Non-Human Ethics
By Rhea Narielwalla
Peter Singers “In Defence of Animals” begins with two interesting questions; (1) can speciesism be defended (2) If speciesism cannot be defended are there any other characteristics of humans that justify human needs being placed above the needs of non-human animals.
In my opinion, speciesism (i.e the idea that it is justifiable to give preference to beings simply on the grounds that they are members of the species Homo sapiens) is an inherent bias built on a deep trust in a science that tells us we are evolutionarily superior, thus empowered to construct “morally relevant boundaries”. These boundaries form not only between human and non-human, but also within a species, and root themselves into the human psyche. History proves that this can have devastating consequences — like the Nazi belief in eugenics and the following holocaust.
Given this, it is logical, that if one were to truly defend ‘speciesism” one would also need to defend wars over religious, racial and ethnic superiority. Not to mention, one would also be called upon to advocate against equal rights, equal pay for men and women, as these are all “morally relevant boundaries”as well. With this understanding, I feel that speciesism concept is better left un-defended!
I would agree with Singer here, when he says that in rejecting speciesism, we do not say that humans and non-humans deserve the exact same worth and rights. There are biological differences that separate us, but we must acknowledge that no philosophy can prove that these differences make us “superior”. In my mind, we have a chance at claiming ethical superiority, if we understand our moral obligation as cognisant, sentient beings to recognise that “normal mature humans often have different interests from nonhuman animals” (Singer, Pg.5) and take these interests into consideration when deciding policy or business.
This ties in nicely with Mark Starik’s “Should Trees Have Managerial Standing? Toward Stakeholder Status for Non-Human Nature” where he advocates introducing non-human nature as a stakeholder (with considerable power and interest) not from a deep ecology or ecofeminism thrust, but from a utilitarian standpoint. Personally, I like this approach because we live in a world where business interests drive decision-making, sometimes more so than humanitarian interests, and to argue that it is good business sense to make nature a stakeholder is more persuasive than repeating the emotional rhetoric “nature has feelings, don’t hurt them”.
From my understanding, historically, presence of non-human interests have hinged on whether or not the non-human animal is “sentient”. This is made even more real for us, who have just witnessed the Jallikattu judgement, wherein non-human sentience was upheld, over the “beasts of burden” argument. I support the conclusion that “biological and behavioural indications do not guarantee sentience but they are about as good as those that we have for my human friend” (Singer, Pg.17) and would have unravelled the rebuttal that “sentience is not a sufficient condition for moral consideration” using the same logic used here by Gaverick Matheny.
Now having agreed that non-human animals are sentient, therefore having different but important interests, we move on to viewing nature as a stakeholder. I agree with Mark Starik when he says that the exclusion of nature from the list of stakeholders is neither “desirable or practical” (Starik, Pg.209). The Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Peace Agreement, the G8 Summit and other international conventions on climate change are proof the international community agrees with him too. There is a general acceptance that nature is arguably the largest stakeholder to manage today, and the consequences of poor management are dire.
I find that the second argument in favour of making nature a stakeholder is one of the most powerful arguments, that is “nature has had and will continue to have significant economic value to all businesses” (Starik, Pg. 210). I say that this argument is powerful because it is resilient to time, there will never be a point in human existence where we do not extract from nature for our use. Therefore to push for non-human interests by arguing for sustainable business and resource management is practical. It shows how the stakeholder concept can be widened to include “ethical, socio-emotional, legal, and physical connotations”(Starik, Pg. 211) when it serves eco-political interests to do so.
I believe that Starik adequately reasons that non-human nature is already a stakeholder in most policy and business decisions today, in that there have been:
- legal consequences for undue human interference with nature.
-Voluntary environmental auditing,
-regulatory requirements for measuring toxic emissions (Starik, Pg. 213)
But I would say that Starik’s assertion that “those stakeholders who are currently representing the natural environment have been necessary but apparently not sufficient to protect non-human nature’s “stakes”” (Starik, Pg, 212) holds true only in some cases. Projects like the ones listed have been extremely successful in meeting their objectives (i) Asian Elephant Conservation, (ii) Seal Protection in South Africa, (iii) Sea Turtle Conversation, (iv) Dolphin Conservation in Kenya, (v) Brown Bear Protection in Romania and (vi) Panda Conservation in China
The efficiency argument, that “in providing the political force necessary to focus serious organisation effort on more prudently managing the natural environment as one or more stakeholders” (Starik, Pg. 215) works well in this case, as businesses desire to maximise profits and save on resource expenditure.
The particularisation argument, that particularising stakeholders betters the organisation’s management of those stakeholders, I feel, is relevant to us now more than ever. Efforts at managing the non-human natural environment, like the 2 degrees Celsius agreement, show that the international community has understood that nature is a big stakeholder with a lot of power. However, whether or not our efforts are coming too late is yet to be determined. In my personal opinion I think we may have caught on just in time, but our success depends entirely on whether every country contributes for the greater good, or whether self interests and the business as usual model will continue to control climate change negotiations.
The conclusion of the paper calls for the traditional definition of stakeholder to be expanded to account for nature and all its components. I feel that the definition of “stakeholder” has already expanded to include nature, without conscious human effort to do so, it does include “any naturally occurring entity which affects or is affected by organizational performance” (Starik, Pg.216) even if it doesn’t explicitly state that.
Starik makes a good argument for the expansion of the textbook definition of “stakeholder” to include nature. His argument sees this as the ideal place to start, but I believe that at this point it is too late in the climate change game to expect simple expansions of definitions to exact meaningful change.
Squabbles over historical blame for excessive emissions and the developed world’s unwillingness to aid developing countries in reducing carbon emissions are already being overridden by the greater concern that, climate change is causing extreme weather events with global impacts (i.e Hurricane Florence, Lombok earthquake and Tsunami). Identification of susceptible areas, plans for dealing with the event (i.e monitoring and evacuation plans) have been formulated and implemented and evaluation comes across in the death toll caused. In this regard we see non-human nature has already been through the four stages of stakeholder management; (i) identification (ii) plan formulation (iii) plan implementation (iv) plan evaluation. It has become a stakeholder that no one can ignore anymore with more political, economic and interest than most others.
