Do ecological balance and biodiversity coincide with what is best for animals?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume V, p. 20 of the PDF edition · English translation

As we saw in chapter 4, many environmentalist programs are carried out in the name of preserving ecological balance and biodiversity. We also saw that several of these programs involve exterminating animals. In this chapter we will address another belief that contributes to animal advocates' acceptance of programs of this kind: the belief that ecological balance and biodiversity coincide with what is best for animals.

This belief is also one of the factors that contribute to environmentalism often being confused with consideration for animals. In short, there are people who believe that ecological balance and biodiversity coincide with what is best for animals; these people notice that one of the goals of environmentalism is to preserve ecological balance and biodiversity; and so these people conclude that environmentalism aims at what is best for animals.

The belief that ecological balance and biodiversity coincide with what is best for animals is mistaken. As explained below, a situation can have a high degree of biodiversity or ecological balance and yet be extremely bad for animals.

The notion of ecological balance concerns a certain stability relative to a state taken as a reference point³³. This concept is generally used with respect to variation in

population size, but it could be used with respect to any other factor (for example, the water level of a river). The notion of biodiversity, on the other hand, concerns the variety of species. Neither of these notions is based on what is best for sentient beings (nor does either have any direct relation to it). In other words, there are situations that are balanced and in which there is a high degree of biodiversity that can be terribly bad for animals³⁴. We will see an example of this below.

Animals of most species have enormous numbers of offspring. Depending on the species, there are thousands or even millions of young (something common in amphibians, reptiles, fish, and invertebrates in general). In periods of approximate population stability (and therefore in balanced situations according to the definition above), it is possible to measure the rate of premature mortality from the size of the brood: if a population has remained approximately constant for several generations, then on average only one offspring per adult has survived (that is, two per brood). All the rest of the young (thousands, millions) had a short existence, usually full of suffering³⁵. This is a balanced situation, but in it suffering and premature death are maximized. Situations in which there is biodiversity also usually show this same result.

It could be objected that, if there were less balance or less biodiversity, then suffering and premature death would be even greater. However, there is not necessarily such a correlation. Everything will depend on how a greater or lesser degree of balance or biodiversity affects other factors that directly influence the well-being of sentient beings. For example, it will depend on whether they result in a larger number of births in species most of whose members have lives full of suffering, or in species whose members have a better chance of having positive lives. It will also depend on how they affect factors such as the availability of food and shelter and the amount of disease and conflict among animals. There is no direct correlation between higher levels of ecological balance or biodiversity and the prevalence of positive lives over negative ones, or of long lives over short ones.

In short: ecological balance and biodiversity could only coincidentally result in something better for animals, and they often result in highly negative situations for them. Therefore, if the goal is to achieve the best state of affairs for animals, we should not center our analysis on the degree of biodiversity or balance, but rather investigate directly how animals are positively or negatively affected. This is something that could be done by the field of welfare biology³⁶, which we will look at in more detail in the next chapter.