Animal advocacy and environmentalism: the divergence is ethical, not scientific

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume V, p. 23 of the PDF edition · English translation

Environmentalists need to draw on knowledge from ecology and other related sciences to achieve their goals. Because of this, there is an idea that, in order to use the existing knowledge in these fields and to obtain new knowledge in them, one must adopt an environmentalist stance. According to this view, programs aimed at helping wild animals, if their goal is to secure the good of the animals themselves³⁷ (and not, indirectly, an environmentalist goal), could not be scientifically informed.

This idea is mistaken. Ecology deals with categories such as species and ecosystems, but this does not imply that, in order to obtain knowledge in ecology or to use existing knowledge, it is necessary to incorporate a perspective that values entities such as species or ecosystems intrinsically, rather than sentient individuals. Scientific, descriptive knowledge is one thing; the normative goals that guide the use of that knowledge and the search for new knowledge are another³⁸.

It is not only interventions with environmentalist goals that can be well informed scientifically. To think so is to confuse ecology with environmentalism. Ecology is the science that describes how interactions take place in ecosystems. Environmentalism, on the other hand, is the normative view holding that what has intrinsic value are nonsentient entities such as species and ecosystems, and not sentient beings. Scientific knowledge is descriptive and, as such, can be used by the most varied normative positions to achieve different goals. Environmentalism is only one of these positions.

Knowledge from ecology and related fields is predominantly used to achieve anthropocentric and environmentalist goals. However, it could equally be used in an attempt to achieve the goal of reducing the suffering and deaths of animals. Indeed, much more knowledge in these fields would be sought if animals received moral consideration, since there would then be an interest in finding out how animals are positively or negatively affected by what happens in ecosystems (something that does not happen – or happens to a much lesser extent – if the good of animals is not valued

intrinsically). This is one of the reasons why the creation of the field of welfare biology³⁹ is being proposed. We will see more about this field below.

Welfare biology focuses on investigating how animals in their ecosystems are positively and negatively affected as sentient beings who have a well-being. It is therefore different from conservation biology⁴⁰, which studies animals as components of ecosystems or specimens of species. It is also different from compassionate conservation⁴¹, which studies animals from the standpoint of conservation while avoiding harming them in that pursuit. Finally, it is also different from conservation welfare⁴², which investigates how to promote the well-being of animals when conservation measures are implemented. Knowledge from these other fields can be useful to welfare biology (and vice versa), but the focus of each of these fields is different. What essentially distinguishes welfare biology from all these other fields is that it studies the way animals are positively or negatively affected as sentient beings who have a well-being, regardless of whether or not this serves conservation purposes.

Welfare biology would bring together knowledge from several other disciplines, such as ecology, animal welfare science, zoology, ethology, and veterinary science. It is a crossdisciplinary field of research, which is something different from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary fields. This will be explained in more detail below.

With regard to their disciplinarity, types of research are usually classified as⁴³: (1) intradisciplinary (when research is carried out within a single discipline); (2) multidisciplinary (when several disciplines offer different perspectives on a problem); (3) interdisciplinary (when knowledge and methods from several disciplines are integrated and synthesized); (4) transdisciplinary (when a framework is created that goes beyond the various disciplines involved); and (5) crossdisciplinary (when one or more disciplines are viewed from the perspective of another). Welfare biology is crossdisciplinary because each discipline involved would be conducted with a focus on

investigating how animals are positively or negatively affected as sentient beings who have a well-being.

Everything we have seen above clearly indicates that the normative perspective that intrinsically values the good of animals as sentient beings (and, consequently, the goal of preventing and minimizing their suffering and premature deaths) can be as scientifically well informed as any other normative perspective.