Does the Sentience Criterion Imply Accepting Environmentalist Goals?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VI, p. 36 of the PDF edition · English translation

Environmentalist positions are generally defended on the grounds that nonsentient entities such as species, ecosystems, and natural processes have value in themselves, entirely independently of how they affect the good of sentient beings⁴⁵. However, another possible defense of environmentalist goals is to claim that, even if we must consider only sentient beings, environmentalists' interest in achieving their goals (for example, the goal of ensuring that nature takes its course, without interventions to help animals⁴⁶) must be taken into account and respected, because environmentalists are sentient beings.

In that case, environmentalists would not be claiming that we have direct obligations of respect toward nonsentient natural entities. These obligations would be indirect obligations of respect toward the interests of environmentalists, but respecting their interests would amount to doing the same as we would do if nonsentient entities had intrinsic value.

The central problem with this argument is the assumption that because an interest of a sentient being must be taken into account, we must necessarily satisfy it. The one does not necessarily imply the other, for the following reason: if we must take this interest into account, then it would be arbitrary not to take into account the interests of the sentient beings who would be harmed if this interest were satisfied.

For example, natural processes typically affect animals very negatively47. Malnutrition, hunger, and thirst, disease, physical injuries, psychological stress, harsh weather events, natural disasters, and interspecific, intraspecific, and sexual conflicts are the norm for animals in the wild. Moreover, the predominant reproductive strategy consists in having litters of thousands or even millions of offspring, while the average number of survivors in stable populations is only two offspring per litter⁴⁸.

Accordingly, satisfying the interest in “letting nature take its course” would entail the suffering and deaths of an enormous number of sentient beings. Whether in terms of the number of beings harmed or in terms of the severity of the harm each affected being would suffer individually, taking into account the interests of everyone involved points toward helping the animals who are victims of natural processes, and not toward satisfying the interest in letting nature take its course.