anthropocentric in orientation. Assisted evolution and de-extinctionpresentadauntingchallengefor environmentalists. They may become dominant forces for conservation in an age of global ecological crises, providing a crucial means of protecting and sus- taining the natural world. Yet they stretch, if not tear apart, the very meaning of nature. In turn, they may serve as the Trojan horse that opens the gates to bioen- gineering for pleasure and profit. As such, assisted evolution and de-extinction constitute powerful test cases for evaluating ecological restoration technologies. Will these wildly ambitious yet increasingly feasible technological endeavors signal a new beginning for nature or the last nail in its coffin? And should the answer to this question determine their fate? We are faced with critical choices—and time is short. A Brief History of Nature The word nature means different things to different people, and probably always has. The range of definitions is large and discordant. For some, nature signifies a Leslie P. Thiele • 11 realm of conflict, competition, and survival of the fittest. For others, it bespeaks symbiotic cooperation and organic harmony. Nature is understood to embody reason and order. It is also depicted as an irrational, brute force. The natural world is embraced as a source of nourishment, healing, and beauty. It is also experienced as an unforgiving, unmerciful, and, ultimately, fatal reality. For the purposes of this inquiry, nature refers to the Earth’s biological and ecological entities, relationships, and processes, and specifically those that preceded our species or have coexisted with it largely unimpacted. I am not claiming to define what nature most essentially is, simply how the word is most commonly under- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/glep/article-pdf/20/3/9/1859717/glep_a_00559.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 stood. As a gesture toward this nonessentialism, I utilize the term Nature 1.0. Nature1.0iswhatC.S.Lewiscalledthe“uninterfered with.” For we humans, Lewis observes, “nature is all that is not man-made; the natural state of anything is its state when not modified by man.” This definition is defensibly species-centric. As Lewis (1960, 45–46) notes, “if ants had a language they would, no doubt, call their anthill an artifact and describe the brick wall in its neighborhood as a natural object. Nature in fact would be for them all that was not ‘ant-made.’” To call nature the uninterfered with does belie the fact that nature is a network of interdependent relationships, a web of life. In the “real world,” as Lewis acknowledges, “everything is continuously ‘interfered with’ by everything else; total mutual interference … is of the essence of nature.” Notwithstanding these caveats, nature is not an “idle term,” because people “know pretty well what they mean by it and sometimes use it to com- municate what would not easily be communicable in other ways” (Lewis 1960, 74). That is my justification for employing the term Nature 1.0. It is not nature, full stop (whatever that might mean). Nature 1.0 does not include cornfields, house pets, the atomic physics that occurs in neutron stars, and countless other (natural) phenomena. Nature 1.0 simply refers to biological and ecological entities, relationships, and processes here on Earth that have not been interfered with by human beings. It is nature commonly understood. For millennia, humans have modified Nature 1.0 to serve their needs and interests in agriculture and horticulture, hunting and security, health and med- icine, aesthetics and entertainment. I call this human-impacted biological and ecological realm Nature 2.0. Nature 2.0 began with primitive hunting and gath- ering, broadening in scale and deepening in scope with the domestication and selective breeding of plants and animals, the use of fire to create grasslands for improved predation, swidden (slash and burn) agriculture, and large-scale water diversion for irrigation. Nature 2.0 is the natural world as anthropogenically and anthropocentrically altered. Technology is always involved. The span between Nature 1.0 and Nature 2.0 is graduated. The hands that transform the former into the latter may have a light or heavy touch, and effects range from the negligible to the transformative. The impact of hunting and gath- ering, for instance, would have been difficult to discern in many if not most of the planet’s biomes in the Pleistocene. Still, Stone Age hominins caused the con- tinental extinction of many species of megafauna. Unquestionably the human 12 • Nature 4.0 handprint has grown more forceful and expansive over the last dozen millennia. That increasing impact is the product of technological development and the growth in human populations that advancing technology facilitated. Although some argue otherwise (Coates 1998, 177), anthropogenic mod- ifications did not put an end to Nature 1.0. A field of maize in the ancient Aztec empire at the bottom of a steep, forested, and seldom-if-ever
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