History and Philosophy of Science

Biodiversity has played a central role within conservation biology over the last thirty years. How the concept should be understood, however, is a matter of ongoing debate. In this paper, we defend what we call a classical pluralist conception of biodiversity. We begin by introducing two arguments against the importance of biodiversity, both of which have been put forward in a recent paper by Carlos Santana (2014). The first argument is against the scientific usefulness of the concept of biodiversity; and the other is against its value as a target of conservation. Neither of these objections is successful against the classical pluralist conception of biodiversity. As we show, the umbrella concept of biological diversity is important from a scientific perspective, because it plays important explanatory roles within contemporary ecology. We then argue that although biodiversity cannot capture all valuable features of the natural world, this does not show that we should abandon it as a target of conservation. Instead, it might show that biodiversity should be conceived as just one of many grounds of value associated with ecosystems. This is consistent with concluding that protecting biodiversity should remain a central target of conservation efforts.