Humanitarian Intervention in Nature Crucial Questions and Probable Answers
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Humanitarian Intervention in Nature
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Humanitarian Intervention In Nature
deaths very shortly after birth are catastrophic. The section at hand – on
crucial question (1) – has argued that the hypothesis that many wilderness
(sub-)populations are in fact catastrophic is reasonably probable, or at the
very least much less improbable than is standardly assumed. If...
Humanitarian Intervention in Nature
Crucial Questions and Probable Answers
Adriano Mannino
Executive Director, Foundational Research Institute, Basel
manninoadriano@gmail.com
Donaldson, Sue, and Will Kymlicka. 2011. Zoopolis: a Political Theory of
Animal Rights. New York: Oxford University Press. 352 pp. $ 29.95. ISBN 978-
0199599660
Sue Donaldson’s and Will Kymlicka’s Zoopolis: a Political Theory of Ani-
mal Rights is a very laudable effort to move the animal rights discussion
beyond the issue of animal individuals’ basic moral status. The authors
consider the question of our overall obligations towards the class of ani-
mals that can plausibly be viewed as our co-citizens; towards the class that
may be considered “liminal”; and last but not least, the class of wilderness
animals in nature, whose communities should enjoy prima facie sovereignty
rights – as a way of preventing and correcting for impermissible human
action towards them. The latter also raises the question of humanitarian
intervention in nature, which is potentially very consequential and should
therefore be accorded significant epistemic resources: Could natural animal
populations be (akin to) failed states? And if so, what is the prevalence of
failed states in nature? Donaldson and Kymlicka seem to admit the nor-
mative possibility of humanitarian intervention in nature but deny obliga-
tions to try and intervene on a large, systematic scale, mainly on empirical
grounds.
In what follows, I will outline the crucial questions, normative and
empirical, which the issue of humanitarian intervention in nature hinges on.
Crucial questions are questions which, depending on how we answer them,
can radically alter the practical course we take 1. If we get a crucial question
wrong, our actions are likely to be radically sub-optimal or even counter-
productive. In addition to outlining the crucial questions for humanitarian
1
I owe this concept to Nick Bostrom, who introduces it on his website: http://www.
nickbostrom.com.
, Adriano Mannino
intervention in nature, I will attempt to identify their probable answers on
the basis of arguments that are likely to have dominant force. I will argue
that Donaldson and Kymlicka are right about the normative possibility of
humanitarian intervention in nature but empirically probably wrong about
the non-existence of an obligation to try and help wilderness animals on a
large, systematic scale.
The proposed crucial questions are: (1) What is the empirical fact of
the matter about how good/bad the situation of wilderness populations is?
Are they “competent” or rather “failed states”? (2) If we were to try and
intervene in nature, what is the probability of us actually (greatly) improv-
ing the situation vs. making it (much) worse? (3) To what extent should we
accept obligations to help? Or: How (non-)consequentialist should we be?
Crucial question (1): What is the empirical fact of the matter about how
good/bad the situation of wilderness populations is? Are they “competent” or
rather “failed states”?
This question is crucial because there is broad agreement that the
situation of wilderness populations being (sufficiently) catastrophic greatly
increases the probability that an obligation to systematic humanitarian
intervention exists. Donaldson and Kymlicka accept “overwhelming catas-
trophes” (e.g. by meteor impacts or devastating viruses) as a “triggers for
intervention” (p. 182) and are sympathetic to the view that “there are times
when humans should insert themselves into the equation, altering nature’s
course in order to prevent catastrophe” (p. 290) and thus oppose the “let
nature be” doctrine.
When we think of wilderness animals, we tend to imagine cases of ani-
mals that may have decently autonomous, long and happy lives. These are
strongly “K-selected” animals (MacArthur and Wilson 1967; Pianka 1970),
i.e. species with few offspring that are taken good care of. Unfortunately,
K-selected species do not seem to be representative of the animal popula-
tions in nature: species following the “r-selection” strategy are much more
prevalent (Ng 1995; Horta 2010a). They bet on the numbers and have many
more offspring than will survive to adulthood. If populations remain roughly
stable (as they eventually must, given finite resources), then only one child
can survive per parent individual – but r-selected animals have hundreds,
thousands or even millions of offspring during their life-time. The conse-
quence is that almost all of them have lives that can roughly be characterized
as follows: birth; struggle over the way too scarce resources against the way
too numerous siblings; gruesome death very shortly after birth. In his paper,
Animal Liberation and Environmental Ethics: Bad Marriage, Quick Divorce,
Mark Sagoff quotes the following passage from Fred Hapgood:
Relations – 3.1 - June 2015
http://www.ledonline.it/Relations/
108
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