Whether Human Beings Have any Ethical Responsibility on the Protection of Plant and Animal Lives - Essay Example

Environmental Spaces The world that we live in now is changing fast making habitats to be transformed and modified. Natural transformations tend to take place at a steady pace, usually causing minimal effect on human beings. However, the challenge is that when these transformations take place at a fast rate, human beings do not get a chance to react and feel comfortable about the new situations. This can bring about hazardous effects, and for this grounds, quick habitat loss is the main cause of the species endangerment. The strongest factor in quick habitat loss is people, and nearly every region in the world has been impacted by human activity mostly in the past one hundred years. While the effect of human activity on plants and animal life is unquestionable, people have consistently questioned whether human beings have any ethical responsibility on the protection of plant and animal lives. Humans have an ethical responsibility to protect the environment because their activities have the potential to cause a negative impact on the environment. Ideally, it can be challenging to determine the effect that human beings have on plants and human life. However, the challenge comes only in the identification of how human beings affect specific species since the role played by man in the extinction of plant and animal life is unquestionable. To begin with, human beings have been responsible in the cutting down of forests to build industries as well as to provide energy for those factories. The cutting down of these forest has led to scarce rainfall since traditionally these forests helped in breaking the clouds hence leading to rainfall. The biggest challenge is that once these forests are cut it might take a long time to re-grow them since they need many centuries for them to grow to their full capacity. In addition to this, these forests acted as havens of some animal species and their destruction has left them without any place for them to live. Recently, there have been numerous cases of poaching which has led to the extinction of some rare animal species. Although governments have been trying to act as though they are protecting these animals, their efforts have been half hearted and they have therefore borne very little fruits. If the current loss of forests goes unabated, then many animal and plant species will be left in jeopardy (Michael 51). Apart from the direct human actions that have led to the extinction of various animal and plant life, human beings have also carried out indirect activities that have led to adverse effects on animal and plant life. To begin with, increasing burning of fuels has led to the depletion of the ozone layer, which has in turn brought adverse plant and animal life. Due to global warming, the tropics have been disappearing at a fast rate leading to a scenario where the plants and animals living in those areas have found it hard to survive and have therefore become extinct. For this reason, human activity accounts for the highest rate of animal and plant extinction in the universe. The issue of whether human beings are responsible for plant and animal protection has been the subject of discussion among philosophers for a long time. Today, an average of 20 million species live in the global ecosystem with some of them surviving for almost 3.5 billion years. However, the present rate at which these species are becoming extinct has had scientists worried. Researchers point out that the extinction rate is currently at 100 to 1000 times as compared to that of background rates. The rising need to protect both solitary and entire ecosystems has brought the issue of international biodiversity loss to the front of global politics triggering the formation of international treaties for this very particular purpose. As the discussions by politicians and scientists regarding the efforts to preserve plants and animals from human destruction, the question of whether man is morally obligated to carry out this protection has arisen. While people realize the need for them to protect the environment, there has been reluctance for this to be implemented since most people do not see the real effect of their actions and there are no laws that compel people to act responsibly towards the environment (Yamin 529) Ideally, stewardship as a justification of ecological health places man in charge of biodiversity. The proponents of this theory point out that as the vanguards of the world we have an ethical duty to protect it from harm especially the harm that is instigated by human actions. Instead of just looking at ourselves as passive players in the ecological system, this theory posits that man is an active player who has the power to fix the issues arising within the system. The motivations behind the stewardship claim has its genesis from the value claims that has been placed on man regarding the protection of the environment. Whether these value or rights claims are valid has been a major cause of debate among environmentalists (Yamin 529). Majority of the environmentalists believe that there is an intrinsic value in all biodiversity. In this aspect, biodiversity refers to every plant, animals as well as the human beings themselves. By placing an intrinsic value to everything regardless of their size, it therefore follows that the higher being has the responsibility of protecting the lesser species from extinction. Instead of man seeing himself as a higher being in the ecosystem, he should view himself as a custodian of all that is under him. This calls for the saving of all those plants and animals that are at the brink of extinction as well as to ensure that no more species become extinct because of human actions. For this reason, in order to save and ensure that the continual of plant and animal species that are facing extinction, then man should place on himself the responsibility of protecting the ecosystem where they are found. However, this view has always been countered by the proponents of the survival for the fittest theory, which claims that each species is supposed to fight for its own survival. According to these theorists, a lion cannot be said to be wrong simply because it hunts down and kills a deer for its own food. This is because the lion needs deer for survival just the same way that the deer needs the grass to survive. If the lion is wrong in eating the deer, then man can be said to be wrong in using the animals and plants around him. For these people, man needs the animals and plants to survive just in the same manner that the lion needs the deer to guarantee its survival (Gould 25). The biggest challenge with the above view however is that while the concept of survival for the fittest is supposed to strike a balance in the ecosystem, the manner in which man has been going about the destruction of animals and plants around him cannot be said to be balanced. According to scientists, human beings have been given the role of intergenerational justice that ties them to the responsibility of protecting the animal and plant life. In this sense, intergenerational justice implies that it is the duty of one generation to see to it that the future generations are well taken care of and hence the need for the contemporary conservation methods. As it concerns the conservation debate, there is a general agreement that the older generations have an ethical duty of ensuring that the earth’s natural capital for the coming generations is upheld. According to the rights-stewardship claim, the current generation is merely borrowing the resources at its disposal from their children who are yet to be born. Following this line of reasoning, the current generation is therefore supposed to hand over the resources at their disposal to the next generation in a better state than how they found it. Given that the next generation is dependent on the available resources for their survival, then it is only reasonable that the current generation has a responsibility of ensuring that when the children finally come, they have something to inherit. This steward debate therefore implies that man has a moral responsibility of ensuring that the plants and animals around him are safeguarded for their real owners who are the coming generations. For long, scientists have been warning that the rate at which the ecosystem is being destroyed may leave nothing to be handed down to the coming generations. In reality, man is in no way threatened by the biodiversity around him and this means that he has no any justifiable reason to destroy it. Instead, the dominion those human beings have been accorded means that they have the responsibility of looking after the animals and plants under their care and not act as though they are competing against it. There is no denying that human beings are at the center of the wanton destruction of both plant and animal life that is being witnessed in the world today. Man or his activities has been responsible for the destruction of forests which acted as river sources and the natural habitat for numerous species of animals and plants. The destruction of these forests has seen the animals and plants that depended on those forests for their existence become extinct. For long, human beings have justified their actions by claiming that they owe nothing to biodiversity and they should not be seen as having any protective role. However, human beings should realize that they have a moral responsibility to protect the plants and animals around them since they are only custodians of these resources for the future generations. This means that they should hand the resources down to these generations in the same or even in a better state than they found them. Reference Gould, Stephen. This View of Life: The Golden Rule - A Proper Scale for our Environmental Crisis. Nat Hist 9: 2011, 24-30. Print. Michael, Martin. Is It Natural to Drive Species to Extinction? Ethics & Environment 10(1): 2005, 49-69. Print. Yamin, Farah. Biodiversity, Ethics and International Law. Int Affairs 71(3) 2009:529-546. Print. Read More