Abstract
In this article, I apply the environmental or expanded capabilities approach to species and examine whether species as wholes can have capabilities and what are the implications if they can. The examination provides support for the claim that species as evolutionary groups can possess capabilities. They have integrity, which refers to the functionings that enable the self-making and development (evolvement) of species, and it is conceptually possible to identify capabilities that essentially enable or contribute to species integrity. One central capability for species can be identified from conservation literature: adaptive capacity, the ability of species to react to environmental changes by self-regulative evolution. After constructing the main argument that species can have capabilities and that they possess the capability to adaptive capacity, I shortly expound on the implications of these claims. It turns out that there are at least three different ways to apply the notion, and that the claim ‘species have capabilities’ does not entail that species are necessarily recipients of justice.
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Notes
For the initial articulation of this approach, see Schlosberg (2007). In this article, the ECA refers to the capabilities-based approach to ecological justice. This differs from the capabilities-based approach to environmental justice (for that application, see e.g., Holland 2008, 2012; Heyward 2011; Schlosberg 2012b). The latter emphasises the instrumental importance of environmental conditions for human flourishing. Some proponents of the capabilities-based approach to environmental justice reject the idea of capabilities-based ecological justice.
Yet, the boundaries of some organisms are also very difficult to define: consider mushrooms, for example, or the microbial systems that inhabit human bowels.
Admittedly, in some rare cases the anthropogenic eradication of a species might not be regrettable: consider a harmful virus whose eradication could protect human health and overall diversity of life forms.
Schlosberg links integrity and flourishing by stating that maintaining integrity is a precondition for flourishing (Schlosberg 2007, 136–137). This does not mean that to have integrity, a being should be one that can flourish. Hence, it can be left open here whether talk about species flourishing is meaningful, although it can be noted that in our everyday language and even in some academic literature species do flourish.
This expansion does not deny the standing of individuals. In this paper, however, I focus on the species as wholes, not their individual specimens.
This should not be confused with Nussbaum’s capability to bodily integrity, which is an entitlement of humans and sentient nonhumans against violence, abuse, and harmful treatment that prevents a being from flourishing in a way characteristic of its kind (Nussbaum 2006, 395–396). The capability to bodily integrity exemplifies a case where there is a vague line between a capability and a functioning realised by it: bodily integrity also refers to a state of intactness. The fact that Nussbaum names bodily integrity as a central capability for nonhumans also amounts to the rebuttal of a recent argument that denies capabilities from nonhumans because they do not make deliberative choices between opportunities (Melin and Kronlid 2016): bodily integrity is not an issue of making deliberative choices.
The ECA departs here from Nussbaum’s human capabilities approach where dignity has, at least earlier, been central in defining which entities are recipients of justice (see Bendik-Keymer 2014).
It must be noted that this notion of integrity is much broader than the one used in the discussions of ‘species integrity’ in molecular ecology, where species integrity essentially relates to their genetic and morphological integrity.
This may appear to be in tension with the emergence of new species: what is the entity that regulates itself in the process of speciation? I do not see this to constitute problems to the notion, though. Even in the ‘emergence’ of new human beings, it is hard to say to whom the related autonomy should be attributed, to mother or the unborn child.
It can be left open at this point whether the case that species have integrity actually convincingly justifies their standing in the community of justice.
Phenotypic plasticity refers to the capacity of a certain genotype to exhibit different phenotypes (appearances) in different environments.
I leave it open whether species may also possess some other capabilities.
Consequently, a ‘Noah’s Ark’ strategy (protecting the species from extinction by keeping minimum viable populations in zoos or like reserves) is insufficient for protecting the species integrity. In such conditions, a species has already lost its capacity for self-regulative and self-maintaining processes (including adaptive capacities).
I hold that adaptive capacity as a central capability is common to all species as wholes. This leaves it open whether there would be a single set of capabilities that fits all species. Differing capabilities may emerge, for example, on the basis of different sexual reproduction methods, for they also define the ways in which genetic exchange and adaptation can occur.
In Nussbaum's account the potential of overlaping consensus over central capabilities justifies them.
In this paper, the term extinction refers mainly to anthropogenic extinctions, for they are relevant for ecological justice (justice in human–nature relations).
It has also been pointed out in this paper that such a notion of integrity would not lead to the inclusion of (say) lava flows or waterdrops in the community of justice.
This departs from Nussbaum who attributes political theorists the role of a theorist–mediator ‘above’ citizens, rather than of a theorist–citizen who offers carefully constructed theoretical doctrines for citizens to be endorsed (or rejected) (Robeyns 2016, 410–411). Capabilities-based approaches allow for employing either of these roles.
The third strategy leaves room for different answers on the normative implications of the species integrity. Although species are not considered as recipients of justice, they may be (and likely are) morally considerable anyway.
A related question is whether the ‘identity’ of a given species is lost in such practices and, particularly in the case of sentient beings, whether the individual well-being is promoted or hindered by genetic manipulation. For example, a manipulation method that would help save a species but make its future specimens suffer at the individual level, is unlikely permissible from any viewpoint.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank for Markku Oksanen, Mikko Yrjönsuuri, the 2016 Hitotsubashi University HDCA conference participants, Marion Hourdequin, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on this paper. This research has been partly conducted with funding from The Kone Foundation.
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Kortetmäki, T. Can Species Have Capabilities, and What if They Can?. J Agric Environ Ethics 31, 307–323 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-018-9726-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-018-9726-7