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The Wave of Trees

By Antony van der Ent

Tropical rainforests are the most diverse terrestrial ecosystems in the world, it is the earth’s epicentre for biodiversity.
The superficial abundance of life here is home to more than 50% of the 10 million species of plants and animals
known on the planet. The ecosystem contains more than 15.000 different flowering plants and 1000 species of
vertebrates alone. But the end is in sight; the ecosystems of Borneo are being plundered, mostly by multinationals. Only
a third of the rainforest that existed in 1985 was left in 2005 according to WWF. According to the World Bank’s
predication Borneo's lowland rainforests in Kalimantan will be lost by 2010 and predicts an uncertain future for the
remaining forests in other parts of Borneo. At its current it is estimated that 80 to 90 percent of tropical rainforest
ecosystems will be completely destroyed by the year 2020. The obscene forces of global marketing turns rainforest into
garden furniture, plywood and paper. The atrocity called palm oil industry supplies shampoo, cooking oil and fuel for
export overseas. The biodiversity-desert of palm oil plantations replaces rainforests at immensely scale now, and as for
fuel; its motivation is ludicrous. Cut down the world’s most biodiverse ecosystem, mostly growing on the worlds largest
carbon sink, to replant it with palm trees and ship the product 20k-kilometre to make fuel for cars in the Western
industrialised world. This is obviously precipitating ecological disaster on a grand scale. The global destruction of
rainforests is the main force behind a current species extinction rate unmatched in 65 million years. The forests of
Borneo are a ‘free plunder-zone’ where virtually no place is off limits to the logging and palm oil industry. The plunder
of Borneo’s rainforests is driven by natural resource competition for control over the abundant natural resources. The
rainforest of Borneo is therefore rapidly going towards its inexorable death. Human impact on ecosystems anywhere on
the planet has resulted in a largely irreversible loss of biodiversity. We entered undeniably the Holocene extinction
spasm now. Worldwide biodiversity is declining, but no-where as fast as in Borneo. The forces of conservation and
consumption clash violently here; it is the battleground between mind-boggling biodiversity of rainforests and the
creeping monoculture of palm oil estates. The destruction of rainforests in Borneo has global relevance; it is the most
important place on earth for conservation now. Almost all biodiversity of Borneo hangs in the balance and the next
decades will determine the fate of thousands of species unique to Borneo.
On the other side of the South Chinese Sea, on the Malaysian peninsula, the local NGO Regional Environmental
Awareness Cameron Highlands has recently launched a campaign there to try to save what little is left of the tropical
rainforest in Peninsular Malaysia. The add is called ‘Wave of Trees’. The add together with an old Indian prophecy
that is used alongside it, are attempts to cause a paradigm shift in public perception.

Borneo is in a state of resource anarchy now. This leads to the ‘tragedy of the commons’. That is a
situation in which individuals, groups or actors act independently in self-interest on a shared finite
resource, will ultimately destroy the resource altogether, while it is clear that it is not in the long term
interest for anyone to happen. Unrestricted access and unlimited demand for a finite resource
ultimately dooms the future benefits of the resource through over-exploitation. The reason for this
to happen is that the benefits of resources exploitation accrue to individuals or groups, each of
whom is motivated to maximise the exploitation of the resource, while the actual costs of the
exploitation are borne by all those to whom dependent on the resource. Of course those who are
dependent on the resources, in this case rainforest, are a much wider community (including but not
limited to local communities and ecosystems), than those who are exploiting it, mostly
multinationals. The Cree Indian prophecy goes:

Only after the Last Tree has been Cut Down,


Only after the Last River has been Poisoned,
Only after the Last Fish has been Caught,
Only then will You find that Money cannot be Eaten.
At first glance, and likely to be grasped by most people looking through Modernist eyes, the lyric
reflects realisation that natural resources are not infinitive. When trees, rivers and fish are spoiled
and depleted, humans will bear the consequences of their greed. The wise use of natural resources
should be able through technology to counteract depletion of trees, rivers and fish. The term
sustainable development comes to mind. But this is not sustainable development in the true sense (a
development that does not compromise existing values, but rather serves to harmonise the
relationship between humans and nature, for current and future generation). Sustainable so
perceived is nothing more than the perversity of multiple-use of resource extraction that masks as
sustainable development, but is in fact merely sustainable in economic terms (i.e. supplying goods
indefinitely).

Through Modernist spectacles the natural world is perceived a machine, mere matter-in-motion
that can be ultimately controlled. Humans dominate over nature, or at best have stewardship based
on a mechanistic view of utility and efficiency. This is the field of economics and its false belief that
the natural environment are resources, only to be valued in monetary terms. So perceived trees,
rivers and fish are ecosystem services at the disposal of man. That the only value trees, rivers and fish
posses is the money that can be made by utility. Trees, rivers and fishes are commodity goods that
can be disposed of. That is not a matter of moral concern, but of expediency, as with property that
can be economically valued or de-valued. The relationship with ecosystems for most is strictly
economic, entailing privileges (resource extraction) but no obligations (preserving and refraining
from destruction). Modernists, like almost the entire developed West, value the natural environment
in what sense trees, rivers and fishes are good to us, more narrowly in terms of dollars.

Today the Judeo-Christian world view in the West harnesses the despotic view of commercial
application of the principle that ‘nature is there for humans to use however they please’. In Genesis
1:28 God says to Adam and Eve: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have
domination over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’.
Nature is therefore generally conceived mere a consumption good, an economic commodity for
unlimited exploitation, perhaps only limited by enlightened self-interest when constrains are met.
Though mainstream, this is not the only possible view, some traditions, especially in modern
Romanticism, even declared wilderness as the closest one could come to God, because it was ‘virgin
from human hands’, who because of the original sin, could never be entirely good, axiologically
pristine nature must be good. They claimed that the closest thing on earth to the original work of
God is pristine wilderness. Destroying trees, rivers and fish is equivalent to altering God’s original
intent. So taken pristine nature the highest manifestation of nature and a ‘window opening into
heaven, a mirror reflecting the Creator’. Some other minority traditions within Christianity also
provide contrary views to the mainstream tradition steeped in anthropocentrism, viewing humans as
‘custodians’ having ‘stewardship’ over nature, but ultimately benevolent. The more benign
anthropocentric approach follows from here with concern for future generations.

Value to humans (anthropocentric valuation) may have many forms, beyond just mere instrumental
virtues. Borneo is the world’s greatest storehouse of genetic diversity; a giant species and gene base
with all kinds of (future) benefits and uses in medicine, technology and food. Rainforests can be of
great aesthetic joy and pleasure. They can be a source of food and timber as well as a homeland for
various groups of indigenous peoples. The Millennium Ecosystems Assessment classifies all the
benefits (values) people obtain from ecosystems (such as rainforests) in Ecosystem Services. They are:
Supporting (primary production, soil formation, nutrient cycling), Provisioning (food, fresh water, wood
and fibre and fuel), Regulating (climate regulation, flood regulation, disease regulation and water
purification) and Cultural (aesthetic, spiritual, educational and recreational) aspects of human life.
Together they are the Constituents of well-being (security, basic material for good life, health, good
social relations leading to freedom of choice and action).
Nature understood here is not valued for itself or in itself however. The anthropocentric view,
looking through spectacles where humanity appears to be distinct from nature, though widespread,
is narrow and unjustified.

Anthropocentrism, the perceived gravity-centre of humans in the worldwide state of affairs, is the
source of environmental degradation and the human induced loss of biodiversity. Anthropocentrism
exists by the virtue of the acceptance of the human/nature schism. This perceived bifurcation of
humans for nature is a western invention. People in Western have developed a sense of being
separate from nature. Aristotle maintained that plants exist for the sake of animals and animals
merely exist for the sake of humans. If then we are right in believing that nature makes nothing without some
end in view, nothing to no purpose, it must be that nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man’.
Nature-is-a-resource only. This initiated the conceptual division between humans and nature. The
Enlightenment later brought with it domination over nature. Nature as a frame to humans.
According to Cartesian metaphysics nature is the subject of management for humans, and can (at
least in principle) be controlled entirely. Nature as ecomachine to be exploited by technology and
scientific knowledge. This obviously leaves ample space for valuing nature for itself. That quickly
leads to the conclusion that nature (in my terminology trees, rivers and fish) only has instrumental
and utilitarian values.

The Wave is a well-known Japanese mythical symbol denoting self-destruction. The force of the
wave destroys itself ultimately. The force of cutting down trees, poisoning rivers and depletes fish
stocks, ultimately destroys the destroyer. We destroy ourselves, not (only) our natural environment
(on which we depended), but our essence; who we are, what we are, where we come from and where
we are going to. As in, the often misunderstood, words of Henry David Thoreau, ‘In wildness lies the
preservation of the world’. It is not wrong to deplete and destroy the natural environment out of our
own unwisely considered interests, it is morally wrong. Two basic arguments can be put forward to
defend this claim. The first that it is wrong because a sustained environmental with natural
resources is essential for humans now and for future generations. This echoes resourism. Secondly and
more profoundly, it may be put forward that it is wrong because nature has somehow values on its
own irrespective of its value to humans. The distinction between the first argument, which is
instrumental or utilitarian and the second, which is on basis of intrinsic value, is of importance.
Instrumental value is the value of trees, rivers and fish as means to further some other ends,
commonly utility to humans. Trees, rivers and fish have their own reasons for being, quite apart
from humans. Intrinsic value is thus the value as ends in themselves. It is commonly agreed that
entities possessing intrinsic value generates moral duty to protect it or at least refrain from harming
it. Thus to hold an environmental ethic is to hold that non-human beings have intrinsic value; it is to
hold that non-human life are not simply of value as a means in furthering human ends, and in the
sense of value that exists independently of human valuations. The debate for the unilateral
acceptance of intrinsic values in nature is however not won (yet), but it is clearly inadequate to value
trees, rivers and fish by the presence or absence of economic advantage. The renewed ‘kinship’ with
nature is now more difficult and more important than ever because societies are drawn away from,
rather than toward, an intense consciousness of nature.

The solely economic approach in valuing rainforests is inadequate and does not do right to non-
marketed utilitarian and instrumental benefits (that clearly outweigh short-term economic benefits
from logging rainforest and conversion) and does not consider moral worth of nature. Economics
(marketed worth of nature) determine to a very large extent its future. But it is a fallacy to belief that
only economic concerns are adequate or even acceptable. Most resource management decisions are
most strongly influenced by ecosystem services entering markets; as a result, the non-marketed
benefits are often lost or degraded. These non-marketed benefits are often high and sometimes more
valuable than the marketed ones. One basic weakness in a conservation system based wholly on
economic motives is that most plants and animals have no economic value. Yet these components
are vital parts of ecosystem. To quote Aldo Leopold: ‘…: a system of conservation based solely on economic
self-interest … tends to ignore, and thus eventually to eliminate, many … that lack commercial value... It assumes,
falsely, I think, that the economic parts of the biotic clock will function without the uneconomic parts’.

Humanity and nature cannot be divided. Humans and their environment are one thing, not two,
and people, as all of nature is immersed into this single biotic system. Anthropocentrism can thus be
explained by the inevitable human perspective distortion. Anthropocentrism makes values
ultimately dependent on human valuations, which is too narrow as vision. But acknowledging that
nature possesses values independently of the valuations of human valuers not necessarily dismisses
instrumental values. Humans and nature can be not meaningfully separated on evolutionary or
physiological arguments. In the post-Darwin age we have come to face our evolutionary place in the
ecosystem called earth, together and on par with trees, rivers and fish. The natural environment
provides the ontogeny, the evolutionary context in which Homo sapiens as a species arose. Darwin’s
evolution theory broke down the conceptual biological wall that drew a cleft between humans and
nature. Humans are not separate from nature, but part of the enveloping evolution. Darwin writes:
‘If we choose to let conjecture run wild, then animals, our fellow brethren in pain, diseases, death, suffering and famine
- our slaves in the most laborious works, our companions in our amusement - they may partake of our origin in one
common ancestor - we may be all netted together’. He continues: ‘… that is humanity to the lower animals, seems to
be one of the latest moral acquisitions… This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise
incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and widely diffused until they are extended to all sentient
beings’. Aldo Leopold combined Darwin’s evolution ethics with the community-ecosystem concept of
science and so the Land Ethic was born. That nature is a community is the basic concept of ecology,
but that nature is to be respected is an extension of ethics. The biotic community here is understood
to include humans, as ‘ordinary citizens’. It contributes significantly to our life quality to
conceptualize and identity oneself with the natural world in relational terms. There is no
need to resort to mysticism and to leave the path of rational thought here. Such extensionalism does
entail expanding our moral horizons and enrich our cognitive perceptions. There is nothing
unnatural (i.e supernatural) or unrational about appreciating ones place in the larger earthly whole.
Such intelligible realism likely provokes a sense of kinship, relatedness, a sensibility if you like, or at
least understanding and sympathy, leading, to paraphrase Darwin, to tender and widely diffused altruism
to nature. Developing such sympathy and altruism towards nature is well within human capacity of
identification and empathy.

It is, of course, clear that animals and plants pursue their own good, they are subject-of-a-life and
goal-oriented. It is equally clear that such a goal-in-life is not as complex, profound and clothed with
intellect and conscience as humans. Humans are likely unique to have dreams, hopes and desires,
and self-reflection on their capacities. It might be that humans are the only moral agents on earth,
but most certainly not the only moral patients. A moral agent is someone who is capable of making
moral judgements, while a moral patient is something, which is capable of being benefited or
harmed. A moral patient has therefore moral standing and should be considered with respect in
ethical decision-making. It should be easy to understand that certain things are good or bad to an
orang-utan, for instance. Again, perhaps, much simpler goals, the case can be made that orang-
utans and well as elephants and birds would like to stay alive in good physical condition, well fed,
reproduce, without stress or pain. In other words, they are ends in themselves. Something is an end
if it has intrinsic value, when it is good in itself, for its own sake, the contrast is with instrumental
value that is value as a means to some other end or purpose. Plants and animals have self-direction
and self-regulation. Their interests can be both fulfilled or be harmed, whether they can reflect or
reason on this or not. Having more complex goals in life (going from insect to primate for instance)
entails perhaps higher differentiated values. Besides that natural entities, whether individuals or
ecosystems have intrinsic value in virtue of their independence from human purpose. This extends
also to ecosystems as with rainforests. Rainforests are incredibly complex environments composed of
tens of thousands of species, that are all somehow, related to each other in one grand community.
When illustrating ends in themselves, consider the fact that rainforest takes up to 500 years to
develop to maturity and maintains its state for millions of years. Within this environment tens of
thousands of animals and plant species follow their course for life in a myriad of millions upon
millions depended interactions.
This doesn’t grant them the same moral standing as humans though, as should be obvious by now,
but it means that considering them as mere things, objects, as only a resource, is a too narrow a vision.
Acknowledging the intrinsic value of nature, at least in principal, means that using them mere as
means to further humans end carries moral consideration. Indeed it is therefore our moral
obligation to respect nature by refraining ourselves from perusing utilitarian interests in at least some
areas.

Accepting that nature contains intrinsic value means acknowledging that such entities have positive
and negative rights in relation to humans. Intrinsic value of nature does not as such entail any
obligations on the part of humans. It does not entail necessary positive obligations per se; i.e. active
preservation, outside altruism towards nature, but it does entail negative obligations; i.e. refraining
from doing harm. So although strictly humans do not have a positive obligation towards nature, for
instance to replant trees, humans do have a negative obligation (respect or moral consideration)
towards nature in the sense of doing it no harm, for instance refraining from logging down
rainforests. One could put forward that the autonomy of nature grounds a strong duty of non-
interference toward them.

Ethics rest upon the premise that the individual is a member of a community. A community itself is
a collection of individuals who engage in co-operative behaviour. An ethic is nothing more then a
code of conduct designed to ensure co-operative behaviour among the members of a community.
Humans are in this sense a member of the earthly community at large. To enable such extension of
moral, the concentric circle of moral consideration has to be re-drawn. In the past we have
extended moral and legal standing to humans of differed races, women, the retarded, slaves and
even corporate bodies, that previously were only valued as mere things to be used or disposed off.
This changes the ‘perceived’ place of humans in the ‘earth community’. Nature is thus not a
commodity at our disposal, but a community to which we belong. This necessitates inter-relational
respect (among humans and societies) and intra-relational respect (among nature) and respect for
the holistic whole (of the larger biotic community). Consider a conceptual ‘tree’. Humans are like
leaves, which relate to other leaves (people), to the branch (humanity), but also to the moss on the
bark (animals and plants) and to the soil (the system Earth) that the tree grows upon. As a matter of
moral guidance we should strive to lessen our impact upon ecosystems, to quote Leopold’s adagio: ‘a
thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it
tends otherwise’. We can add biodiversity here. This maxim is an extension of moral concern and does
not replace human ethics. It is not an uncontested practicality but a moral framework in which we
should operate. For this to take effect, we must internalise a profound consciousness that nature is
not to be understood as a commodity good but has intrinsic value. We must recognise that humans
are a member of the extended community called ‘Earth’. Significantly the disrespect and lack of
understanding of the community leads to major issues for humans; including hunger, over-
population, inequality and energy-shortage.
From a holistic world-view (i.e. a world-view not acknowledging the separation between humans and
nature) and appreciating intrinsic valuation of nature, humans can inhabit all places, also wilderness
areas, and ‘use nature to their ends’, but they do not need to, perhaps out of considerations of
respect for nature some places (rainforest) are better left alone, or even on utilitarian – instrumental
grounds (places that do not have support any human benefits do not need to be inhabited, or places
that are better left alone because then they better serve utilitarian benefits).

In the very long term (planetary time scale) the damage being done to rainforests doesn’t really
matter, indeed none of the human influence on earth including climate change would matter,
because on evolutionary time-scale the ecosystem will always recover. We cannot reason or moralise
beyond our own timeframe on earth. Because degradation to ecosystems caused by humans can
only be considered in the time frame of humanity, this degradation should be recoverable in the
same time frame. Understanding our dependence and realising that nature is far greater than our
own being, should humble our attitude and weaken human arrogance and hubris toward nature.

As one species, numbering six billion, humans are capable of altering the fate of millions of other
life forms, indeed the whole system called Earth. In fact a fully 40% of the entire world’s net
primary production goes directly to sustaining Homo sapiens. As a result it is expected that the world
will lose over 20% of its species in the next decades. Although most people in the Western world
would like to see tropical rainforests with its mega fauna as elephants, tigers and orang-utans
survive, their commitment to extreme consumerism in effect express that they can just as well do
without. While most people may be remorseful and powerless to the logging of rainforest, they easy
buy hardwood products such as that beautiful set of garden furniture. Is there then no practical
solution to this crisis? I think there is, but people are just not willing to give up the money. Ban the
export of tropical timber and halt the seemingless unlimited demand to palm oil. In the words of
Aldous Huxley in a letter to his brother, Julian, then Director General of UNESCO:

‘Meanwhile I come to feel more and more that no system of morals is adequate which does not include within
the sphere of moral relationships, not only other human beings, but animals, plants and even things. We have
done quite monstrously badly by the earth we live in, and now the earth we live in, with its soil eroded, its
forests ravaged, its rivers polluted, its mineral resources reduced, is doing so badly by us that, unless we stop
our insane fiddling at power politics and use all available knowledge, intelligence and good will to repair the
harm we have done, the whole of mankind will be starving in a dust bowl within a century or two. People
still seem to believe that there is poverty in the midst of plenty, when in fact there is only poverty in the midst
of growing poverty – and all through our own fault, through not treating nature morally.
‘If we don’t do something about it pretty soon, we shall find that, even if we escape atomic warfare, we shall
destroy our civilization by destroying the cosmic capital on which we live. Our relation to earth is not that of
mutually beneficial symbiosis; we have become the kind of parasite that kills its host, even at the risk of
killing itself ’.

If we can successfully establish intrinsic value as a moral consideration then the preservation of
nature becomes a moral issue. This would turn the ethical decision-making around. Instead of
environmentalists defending nature to be spared by development, those destroying nature would
need to defend themselves. When the intrinsic value of nature gains moral standing in the public
domain, anyone logging a rainforest for its timber would need to demonstrate that something
possessing intrinsic value (the rainforest) has to be sacrificed for the sake of something merely of
economic value (timber). The paradigm would thus be shifted, the burden of proof lies at destructor
of nature, not at the defence of environmentalists. This brakes the Wave on the shores of morality,
certainly in the reach of human intellect.
Malaysia is well underway to destroy so much of the natural environment, in such little time, that
this realisation may come too late.

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