Ecosystems Can't Truly Malfunction, Essayist Argues
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- The concept of ecosystem "function" is a human projection, the author argues: the Amazon absorbs carbon without aiming to, and standards like climate stability or abundant fisheries reflect desires we impose on a nature that has no intrinsic ends.
- The biodiversity and ecosystem function (BEF) research agenda, which crystallised in the late 1990s, scaled up into UN projects and national "natural-capital accounts" that assign monetary value to pollination, flood regulation, and carbon storage.
- Causal role theory, developed by philosopher Robert Cummins, treats function as a component's contribution to system capacity, but philosopher Ruth Millikan notes it cannot distinguish genuine functions (a heart pumping blood) from incidental effects (a heart's thumping noise).
- A 2021 study found the Amazon rainforest has lost its capacity as a carbon sink and now emits more than it absorbs, alongside declining tropical coral reefs and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) at risk of collapse this century.
- Aldo Leopold's mid-20th century call to expand moral community to include "the land" — soils, waters, plants, and animals — shifted conservation away from 19th-century game-law resource management toward broader ecological thinking.
- The US Endangered Species Act era of the 1970s-80s focused on individual species like the spotted owl and snail darter, prompting researchers to argue this approach overlooked more consequential ecosystem "services" like food production, clean water, and drought mitigation.
- Philosopher Karen Neander uses penguins as an example: their apparent land myopia isn't a defect but an optimisation for underwater focus where they feed — a function that emerged without intention or design.
Why it matters: If "ecosystem function" is a conceptual bridge from ecology to economics rather than a property of nature itself, then conservation built on natural-capital accounting — assigning monetary value to pollination, flood regulation, and carbon storage — rests on an unexamined assumption. The essay makes that assumption visible just as the Amazon flips from carbon sink to carbon source and Amoc faces collapse this century.
