The double-edged sword of tech in conservation
Or why we must be careful whenever using technology, even if it is used for good
Sarkar and Chapman published the article, Academic Incentives Should Not Promote the “Extinction of Nature Experience” in the journal Tropical Conservation Science, which I recently read.
According to the authors, more and more, conservation efforts are using advanced technology such as remote sensors and laboratory-based genetic techniques among others.
This in turn has an unwanted side effect: researchers are spending more time in the laboratory and less time in the field.
The consequence feared by the authors is that because direct contact with nature is being lost, conservation is being transformed from a personal and heartfelt mission into a more numerical, abstract academic exercise.
Moving away from nature
This is indeed a danger: we can extrapolate beyond this article by understanding the true nature of technology as it grows in a hyper-capitalistic system. This nature is precisely that technology "aims" to isolate us from nature so that nature itself is viewed by the masses as a commodity, thereby increasing the growth of technology. Moreover, because of how modern society is, this commodity's value will fluctuate mainly based on how it sits in the short-sighted global balance sheet.
Unfortunately, numerically-based conservation and numerically-motivated climate-change action, while important, can become quite ineffective and even destructive if it is not accompanied by social changes in human attitudes.
Engineers and economists frequently forget or are even unaware of this: it is not enough to optimize for single values such as CO2 output or square kilometers of forest preserved. By doing only this, we risk simply setting aside more natural resources so that they can be used even more efficiently in the future once the ever-growing consumerist machine needs them!
The only safeguard against this sort of myopic, economic thinking is for people to actually experience nature and develop a healthy attitude towards nature.
This needs to go beyond using nature as a form of entertainment or enjoyment, even though enjoying nature is the first step. Our attitude needs to be one of mutual care for nature. Just as we've developed some societies that care for other human beings, so too should we have empathy for other organisms and care for them. Ultimately, this would involve a complete radical change of our economics to move away from short-sighted economic gains such as the increase of the Dow Jones index.
However, we're very far away from such a general attitude. For example, the Geneva Convention signed in 1925 prohibits the use of chemical and biological weapons in warfare. The motivation for such a treaty is clear: dying of chemical weapons is a horrible fate. So why do we still openly endorse the use of chemical weapons against other, nonhuman organisms? Genocide is internationally rebuked and yet we endorse genocide against other species, as illustrated by the thousands of extinctions we have caused.
We have such attitudes because we treat nonhuman organisms as commodities rather than life.
Conclusion
The only remedy to this situation is to promote not just conservation based on numbers, but attitude change as well, which ultimately would involve a return to a more holistic and natural relationship with nature. This attitude change, or even more accurately perhaps, a change of spirituality, must involve reconnecting with nature and reforming society away from its human supremacy built upon violent economic gains.
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