Professor in the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
Bryan is Professor in the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology and author of Why Preserve Natural Variety? (Princeton University Press, 1987), Toward Unity Among Environmentalists (Oxford University Press, 1991), Searching for Sustainability (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Sustainability: A Philosophy of Adaptive Ecosystem Management (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Norton has contributed to journals in several fields and has served on the Environmental Economics Advisory Committee of the US EPA Science Advisory Board, and two terms as a member of the Governing Board of the Society for Conservation Biology. His current research concentrates on sustainability theory and on spatio-temporal scaling of environmental problems. He was a member of the Board of Directors of Defenders of Wildlife from 1994-2005 and continues on their Science Advisory Board.
Evaluation and Species Preservation 36:00 min.
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The breadth of the consensus in favor of saving biodiversity is not matched by a comparable consensus regarding how to expend scarce resources in protecting species and other elements of nature's diversity. Since passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, despite some spectacular successes in recovering acutely endangered species, many criticisms of the administrative priorities have been voiced. Many participants in these debates have assumed that, in order to resolve these differences, it would be useful (necessary?) to have a theory-based method for precisely characterizing the "value of a species" or "the value of units of biodiversity." This assumption, however, has simply led to an impasse, as advocates of different disciplinarily-based theories created incommensurable methods of description and measurement. Since commitments to theory at this level are very hard to resolve by empirical study, the public debate about WHY we should save biodiversity and WHICH ASPECTS are more important, has become ideological and fruitless. Facing this situation, a radical change is necessary in the way we evaluate human-generated change to natural systems; a radical re-thinking of "valuation studies" is in order. Following such a re-thinking, a new, pluralistic and adaptive perspective on the problem of valuing species and setting priorities becomes possible, and suggests a new direction for establishing the value of biological diversity and biological resources more generally. Written Summaries of Presentation |
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