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Ethical Questions for Resource

Managers

Gordon H. Reeves

Daniel L. Bottom

Martha H. Brookes

Technical Coordinators

Pacific Northwest Research Station

Forest Service

U.S. Department of Agriculture

General Technical Report PNW-GTR-288

January 1992
Abstract

Reeves, Gordon H.; Bottom, Daniel L; Brookes, Martha H., tech. coords. 1992. Ethical questions for resource

managers. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-288. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,

Pacific Northwest Research Station. 39 p.

The decisions of natural resource managers are not simply scientific issues but involve fundamental questions of

ethics. Conflicts in fisheries management, forestry, and other applied sciences arise from social and economic

factors that affect natural resource values. Administrative processes, cost-benefit analyses, and various

management "myths" have been constructed to avoid responsibility for difficult value-based decisions. Through

these and other means, individuals and organizational systems tend to "filter" information to minimize conflict.

The duty to inform the public of the alternative consequences of management actions remains a basic ethical

obligation of the resource professional. This series of essays discusses conflicting values of resource

management; the moral responsibilities of resource managers toward natural ecosystems, the public, and future

generations; and the obligation of resource professionals to sustain for public scrutiny an open and honest

debate about critical resource issues.

Keywords: environmental ethics, natural resource managers, the Land Ethic, Aldo Leopold, fisheries

management, resource economics.
Foreword

The wonderful books of Joseph Campbell and his

memorable interviews with Bill Moyers remind us of the

importance of myth. We moderns smugly think of myth

as a pre-scientific mode of thought. But Homo sapiens

is as innately mythic an animal as linguistic, social, and

tool-using. We moderns have myths of our own.

Those for whom a particular myth lives never think of

their beliefs as "myth" but simply as how the world is.

Read Homer. For him and his contemporaries, the

heroes at Troy were men of flesh and blood and their

glorious deeds the simple facts of history. And the gods

and goddesses were as real as lightning, war, and love.

In all of Homer, not the shadow of a doubt diminishes

the certain existence of either the superhuman heroes

or the supernatural divinities.

As soon as doubt's shadow is cast, myths are revealed

for what they are. Until recently, the myth of value-free

science has reigned. Ren6 Descartes, "the father of

modern philosophy." divided reality into two

domains-the objective and subjective. In the former

reposed all physical facts; in the latter, all of our beliefs,

sensations, and values. Because science was supposed

to ascertain the facts, then science, like its object of

inquiry, physical nature, was proclaimed by its

practitioners to be morally neutral and value-free.

But even the purest of scientific research is necessarily

motivated by values. The pursuit of knowledge for its

own sake is motivated by the value we ascribe to

knowledge-the belief that it is good and worth having,

even if it cannot be technologically applied. Applied

science-practically by definition-is fraught with values.

Yet until recently, resource management could proclaim

with Olympian arrogance that because its policies were

scientific, they were objective and value-neutral. The

other fellow had values. And because values "are

subjective, those values were merely personal

preferences. Thus, scientific management placed

itself beyond all ethical criticism, indeed beyond

criticism of any kind, concerning ends. All debate

could thus be safely confined to technical ways and

means; about such matters, professional, expert,

scientific opinion prevailed.

Today, we recognize the myth of a value-free

science for what it is: a myth. This volume of essays

begins with the assumption that values pervade

science and calls us into a serious dialogue about

the ends of resource management as well as the

means. More deeply, it exposes the very concept of

"resources" to be value-laden and demands that we

reassess the culture of applied science and the

world view that applied science has long taken for

granted.

This is a remarkable set of essays. They are direct,

brief, and accessible. They are also inspiring,

candid, and critical. They should be required

reading for anyone in the field of resource

management-whether student, professor,

technician, or administrator.

Being awakened from our dogmatic slumbers is

painful. And to be disabused of our cherished myths

is to be set adrift in a sea of ideas with no terra

firma in sight. Indeed, we are living in a time when

the old myths are debunked and no new

enlightenment has crystallized to take their place.

But it is also exciting. A rare moment of great

opportunity and responsibility is given to our

generation, for it falls to us to be the architects of
tomorrow's world view. Aldo Leopold is much quoted in

this book, as elsewhere. Here are some lines penned by

Edwin Arlington Robinson that Leopold thought

worthwhile to repeat:

Whether you will or not

You are a King, Tristram, for you are one

Of the time-tested few that leave the world,

When they are gone, not the same place it was.

Mark what you leave.

J. Baird Callicott

Professor of Philosophy

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Stevens Point, Wisconsin H
Contents

1 Introduction

Daniel L Bottom

5 A Pilgrim's Progress from Group A to Group B

Edwin P. Pister

11 Management for Sustainable Fisheries:

Some Social, Economic, and Ethical Questions

Jim Lichatowich

19 Ethics and Credibility of Applied Science

David A. Bella

33 The Moral Uses of Future Generations

Ernest Partridge

Introduction

Daniel L. Bottom

DANIEL L BOTTOM is a research fishery biologist,

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Corvallis,

Oregon 97331.

In the last decade, natural resource professions such as

fisheries and forestry have become intensely focused on

techniques for resource protection, production, and

harvest management. To be sure, technology has a

major role in determining the human capacity to use

and conserve natural resources. But technology cannot

decide how natural resources ought to be managed.

Resource management is much more than an

engineering problem. It requires ethical judgments

about how human beings are related to the rest of

nature. The values that guide this interaction, rather

than the techniques by which it is consummated,

ultimately will decide the quality of resource

management and the standards by which the results are

measured.

Ethics is a system of moral values that governs the

conduct of individuals and groups of individuals. Some

of the most important ethical issues for natural resource

professionals are contained in the many answers that

might be given to the question: "As a resource manager,

what are your moral obligations and whose interests do

you serve?" In 1989, the Oregon Chapter of the

American Fisheries Society organized a symposium to

address this question. These papers, adapted from

talks given at the symposium, describe several ethical

concerns from the perspective of the natural resource

professional:

• What are resource professionals' responsibilities to

future generations?

• What are our responsibilities to the ecosystems we

"manage"?

• What are our responsibilities to the public we serve

and to the organizations we represent?

Perhaps one of the most important ethical problems that

society and we, as instruments of public policy, face is

the definition of our responsibility to future generations

Some form of obligation to posterity has been

recognized throughout the history of conservation

legislation in this country. Today, this obligation is

institutionalized, for example, in the National

Environmental Policy Act that directs agencies of the

Federal government to "fulfill the responsibilities of each

generation as a trustee of the environment for

1
succeeding generations," Similarly, Oregon Revised

Statutes require that "fish and wildlife of the state shall

be managed to maintain optimum benefits to present

and future generations of Oregonians." These

statements notwithstanding, the future generations are

not with us to see to it that their interests are served by

the decisions of today. But the voices of multitudes of

present-day resource interests can be heard loud and

clear No easy formulas, no simple quotas tell us how

we are to distribute resources between generations, fn

an essay entitled "What Is the basis of our responsibility

to posterity?," Garrett Hardin (1981) describes the

problem in cost-benefit terms. How do we balance

costs and benefits when the time lag between the two is

considerable? That is. if the benefits come now but the

costs are not incurred for a generation or more, or H

present generations must bear the costs for future

benefits. The answers are not contained in the Oregon

Revised Statutes or any other State or Federal laws or

statutes. But these questions are at the heart of all fish

management activities-harvest regulation, habitat

protection and enhancement, hatchery programs, gene

conservation efforts, and so on.

Perhaps even more fundamental than our responsibility

to posterity is the question of our responsibility to

nature itself. That we somehow accept such a

responsibility is implicit in the term we use to describe

our profession-"resource management." How we

choose to define the "resource" we "manage" may have

more to do with ethics than with science. What social

and natural resource values should be the object of our

management?

The early period of the conservation movement in this

country stressed the use of natural resources for the

benefit of human beings. Gifford Pinchot, who served

as Chief Forester fn the Theodore Roosevelt

administration, expressed this philosophy (1973):

The first principle of conservation is development,

the use of the natural resources now existing on

this continent for the benefit of people who live

here now.

Although economic use remains a dominant factor in

resource management today, many believe that the

resources and processes of nature have intrinsic value

aside from any utilitarian purpose, Do all living

organisms have moral value, a right to exist? Do rivers,

lakes, and streams? Do ecosystem functions? And do

these values and rights exist whether or not these

organisms, features, and functions directly serve

economic or spiritual interests of humankind? As some

suggest, do these nonpersons have legal rights

themselves for which resource professionals should be

held accountable (Stone 1974, 1988)? And how do we

reconcile the technological capacity to dramatically

change the Earth with the burden of responsibility to

protect an ecosystem of which human beings are also a

part? In 1970. Aldo Leopold suggested

When we see land as a community to which we

belong, we may begin to use it with love and

respect....That land is a community is the basic

concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved

and respected Is an extension of ethics.

The ethical implications of a narrow definition of the

resource become evermore apparent when, as is

generally true in nature, the cost of intensive

management of one species is the decline or loss of

others.

Resource technicians, scientists, and administrators also

face important ethical questions about their professional

responsibilities. Although natural resource managers

have no Hippocratic oath, some common values surely

can define the ethics and obligations of the profession

to society. One of the most important of these is the

duty to provide information needed for society to make

ethical choices about the use or protection of its natural

resources. Because our science and technology have

the capacity and we have clearly demonstrated the will

to alter the course of all life on this planet, our

responsibility to inform, even in so specialized a field as

fisheries, cannot be taken lightly. In his essay on "The

Ethical Basis of Science," biologist Bentley Glass (1965)

wrote

The scientist cannot make the choice of goals for his

people and neither can he measure and weigh values

with accuracy and objectivity. There is nonetheless

an important duty he must perform, because he and

he alone may see clearly enough the nature of the

alternative choices.... It is the social duty and function

of the scientist...to demand of the people, and their

leaders too, a discussion and consideration of all

those impending problems that grow out of scientific

discovery and the amplification of human power.

In the political arena of resource management, the

professional obligation to inform may come in direct

conflict with the desire of resource agencies to

2
streamline decisionmaking and, particularly, to minimize

public controversy. The responsibilities of science to

society and of an individual to the organization she or

he serves raise important ethical questions. We believe

the answers are fundamental to the function of all public

agencies charged with managing natural resources in a

democratic society.

References

Glass, B. 1965. Science and ethical values. Chapel Hill,

NC: University of North Carolina Press, p. 101.

Hardin, G. 1981. Who cares for posterity? In:

E. Partridge, ed. Responsibilities to future generations.

Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books: 221-234.

Leopold, A. 1970. A Sand County almanac with essays

on conservation from Round River. New York:

Ballantine Books. 295 p.

Pinchot, G. 1973 (original publication in 1910). The fight

for conservation. Seattle, WA: University of

Washington Press. 152 p.

Stone, C. 1974. Should trees have standing?: Toward

legal rights for natural objects. Los Altos, CA: William

Kaufman, Inc. 102 p.

Stone, C. 1988. Earth and other ethics: The case for

moral pluralism. New York: Harper and Row. 280 p. •

3

A Pilgrim's Progress From Group A to Group B1

Edwin P. Pister

E. PHILIP PISTER Is a retired fishery biologist, California

Department of Fish and Game, Bishop, California

93514.

Conservationists are notorious for their dissensions

.... In each field one group (A) regards the land

as soil. and Its function as commodity-production;

another group (B) regards the land as a biota, and

its function as something broader (Leopold 1947).

Conservation is a state of harmony between men

and land (Leopold 1947).

"Rest! cries the chief sawyer, and we pause for breath."

My eyes fell upon the brass plaque, recently fastened to

a large boulder near where the "good oak" had once

stood (not far from "the shack"), and waves of nostalgia

and emotion washed over me as my mind quickly

retraced the events that led me here, and the role

played by A Sand County Almanac in my evolution as a

professional steward of natural resources. I

remembered vividly that spring day in Berkeley,

36 years earlier, when A. Starker Leopold suggested

that his undergraduate students in wildlife management

read "this group of essays that Dad wrote." In 1949, I

was unable to absorb much of Aldo Leopold's

philosophy of conservation. It first had to be tempered

by more than a decade of experience and exposure in

the field.

Following the usual variety of moves, jobs, and

agencies that accompany the earlier portion of most

careers in fish and wildlife research and management, I

settled, in the late 1950s, into a position as a fishery

biologist with the California Department of Fish and

Game in the eastern Sierra and desert regions of the

State. My graduate studies in limnology had already

given me considerable knowledge of the geography of

the area and an insight into the biological characteristics

of many of the waters falling under my jurisdiction. With

but one assistant, I was relegated the responsibility for

managing nearly a thousand waters extending from the

crest of the Sierra Nevada eastward to the Nevada line,

and ranging from the top of Mount Whitney at

4418 meters to the floor of Death Valley at nearly

100 meters below sea level. Management, ideally,

meant responsibility for the perpetuation of all species

of aquatic organisms-including fishes, amphibians,

invertebrates, and even reptiles-and their habitats.

1

 Adapted from: J. Baird Callicott, ed. Companion to A

Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays.

Published with permission of University of Wisconsin Press,

Madison, Wisconsin.

5
The management programs I had inherited from my

predecessors reflected the philosophies of the times.

They were technologically "state of the art," and they

were designed to meet the desires and demands of a

public hungry for outdoor recreation after World War It.

They were, in short, model "utilitarian" management

procedures.

Fleets of tanker trucks from huge and highly efficient

trout hatcheries did a superb job of meeting angler

demand, despite the obvious fact that each planted

trout was an "artificial ized" trophy. But the program sold

licenses (the department's primary income source),

which increased funding for the program, which grew

ever larger. And the larger it grew, the greater became

the bureaucratic intransigence. It was popular, it kept

us fully employed, it fueled the tourist economy, and it

was heresy to think otherwise.

Most California fishery biologists scurried about,

robotlike, in a heroic effort to increase catch per

angler-effort. With one exception, the golden trout

(Salmo aquabonita), the game fishes in my district were

introduced or exotic species. Nothing was being done

to assure the preservation of the native life forms

included within my stewardship. No one even knew

what they were! No one had realty given the matter

much thought. Virtually no attention was devoted to the

study of the basic components of the biota. We were

living in a make-believe world. The California

Department of Fish and Game, as with most State fish

and wildlife agencies of that era, was spending its

resources painting the building while the foundation

crumbled. Although my department as a whole seemed

pleased with what was going on, I felt a strange

foreboding and knew, somehow, trial tn'ings had to

change. During the summer of 1964,1 returned to A

Sand County Almanac and reread "The Land Ethtic" at

leisure and in depth.

More than a decade of field experience gave Aldo

Leopold's words new meaning. Within the principles

that he so eloquently set forth, I found a rational basis

for approaching and solving the problems that

perplexed and seemed to overwhelm me so completely.

I felt I had within my grasp the basic components for

making management programs address the entire biota,

not simply the superficial popular demands that had so

fully and frivolously consumed my time.

A Sand County Almanac clearly articulated my

intimations that, to be realty meaningful and to serve the

long-term interests of the biota (and therefore the

people), any management program worthy of the name

must begin with the integrity of the land and water.

Using this idea as a foundation, the resource manager

can then build the pyramid upward, adding to this base

the flora and fauna, and then build further to

accommodate, finally, the species of economic and

political interest I had toyed with this possibility, but up

to that point I had been unable to muster the courage

necessary to buck the system. Leopold's grit, as well

as his clear purpose and simple means, seemed to be

the very thing I needed to gain this courage. I was

especially motivated by his wry observation that

"nonconformity is the highest evolutionary attainment of

social animals" (Leopold 1947).

The universe as a whole ts governed by the complex

interaction of immutable and elegant physical laws. As I

read through A Sand County Almanac, a set of natural

laws, equally elegant and immutable, governing

biological systems became evident. The futility of trying

to circumvent these laws for any appreciable length of

time in an effort to achieve short-term economic and

political goals became even more apparent to me.

The early 1960s found the nation just entering the initial

throes of a concerted conservation movement. The first

(and very inadequate) Endangered Species Act was not

passed until 1966, and the National Environmental

Policy Act was several years away. Financial support

for innovative programs did not exist, and administrative

and public backing were almost totally lacking. The

land ethic was not yet abuilding. But, to me, for the

department to be spending the great majority of its

fisheries budget planting put-and-take trout and

conducting meaningless creel censuses, while we had

no dear understanding of the indigenous biotic

community. seemed unconscionable. When our

pressing need to conduct biological surveys was

brought to the attention of top administrators, even

those with advanced degrees responded with either a

blank took or a remark to the effect that the public and

the legislature would never allow license money to be

spent collecting "bugs or suckers," some of which we

were in fact trying to eradicate to provide better angling

(Kellert 1985).

Adding insult to injury, the department had

commissioned several fine wildlife scholars and

administrators (headed by Starker Leopold) to prepare a

plan to guide the department's activities until 1980. The

principles of the plan were ecologically sound and, had

6
they been followed, would have done much to change

the status quo. Politics and tradition often speak much

louder than logic, however, and we stumbled on as if

the plan had never been written.

An interagency meeting was called in Death Valley in

April 1969 to discuss the status of the native fishes of

the Death Valley hydrographic area (the Pleistocene

drainages entering Death Valley originate in both

California and Nevada). I learned there that my

colleagues in the Nevada Department of Fish and Game

(now the Department of Wildlife), National Park Service,

Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Fish and

Wildlife Service faced a similar dilemma. Recognizing

that at least a decade could be expected to elapse

between recognition of a problem in the field and the

mustering of full financial and administrative support

from government in an effort to solve it, we realized that

we would have to move independently of bureaucracy.

In effect, "we moved underground. Had we waited for

official support, I am absolutely certain that at least

two, and probably five, fishes in two genera would now

be extinct. We would have lost the last remaining

individuals of the entire genus Empetrichthys and, as

their habitats were destroyed, we no doubt would

likewise have lost an unknown number of invertebrate

species and plants (Miller and Pister 1971, Pister 1974).

And by "lost," I mean extinct-gone forever-in the words

of Alfred Russel Wallace (1863) "uncared for and

unknown."

The obvious futility of continuing to blindly repeat

conventional management procedures caused me to

look elsewhere for long-term solutions to problems that

were growing worse with each passing day, and with no

relief in sight (Pister 1985). Unfortunately, the

biologically sound concept of conducting basic

inventories of native species was hampered because the

habitat integrity and species composition of the Owens

and Walker river systems had already been significantly

altered during the early part of the twentieth century.

Even so, "The Land Ethic" could serve to establish the

ideal that we should be striving to achieve: habitat

integrity and an adequate and complete complement of

native species. A Sand County Almanac literally charted

our course: "A land ethic of course cannot prevent the

alteration, management, and use of these 'resources,'

but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and,

at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural

state" (Leopold 1947).

A change could be felt, although our management and

research programs remained utilitarian. Actually,

"economically or politically expedient" would better

characterize them because enlightened self-interest, the

hallmark of utilitarianism, if carried to its logical limits

must lead to a policy of basic resource integrity and

protection.

With the blessings of an understanding supervisor, I

kept the wolves away from the door with the

fish-hatchery system while I began to substitute species

inventories for creel censuses. The initial survey

revealed that three of the four fishes native to the

Owens River system were either endangered or of

indeterminate status (Pister 1985). Eventually, informal

species-recovery plans and similar nonconsumptive

management programs were initiated, along with a plan

designed to further self-sustaining wild trout. Major

efforts were devoted to environmental protection.

Additional efforts to "educate" the general public and to

win the political support necessary for the perpetuation

of an environmentally sound program of resource

management have been undertaken. This new

approach appears to be gratifyingly successful and has

not, as was feared, provoked significant adverse public

or political reaction.

Among the most profound of Leopold's observations is

the following: 'To promote perception is the only truly

creative part of recreational engineering" and its

corollary: 'The only true development in American

recreational resources is the development of the

perceptive faculty in Americans. All of the other acts we

grace by that name are, at best, attempts to retard or

mask the process of dilution" (Leopold 1947). To

assume for even a moment that government can

continue for long in a specific direction, irrespective of

the righteousness of its cause, without the support of

the people is the height of naivete. the concept of

public perception therefore becomes paramount.

Abraham Lincoln supposedly observed that

understanding a problem constitutes half of its solution.

I have come to believe, on the basis of my experience,

that if A Sand County Almanac would constitute the

humanities component-the values and philosophy-of

fish and wildlife management, it would provide a sound

moral basis for drafting an ecologically responsible

agency approach. Unfortunately, few of our colleges or

universities provide undergraduate courses in

environmental philosophy or ethics. Most agency

biologists, if they gain an interest in the values and

7
goals of resource management at all, do so through

insight derived from experience

especially because doing so would violate new laws

resulting from the Gorge project.

Although less so than In past years, that Leopold's A-B

cleavage remains alive and healthy within the fish and

wildlife profession should be no great surprise. The B

types, who regard the land as an integrated biota,

mostly remain in academe. possibly because they are

primarily oriented toward research and theory, The A

types, who regard the land primarily as a vehicle for

producing a harvestable crop, abound in fish and

wildlife agencies because a love of hunting or fishing

may have provided the major motivation for their entry

into the profession, and their thinking very often has not

progressed much beyond that,

The significance of this fact is often overlooked by

analysts seeking to understand the history and evolution

of the Nation's fish and wildlife programs. The A types

were quick to discover that the license buyers who

funded most agency programs were also

overwhelmingly of the A persuasion. Obtaining the

legislative, administrative , and financial backing

consistent with economically popular programs then

became a simple matter. And this backing explains why

the very basic and ecologically essential nongame

component of the biota was almost totally neglected in

favor of economical valuable species (Pister 1976). To

paraphrase Leopold here, we in the agencies fancy that

game species support us, forgetting what supports

game species. Obviously, this support is manifested in

healthy land and a healthy, intact, total biota: soil

plants, invertebrates, nongame and game species alike.

At this writing, the A-B cleavage is still strongly

represented throughout fish and wildlife agencies. The

A component is often given strong support by politically

appointed commissioners, who then receive the

accolades of the sportsmen's groups responsible for

their appointments.

My transition from an A to a B philosophy in turn

resulted in a major shift in my professional emphasis. In

1959, the Los Angeles Department or Water and Power

applied to the Califomia Division of Water Rights for a

permit to divert: several miles of lower Rock Creek-one

of the eastern Sierra's most heavily used recreational

streams, and an excellent fishery--into Crowley Lake to

produce additional hydroelectric power from the Owens

River Gorge power plants. As much as Los Angeles

had already dried up several miles of the famous Gorge

fishery during the early 1950s, the thought of losing

additional stream mileage was unacceptable to me,

The very rough studies we conducted to prepare for the

court proceedings constituted one of the early

predecessors of the instream flow technologies in

current use throughout the West They were adequate

to convince the court, however, in what turned out to be

the first water battle that the California Department of

Fish and Game had ever won, and the first that the city

of Los Angles had ever lost

My motivation then was almost entirely to preserve a

fishery for an exotic trout species. I would work ever

harder now to accomplish the same thing, but primarily

to preserve the basic stream ecosystem and its

component flora and fauna. The brown trout is now

part of this ecosystem, but by no means the most

important part. I am consciously guided by Leopold's

summary precept: "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"

{Leopold 1947).

Twenty years later, after the "energy crunch" of the

1970s, Congress passed legislation encouraging

entrepreneurial development of small hydroelectric

projects. This legislation has placed in great jeopardy

the entire stream system of the eastern Sierra NevadaSo far. we have been successful in saving these

habitats, and the motivation again derives from

Leopold's maxim. This precept is directly applicable

and effective in virtually any problem that a resource

manager may confront - whether to introduce an exotic

species, to build a road near a fragile habitat, or

whatever.

In 1985, for example, the Federal Energy Regulatory

Commission decided to conduct an assessment of

potential small hydroelectric developments in the Owens

River Basin, We knew from our own analyses that

88 percent of our stream mileage downstream from

USDA Forest Service Wilderness boundaries had

already been affected by diversions of one type or

another, and about 25 percent of the hydroscape no

longer existed. To further disturb this tremendously

valuable stream resource to produce a miniscule

amount of electric energy seemed categorically

unethical, as measured by Leopold's cardinal principle.

And it should not require a study of any sort to prove it

(Pister 1979). When I related this opinion to a project

official, however, his response chilled me. "When you

8
start talking about morality and ethics, you lose me." I

find such a philosophy (or lack of it) guiding a high

public official frightening, to say the least.

Another illustration of a practical application of

Leopold's precept of biological integrity occurred in the

late 1970s when the National Park Service examined its

policies and decided that because trout are not

indigenous to the lakes of the High Sierra, they would

no longer be planted in park waters. The intent here

was to be consistent with a basic park policy to

preserve the integrity of natural biota, although most

ecological damage resulting from trout planting had

occurred years before when the first trout introductions

were made. The Department of Fish and Game

opposed the new park policy primarily because it

constituted revocation of a historic State management

procedure that had never before been questioned. I

sided with the Park Service against my own agency

because the Park Service policy was clearly more in line

with the fundamental directive of the land ethic.

Later, we reached an ethically sound compromise. We

are not planting lakes in the National Parks, but the

Forest Service, which administers High Sierra waters

outside the park boundaries, has adopted an

ecologically realistic and politically acceptable policy:

continue to plant lakes that have been planted

historically, but do not plant lakes hitherto barren of

trout.

The concept of biological (environmental) integrity is

comprehensive. As Leopold avers, "A land ethic

changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of

the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It

implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect

for the community as such" (Leopold 1947). Moreover,

Homo sapiens will benefit in the long run from a healthy

biota. This benefit should provide enough of a utilitarian

rationale to elicit political support for ecologically sound

decisions. We, too, are part of the system, and if

something is good for owls, trout, and lizards, it will, in

the final accounting, be good for us as well.

Aldo Leopold lamented the failure of the American

public to recognize the need for, and to implement, a

land ethic. If he now were to look down upon us.

"perchance in some far pasture of the Milky Way," he

would likely be gratified by what has happened in the

environmental field since he left us. The environmental

movement of the 1960s and 1970s was in no small

measure inspired by his philosophy. The National

Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act,

Marine Mammal Protection Act. Clean Water Act. and

similar laws -passed by the States were also in no small

measure inspired by his philosophy. The publication of

this volume itself contributes to the growing awareness

of what he modestly called "conservation," and I predict

that A Sand County Almanac will continue well into the

future as one of the major forces shaping the Nation's

environmental policies.

We see an increasing emphasis on nongame species by

States. In California, for instance, a Natural Diversity

Data Base, conducted in cooperation with The Nature

Conservancy, is drafting an inventory of the State's flora

and fauna. Although the program is embryonic at this

stage, and small in comparison with traditional

programs, progress in this direction is heartening. A

strong effort by top administrators to achieve funding

sources other than hunting and fishing licenses, and

earmarked for the management of nongame wildlife,

reflects the idea that wildlife resources are an amenity

for all the people, and not just the property of

consuming users. Additional efforts to acquire key

habitats and to coordinate interagency activities are also

underway.

A credit to Aldo Leopold is today's increasing concern

for those creatures that share a common habitat with

us. More and more scientists and lay persons alike

conceptually integrate species with habitat in our efforts

to preserve biological diversity (Williams and others

1985).

Some people might debate the practicability of the land

ethic for contemporary fish and wildlife management

programs. I would urge them to remember that Aldo

Leopold was a great naturalist and wildlife professional

whose humility allowed him to probe an unspectacular

local ecosystem, to be informed by what he found

there, and to record it with a beauty and clarity of

expression unadorned by needless sophistication. His

wisdom was forged by a lifetime of field experience and

reflection on his own mistakes, and by his careful

husbandry of a small parcel of poor land.

A loathing of freeways and asphalt has kept me in the

field for more than 35 years now. The solitude of sand,

sage, and pine has allowed me to hear "a few notes" of

that "vast pulsing harmony-its score inscribed on a

thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plant

and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the

9
centuries" (Leopold 1947). And the lessons of the

backward Sand County farm have allowed me to

approach and solve the management problems

presented both by an ever-increasing and demanding

public, and those who would degrade or destroy the

habitat that is basic to the recreational resource.

Because I know that the land ethic works well in the

field, I have gained much satisfaction in recent years by

relating my management experiences to students in

places ranging from Nuevo Leon in Mexico to British

Columbia in Canada, encouraging them to avail

themselves of the wisdom born within the soil, waters,

and winds of the Sand Counties. Learning that a

nucleus of environmental philosophers was similarly

engaged took me to a conference at the University of

Georgia in October 1984. Not long after, J. Baird

Callicott invited me to lecture to resource management

classes and to participate in Earth Week activities at the

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. My honorarium

consisted of a visit to "the shack." While dinner was

being prepared there, I stole away by myself and stood

beside the "good oak" with Starker and his dad. There

was really no reason to speak; I had long ago been well

taught. Then, through the clouds of the early evening, I

heard goose music as a single pair of honkers set their

wings over the Crane Marsh and swung low over the

Wisconsin River. Somehow I knew they would always

do this, and I glanced for a moment into eternity. Like

the "Round River," I had come home.

References

Kellert, S.R. 1985. Social and perceptual factors in

endangered species management. Journal of Wildlife

Management. 49: 528-536.

Leopold, A. 1947. A Sand County almanac. New York:

Oxford University Press. 295 p.

Leopold, A. 1953. Round River. New York: Oxford

University Press. 8 p.

Miller, R.R.; Pister, E.P. 1971. Management of the

Owens pupfish, Cyprinodon radiosus. in Mono

County, California. Transactions of the American

Fisheries Society. 100: 502-509.

Pister, E.P. 1974. Desert fishes and their habitats:

Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.

103: 531-540.

Pister, E.P. 1976. A rationale for the management of

nongame fish and wildlife. Fisheries. 1: 11-14.

Pister, E.P. 1979. Endangered species: costs and

benefits. Environmental Ethics. 1: 341 -353.

Pister, E.P. 1985. Desert pupfishes: reflections on

reality, desirability, and conscience. Environmental

Biology of Fishes. 12: 3-12.

Wallace, A.R. 1863. On the physical geology of the

Malay Archipelago. London. Journal of the Royal

Geographical Society. 33: 217-234.

Williams, J.E.; Bowman, D.B.; Brooks, J.E.; Echelle,

A.A.; Edwards, R.J.; Hendrickson, D.A.; Landye,

J.J. 1985. Endangered aquatic ecosystems in North

American deserts with a list of vanishing fishes of the

region. Journal of the Arizona-Nevada Academy of

Science. 20: 1-62.

10
Managing for Sustainable Fisheries: Some Social, Economic, and Ethical

Considerations

Jim Lichatowich__________________________________________

JIM LICHATOWICH is a fishery biologist, Point No Point

Treaty Council, Jamestown Klallam Tribe, Sequim,

Washington 98382.

Fisheries management is basically two allocation

processes: managers allocate the resource among

contemporary users and between this generation and

future generations. Managers make a direct allocation

of the fishery resource to the sport, commercial, and

Native American fishermen. In addition, through various

legal and administrative procedures, managers

participate in allocating fisheries resources to

agriculture, energy-producing utilities, industries such as

timber, and so forth. Anyone harvesting or destroying a

part of the resource-whether by fishing, turbine

mortalities, or unscreened irrigation ditches-does, in

effect, receive an allocation. A less obvious allocation

of the resource goes to those who reduce habitat

productivity by poor logging and agricultural practices

or by discharging toxic wastes.

When allocating the resource to contemporary users,

fishery managers often make decisions that determine

the quality and quantity of resources available to future

generations. Although management goals often imply a

concern for long-term sustainability of the fisheries

(Gulland 1977), platitudes about sustainable

management are rarely implemented (Regier and

Baskerville 1986). I am not aware of any monitoring

program in Oregon designed specifically to measure the

performance of allocating fishery resources between

generations; a possible exception is the Elk River study

(Nicholas and Downey 1989). Oregon, for example,

does not record the loss of fish stocks, identify stocks in

trouble, or monitor the loss of genetic diversity in

hatchery stocks. Recent attempts to establish a program

to carry out these functions (Oregon Trout 1989) were

resisted by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

(ODFW) (personal communication, Bill Bakke, May 10,

1989). Whether or not you agree with the view

presented by Ernest Partridge (this volume) that we

have a moral obligation to future generations, the

Oregon Legislature has made the management of

fishery resources for present and future generations the

law (Oregon revised statutes 496.012 and 506.109).

Allocating fishery resources to contemporary users often

boils down to a choice between immediate economic

gain and long-term sustainability of a fish stock. This

choice exposes different values held by the public about

its fishery resource. The result can produce severe

conflict. Avoiding these conflicts and removing them

from public view by labeling them technical or scientific

questions (Erman and Pister 1989) is tempting, but

value-based conflicts over resource management must

be clearly identified as such, and they must be resolved

11
through informed debate (Erman and Pister 1989). The

role of technical experts, the professional fisheries

biologists, is to ensure that the debate over conflicting

values is carried out at the highest level of

understanding by agency administrators, fish and

wildlife commissions, and the public. It is our

responsibility because we possess the knowledge to

evaluate the outcomes and risks of management

alternatives (Bottom, this volume).

This paper briefly describes some social and economic

factors leading to value-based conflict in resource

management. I also describe mechanisms that

managers use to avoid their ethical responsibility to

resolve these conflicts through informed debate.

Public values in a pluralistic democracy like ours are

often difficult to interpret, particularly for natural

resource management, because in this area we seem to

have a split personality. America has many advocates

for conserving wilderness landscapes, maintaining wild

animal populations, and protecting the air and water

quality of urban environments (Douglas 1965). National

surveys show a majority of Americans strongly value

wildlife and are willing to make economic sacrifices to

protect wildlife and its habitat (Kellert 1981). Fish and

wildlife agencies have responded in recent years to

changing public values and attitudes by initiating

nongame management and watchable wildlife programs.

Over the past 15 years or so in Oregon, I have seen

what I believe to be a significant increase in the number

of citizens involved in managing their fishery resource.

Public involvement ranges from active participation in

river basin planning, harvest allocation, and sport fishing

regulations to less exciting issues such as the budgets

of fishery programs. The Salmon and Trout

Enhancement Program (STEP) is an example of the

depth and breadth of the public's interest in their fishery

resource. Volunteers from STEP work thousands of

hours each year on fishery projects. Strong public

involvement is showing up in other resource

management agencies such as the USDA Forest Service

(for example, in the Adopt-a-Forest Program).

The other side of the coin is the strong support

Americans give to utilitarian individualism and the

pursuit of narrowly defined economic efficiencies. The

right of individuals to maximize their profits through their

own initiative with minimum interference from the

Government is a fervently held belief. Individuals trying

to maximize the efficiency of their economic activity

often do so at a cost to others (Okum 1975). The costs

to public resources (fish, for example) from individuals

exploiting private resources (grazing or logging) have

traditionally been ignored (McEvoy 1986). Recently,

however, these costs have increased to the point where

reconciliation of public and private interests has been

attempted (see Timber, Fish and Wildlife Agreement

achieved in Washington State).

Individualism has been emphasized by national leaders

recently, although it is not new to our national

character. The French sociologist, Alexis

de Tocqueville, studied America and Americans in the

1830s and saw individualism as a strong part of our

national character. He believed that a people

expressing such strong individualism will not only forget

their ancestors, but they will also forget their

descendants (Bellah and others 1985). Think about that

in light of the past national administration. Individualism

was given strong support ("get the government off the

backs of the people" was a popular slogan), but at the

same time we increased the national debt at a record

rate-a debt we seem to be willing to pass on to our

descendants. Our lack of concern about the debt we

will pass on to future generations is matched by our

apparent lack of concern about the condition of the

resources they will inherit from us.

The values described above reflect the difference

between conservation as defined by Aldo Leopold

(1966) and Immediate economic gain; between thinking

of the future and only of the present; and between

thinking of the people downstream from us in time and

space and thinking only of our needs. I believe the

conflict Is, at its root. a conflict In economic systems.

Anyone who participates In making any decisions In

fisheries has probably heard the phrase "economics Is

the bottom line." This statement usually is intended to

justify a decision to favor short-term economic

consideration over long-term sustainability of the

resource. Basically the statement is true: economic

considerations are the bottom line. The question that

results in conflict Is not whether economic

considerations take precedence, but which economic

considerations take precedence.

The words economics and ecology are derived from the

same root word, from the Greek word oikos, meaning

household. The common origin is appropriate because

ecology can be thought of as a form of economics, a

12
natural economics. Traditional economics (what I call

industrial economics) focuses on human beings; the

study of human use and allocation of resources

(Anderson 1977). Ecology focuses on ecosystems: the

study of use and allocation of resources by elements of

the ecosystem, including human beings. The two

economies, however, have fundamental differences

(table 1). Their operating principles foster different

values, and those values conflict when managers must

choose between short-term financial gain and

sustainable fisheries management.

An important difference in the natural and industrial

economies is their energy source. The industrial

economy as we know it has a short-term horizon unless

other forms of cheap energy are discovered before

fossil fuels become scarce and expensive (Hall and

others 1986). In addition, the side effects of our use of

fossil fuels are causing global environmental problems,

such as the greenhouse effect. Hatchery programs that

use large, centralized production facilities are designed

to meet the standards of the industrial rather than the

natural economy. Large-scale use of monocultures and

chemicals in agricultural production have accelerated

soil loss and may be undermining the genetic basis of

sustainable agriculture (Carter and Dale 1974, Jackson

and Bender 1984). In fisheries, managers have barely

begun to ask questions about the importance of

genetics to the long-term conservation of stocks

(Allendorf and others 1987). We are losing stocks of

salmon and steelhead (Oregon Trout 1988) at the same

time we are intensifying artificial production (Bouck

1986), which will promote hatchery monocultures. The

industrial economy is linear and extractive, but the

natural economy operates in renewable cycles. This

difference leads to emphasis on production in the

industrial economy and emphasis on reproduction in the

natural economy (Berry 1987). The differences in table

1 are but a sample of the differences that can be

derived from a survey of the two economies. And the

differences have real consequences.

Table 1—Some differences in Industrial and natural economies

Industrial economy Natural economy

Fossil fuel supplies the primary source of energy

Large, centralized production facilities (economies

of scale and monocultures)

Emphasis on production (linear extraction of resource,

continuous growth)

Improvements and changes are external (humans dominate,

shape the course of diversity, determine scope for change)

Independent spheres of economic activity (individualism)

Global imbalance (greenhouse effect, holes in ozone)

Solar radiation is the primary source of energy

Dispersed production (stability through diversity,

the principle of spreading the risk)

Emphasis on reproduction (renewable cycles, limits

to growth)

Improvements and changes are internal (natural

processes and genetic evolution)

Interdependent parts (contextual)

Global gas exchange (GAIA effect)

13
Conflicts at public hearings before natural resource

commissions very often originate from values that are in

turn derived from the operating principles of the two

different economic systems. Sometimes differences are

small enough to be ignored, and sometimes, genuine

compromise and accommodation can take place. But

often the differences lead to an impasse, and then

tough decisions need to be made. Those decisions

must be made carefully, after full and open debate at

the highest level of understanding, by commissions,

administrators, and the public. The choice between

economic systems is not simply an either-or decision.

Both economic systems are important to the economic

and cultural well being of the region and Nation. Those

who argue that economic considerations are always the

bottom line (meaning industrial economics) fail to

remember that our economy developed its strength

through individual initiative and because of our

productive and abundant natural resources.

Nobody likes conflict, especially the intensity of conflict

that results from an intractable clash of the natural and

industrial economies. Often, when confronted with the

choice either to face the conflict, explain its roots,

evaluate the economic and ecologic risks of alternatives,

and promote intelligent public debate, or to avoid

honest debate, administrators choose the path of

avoidance. The mechanism of avoidance relies on a

series of management myths.

I have chosen to highlight four myths. They do not

exhaust the list, but are-in my judgment-the most

important impediments to informed debate on

value-based conflicts in fisheries management.

• Necessity is the mother of invention.

The myth that necessity is the mother of invention has

led its proponents to conclude that natural resources

are not finite in an economic sense (industrial economic

sense), will become progressively less scarce and less

costly, and that population growth is likely to have a

positive effect on natural resources in the long run

(Simon 1981). How this point of view limits informed

debate on the allocation of resources to future

generations should be obvious. If this myth were true, if

we could depend on future generations to solve the

problems we give them once those problems became

large enough, then in our own time Ethiopia should

have the most inventive and productive agriculture in

the world. Necessity, in Ethiopia has been the mother

of misery. Ethiopia is one of the world's greatest and

oldest centers of domestic seed plants and the seat of

the greatest genetic diversity of wheat and barley (Sauer

1969), but Ethiopia cannot grow enough to feed its

children.

• The release of fish from large-scale artificial

production facilities is a neutral factor in the

ecosystem.

The myth that releasing hatchery fish has no effect on

the ecosystem has led to the belief that hatcheries can

compensate for all losses in fish production caused by

overharvest or habitat degradation. Where is the need

for debate if hatcheries can correct any problem in the

supply of fish to the market in the present and future?

Honest debate over resource issues is circumvented

when management agencies make value judgments

(hatchery vs. wild production) for society under the

guise of science (Erman and Pister 1989). Reliance on

hatcheries to solve resource allocation problems and

avoid debate over value-based issues has led agencies

to let wild salmon stocks fend for themselves (Wilkinson

and Connor 1983). Because of the massive size of the

hatchery input to the ecosystem, hatcheries may have

been part of the cause of the depletion of the wild

populations (Wilkinson and Connor 1983). Hatcheries

are still seen as a solution to fishery problems (Bouck

1986), in the face of evidence raising doubts (Chilcote

and others 1986, Nickelson and others 1986,

Risenbichler and Mclntyre 1977, Walters 1988).

• Protecting the resource management agencies by

compromising the resource protects the resource.

Fishery management agencies honestly acquired the

myth that protecting the agency by compromising

actually protects the resource. When first created, the

young management agencies had to regulate resource

users, who for several decades had enjoyed

unregulated exploitation of an abundant resource.

Many of the individuals and corporations resisting

regulation were politically powerful, and the legal system

seemed to be on their side (McEvoy 1986).

Consequently, many of the early environmental laws in

Oregon were not enforced (Johnson 1983).

Management agencies had a right to feel politically

vulnerable, and lopsided compromises that hurt the

resource were the result. The hatchery myth helped

justify those compromises.

The political climate and legal support for conservation

have changed. The strength and political clout of

14
citizens supporting effective fish and wildlife

conservation have increased. Moreover, the

constituency of the management agencies has changed

to become broader than fishermen and hunters. What

has not changed is the attitude of the agencies. Their

ability to recognize changes in public attitudes about

conservation and to give leadership to their expanded

constituency will be one of the agencies' biggest

challenges in the coming decades (Kellert 1981). In the

meantime, a timid agency cannot effectively ensure

open debate over value-based conflicts in the allocation

of the resource.

• Agency biologists agree with every decision agency

administrators make.

The myth that agency biologists agree with every

administrator's decision has done much to circumvent

honest, open debate over the value-based conflicts in

resource management. Agencies that adhere to this

myth exert a strong selective pressure on professional

staff. Because it can influence career development, the

pressure is effective. The pressure is so strong that it

has selected for a unique species of bureaucrat, with a

high level of fitness (upward mobility), known as

"teamplayers."

The word "team" in teamplayer is misleading. A team is

a group of individuals with different points of view,

different skills, or different experiences brought together

to achieve a common goal-a goal whose achievement

needs the individual contributions of the team members.

The different contributions of the team members are

important. Contrast that with teamplayers-the

individuals who wait until decisions are made and then

conform their thinking to fit. The teamplayer believes

that an agency decision not only directs what work he

or she does but overrides his or her need to think

independently.

Most of the fishery biologists in Oregon work for

Government agencies, which means that in a indirect

way they work for the people of the State and the

Nation. Fishery biologists are employed as technical

experts in fisheries. When a State or Federal fishery

biologist speaks on the subject of fisheries, the public

has a right to believe that he or she is speaking on the

basis of technical expertise, unless clearly stated

otherwise. Presenting yourself as a fisheries expert is

wrong, if all you are going to do is repeat an agency

policy that you do not support as a professional

biologist. The strength of the teamplayer syndrome is

inversely proportional to the strength of an agency's

program and leadership.

As natural resource managers and professionals, we

have an important connection to future generations.

That connection is the quality and quantity of resource

we pass on to the future. Our decisions will strongly

affect the quality of life of our descendants-a big

responsibility. In carrying out that responsibility, we

need to remember that we are fortunate to live in a

pluralistic democracy. To me, that means disagreeing

with your neighbor is okay; disagreeing with the

President's policies is okay; and even disagreeing with

your boss is okay. It also means that the same decision

can be both good and bad. A decision may make

perfect sense from the standpoint of the industrial

economic system and be a disaster to the natural

economic system. Our challenge is to be sure that

administrators, commissions, and the public understand

the issues and consequences so they can make the

most informed choices for us and our descendants.

I appreciate the reviews and suggestions from Charles

Warren, Lyn Pinkerton, Ron Hirshi, Mike Reed, Ann

Seiter, and Nick Lampsalis.

References

AIlendorf, F.; Ryman, N.; Utter, F. 1987. Genetics and

fisheries management: Past, present and future. In:

Ryman, N.; Utter, F., eds., Population genetics and

fishery management. Seattle, WA: University of

Washington Press. 420 p.

Anderson, L.G. 1977. The economics of fisheries

management. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins

University Press. 214 p.

Bellah, P.M.; Madsen, R.; Sullivan, W.M.; Swidler, A.;

Tipton, S.R. 1985. Habits of the heart. Berkeley, CA:

University of California Press. 355 p.

Berry, W. 1987. Home economics. San Francisco, CA:

North Point Press. 192 p.

Bouck, G.R. 1986. Conceptual plans for qualitatively

and quantitatively improving artificial propagation of

anadromous salmonids in the Columbia River Basin.

Portland, OR: Bonneville Power Administration. 55 p.

15
Carter, V.G.; Dale, T. 1974. Top soil and civilization.

Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. 292 p.

Chilcote, M.W.; Leider, S.A.; Loch, J.J. 1986.

Differential reproduction success of hatchery and

wild summer-run steelhead under natural conditions.

Transactions of the American Fisheries Society.

115: 726-735.

Douglas, W.O. 1965. A wilderness bill of rights.

Boston, MA- Little Brown. 192 p.

Erman, D.C.; Pister, E.P. 1989. Ethics and the

environmental biologist. Fisheries. 14(2): 4-7.

Gulland, J.A. 1977. Goals and objectives of fisheries

management. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 166.

14 p.

Hall, C.A.S.; Cleveland, C.J.; Kaufmann, R. 1986.

Energy and resource quality: The ecology of the

economic process. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

568 p.

Jackson W.; Bender, M. 1984. Investigations into

perennial polyculture. In: Jackson, W.; Berry, W.;

Colman, B., eds. Meeting the expectations of the

land. San Francisco, CA: North Point Press. 250 p.

Johnson, S.L. 1983. Freshwater environmental

problems and coho production in Oregon. Portland,

OR: Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Information Report. 84-11.

Kellert, S.R. 1981.Americans' attitude and knowledge

of animals. Transactions of the North American

Wildife Conference. 45: 111-125.

Leopold, A. 1966. A Sand County almanac. New York:

Oxford University Press. 269 p.

McEvoy, A.F. 1986. The fishermen's problem: Ecology

and law in the California fisheries. New York:

Cambridge University Press. 367 p.

Nicholas, J.W.; Downey, T.W. 1989. Looking back on

two decades of work at Elk River Hatchery: Has

there been harmony between the natural and artificial

production systems and has Elk River hatchery been

a prototype conservation hatchery? Draft manuscript

on file at Portland, OR: Oregon Department of Fish

and Wildlife. 52 p.

Nickelson, T.E.; Solazzi, M.F.; Johnson, S.L. 1986.

Use of hatchery coho salmon presmolts to rebuild

wild populations in Oregon's coastal streams.

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

43: 2443-2449.

Okum, A.M. 1975. Equality and efficiency: The big

tradeoff. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution.

124 p.

Oregon Trout. 1989. A proposal for a natural

production program for Oregon. Portland, OR:

Oregon Trout, P.O. Box 97219. 27 p.

Oregon Trout. 1988. Columbia River Basin fish

extinction record. Unpublished manuscript. Portland,

OR: Oregon Trout. 4 p.

Regier, H.A.; Baskerville, G.L. 1986. Sustainable

redevelopment of regional ecosystems degraded by

exploitive development. In: dark, W.C.; Munn, R.E.,

eds. Sustainable development of the biosphere. New

York: Cambridge University Press. 490 p.

Risenbichler, R.R.; Mclntyre, J.D. 1977. Genetic

differences in growth and survival of juvenile

hatchery and wild steelhead trout. Journal of the

Fisheries Research Board of Canada. 34: 123-128.

Sauer, C.0.1969. Seeds, spades, hearths and herds:

The domestication of animals and foodstuffs.

Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 175 p.

Simon, J.L. 1981. The ultimate resource. Princeton, NJ:

Princeton University Press. 415 p.

16
Wilkinson, C.F.; Connor, D.K..1983. The law of the Walters, C.J.1988. Mixed-stock fisheries and the

Pacific salmon fishery: Conservation and allocation of sustainability of enhancement production for chinook

a transboundary common property resource. The and coho salmon. In: McNeil, W.J., ed. Salmon

University of Kansas Law Review. 32: 1-14. production, management and allocation. Corvallis,

OR: Oregon State University Press. 194 p.

17

Ethics and the Credibility of Applied Science

David A. Bella______________________________________________

DAVID A. BELLA is a professor of civil engineering,

Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331.

Something is clearly wrong with the way our society

assesses environmental impacts. Too many

shortsighted policies, assumptions, and deficiencies

continue without effective challenge. Too much of the

written material is mere "filler" that satisfies procedural

requirements in ways that allow programs and projects

to continue without serious, critical review. Too many of

the best environmental scientists, particularly those

dedicated to the highest ideals of public service, have

become cynical. Something is fundamentally wrong. In

this paper, I explore what might be wrong and suggest

what can be done-not to eliminate these problems

because that is more than I could hope for, but to

reduce them in some limited though meaningful way.

Stated simply, I believe that the assessments are

developed, sustained, and promoted by organizational

systems. Among the normal properties of such systems

is the tendency to selectively produce and sustain

information favorable to these systems. Favorable

assessments, which do not disrupt organizational

systems, have survival value; contrary assessments tend

to be systematically filtered out. The cumulative

outcome is systemic distortion. If each of us merely

fulfills our organizational role. our own perceptions

become distorted through a constant intellectual diet of

systemically selected information. Those in the highest

positions are most dependent on such a diet and thus

their perceptions are most vulnerable to this risk. A

society that depends on organizational systems and

yields authority to those in high position faces the grave

danger that systemic distortions will form the cultural

bases for defining what is reasonable, what is

responsible, and what is realistic.

Based in part on stories I have heard from many people

who have dealt for decades with environmental impact

assessments, I will attempt to develop a general

framework that gives coherence to many separate

observations and provides some basis for addressing

common problems. But, because this framework is not

the kind of stuff that organizational systems tend to

sustain, it may at first seem unusual - it is.

Modern society depends on a complex array of services

that require the continual coordination of large numbers

of specialists. Such coordination arises through

organizational systems that contain administrative

hierarchies through which tasks and resources are

distributed to diverse groups and individuals.

Information is produced, condensed, evaluated,

selected, and distributed to support coordination.

Through such systems, vast numbers of individuals are

able to produce complex goods and services in ways

far beyond the capacity of any individual. Often,

administrators cannot understand technical specialists.

19
Technical specialists cannot understand each other, and

they are frequently baffled by the words and actions of

administrators. But organizational systems allow such

diverse individuals (who rarely even meet each other) to

produce and sustain the vast technological systems that

you and I depend upon (like telephones, central heating,

and indoor plumbing). These same kinds of systems,

however, now possess enormous power-including the

power to extract and consume huge amounts of natural

resources, alter and destroy wide ranges of habitats,

and transform in significant ways the entire biosphere.

Thus, while acknowledging our dependency on such

systems, we must seriously consider their limitations

and develop appropriate checks and balances.

Organizational systems share important behavioral

characteristics, particularly in their influence on

information transmittal. I developed a general model

(fig. 1) to describe how organizational systems tend to

assess the impacts of their own activities (Bella 1987b).

The model was based on study of the environmental

impact assessments that have been required for Federal

projects in the United States for 20 years.

This model refers to a typical organizational system that

includes several management levels and a variety of

technical specialists. The model describes the tendency

of organizational systems to distort information through

the normal practices of its members-practices which,

from the local view of each participant, appear

reasonable and proper. That is, the model claims that

organizational processes tend to distort information not

through the malicious Intent of its members (although

this might occur) but rather as an unplanned, systemic

outcome. Such systemic distortion occurs not only in

single organizations but also within systems

(complexes) of organizations. Consultants can play

critical roles by providing information favorable to the

organizations that fund them.

After you read and reflect on the figure, conduct the

following mental experiment. Assume that a very biased

study has been produced by an organization as

described in the figure. Imagine that you have read this

report and are disturbed by its biased results. You learn

that information unfavorable to the organization was

omitted from the report. You decide to determine who

is responsible, so you question all the participants in the

system-including top and mid-level managers,

professionals, and the particular individual (the

"troublemaker") who had reported the unfavorable

information. Your questions and the responses of the

participants are given in table 1. Compare the

responses in table 1 to the system of figure 1. The

responses are not dishonest; they reflect the actually

experienced environments of participants. That is, each

participant works within a local environment of the

organizational system. Within this environment, each

perceives his or her own actions to be reasonable and

responsible. But, despite the responses of table 1, the

system (fig. 1) still produces distorted information. This

is systemic distortion.

The model illustrated how organization systems have a

selective influence on information. One study (Matzke

and others 1976, p. 36-37) that traced environmental

impact assessment information through several different

organizational systems found the following:

Research that has a negative effect on the project

is challenged, contracted to another group of

scientists, or explained away .... On the other

hand, favorable research is subject to no such

scrutiny and in several instances purely speculative

discussions are introduced that have positive

conclusions based on no hint of evidence.

Examples of such systemic filtering are common. A

colleague told me of a cost-benefit analysis that clearly

demonstrated that the costs of a proposed project far

exceeded any feasible benefits. The project was not

rejected; instead, the analysis was sent back for further

review (see fig. 1). The young analyst was told by the

branch chief, "We're not in business to kill projects." A

positive cost-benefit ratio would doubtless emerge

eventually. "Nobody wants to be a puppy killer," I was

told. A "puppy" is a project that grows up to be a "dog,"

and a dog is a project with no real net benefits except

to the systems that produce it.

20
Figure 1—Distortion of information within an organizational system.

How to read the figure:

1. Start by reading any statement.

2. Move from that statement along an arrow to a connecting statement.

3. If you move forward along an arrow, insert the word "therefore."

4. If you move backward along an arrow, insert the word "cause."

5. After following an arrow (forward or backward) to a statement, read this statement.

6. Repeat steps 2 to 5 as shown above.

7. Read your way through the entire figure, moving forward or backward on arrows as you wish until you have gone through as

many loops and cycles as you can find.

21
The model (fig. 1, table 1) was developed in 1979 to

explain the organizational tendency that I had observed

for more than a decade to distort environmental impact

assessments. The model was presented and discussed

in workshops and seminars with colleagues who do

environmental impact assessments. I was surprised by

how many examples participants cited. In effect, the

model was saying something that almost everybody

already knew.

The commission that investigated the Challenger shuttle

explosion in 1986 found similar organizational behavior

in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

(NASA) before the accident (U.S. Presidential

Commission 1986). Unfavorable information concerning

risks was filtered out right up to the time of launch.

These systemic distortions resulted in misperceptions

that, in turn, resulted in poor decisions. I sent figure 1

and table 1 to Nobel physicist and commission member

Richard Feynman, who wrote back:

I read Table 1 and am amazed at the perfect

prediction of the answers given at the public

hearings. I didn't know that anybody understood

these things so well and I hadn't realized that NASA

was an example of a widespread phenomena.

Feynman's own study had found systemic distortions of

perceptions. Before the accident, managers perceived

the risk of catastrophic loss to be about a thousand

times less than perceived by working engineers

(Feynman 1986).

Recent disclosures revealed that the U.S. Department of

Energy (DOE) and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy

Commission, had for many years suppressed

information on accidents, operational problems, and

waste disposal deficiencies at its huge nuclear weapon

complexes. Particularly revealing is a memo written in

1981 by a DuPont supervisor attempting to warn higher

management of the risks (Anonymous 1988). The

memo read:

. . . . I am convinced that you do not and cannot

(with the present administrative system) know the

residual risks that remain after we do what we do.

This is not criticism of you or any individual

personally. The problem lies with the system ....

it is not realistic to expect any chain of command to

report unfavorably upon itself.

The system continued to filter out information on such

risks, top administrators remained unaware of

unfavorable information (Schneider 1988). and the

author of the memo took early retirement.

Several years ago, I participated in an investigation of

DOE'S consultation and cooperation efforts in

developing a permanent nuclear waste repository (Bella

and others 1988). Our study found that people from a

wide range of backgrounds did not trust the

organizational process. We did find, however, that

these same people tended to trust known individuals

who were employees of DOE. In brief, the whole-the

organizational process-was less trustworthy than the

parts-individual members of the organization. This

observation is consistent with the model of systemic

distortion presented.

Jackall's (1988) study of corporations strongly suggests

that accepted management practices, particularly at

higher levels, have adapted to conform and sustain

such distorting systems (fig. 1) in ways that allow

individuals to advance their own careers. Jackall finds

that ambitious managers can "outrun their mistakes."

Problems can be avoided, resources can be "milked,"

and distorted analyses can be used to look good in the

short term. If the time frames for consequences are

longer than the time frames for promotions and career

changes, accountability may never catch up. Careers of

"successful" organizational advancement can leave

behind wakes of long-term damage. Moreover, those

who have such "successful" careers may end up in

positions where they evaluate and direct those left

behind to deal with the consequences. It Is no wonder

that cumulative and long-term effects are neglected.

Interest in professional ethics has recently increased.

Indeed, a "profession of professional ethics" has grown

up-complete with journals, newsletters, conferences,

and experts. Unfortunately, the dominant paradigms

and methods of this emerging field have not adequately

addressed systemic distortions because researchers

tend to focus on individual deviations from accepted

norms.

22
Table 1 "Organizational system (fig. 1), as seen from within (assume that a biased report has been produced by

the system)

Person Question Answer

Higher-level

manager

Mid-level

manager

Professional

technologist

"Trouble-maker"

Higher-level

manager

Mid-level

manager

Professional

technologist

"Trouble-maker"

Higher-level

manager

Why didn't you consider the unfavorable

information your own staff produced?

Why didn't you pass the unfavorable

information up to your superiors?

Why wasn't the unfavorable information

checked out and sent back up

to your superiors?

Why didn't you follow up on the

information that you presented?

Why has the organization released such a

biased report?

Why has the organization released such a

biased report?

Why has the organization released such a

biased report?

Why has the organization released such a

biased report?

Why was the source of unfavorable

information (the "trouble-maker") removed

from the project?

I'm not familiar with the information that you're talking

about. I can assure you that my decisions were based on

the best information available to me.

I cant pass everything up to them. Based on the

information available to me, it seemed appropriate to have

this information re-evaluated and checked over.

That wasn't my job.

to meet.

had other tasks to do and deadlines

I only worked on part of the project. I don't know how my

particular information was used after I turned it in. I did

my job. Even if I had all the information, which I didn't,

there was no way that I could stop this project.

I resent your accusation! I have followed the development

of this report. I have reviewed the drafts and the final

copy. I know that the report can't please everybody but,

based on the information available to me, I can assure you

that the report is not biased.

It's not just my reporti My sections of the report were

based upon the best information made available to me by

both my superiors and subordinates.

It's not my report. I was involved in a portion of the

studies that went into the report. I completed my tasks in

the best way possible given the resources available to me

Don't ask me! I'm not on this project anymore and I

really havent kept up with the project. I turned in my

report. I dealt with only a part of the project.

I hardly know the person. A lot of people have worked on

this project. I must, of course, make decisions to keep

this organization running, but there has been no "plot" to

suppress people! On the contrary, my decisions have

been objectively based upon the available information and

the recommendations of my staff.

23
Table 1—continued

Person Question Answer

Mid-level

manager

Professional

technologist

"Trouble-maker"

Why was the source of unfavorable

information removed from the project?

Why was the source of unfavorable

information removed from the project?

Why were you removed from the project?

I don't like your implications! I've got tasks to complete

and deadlines to meet with limited resources. I can't let

everybody do "their own thing;" we'd never finish anything.

I base my recommendations and assignments on the best

available information.

I'm not sure about the details because I don't work with

him. I guess that it had something to do with a

reorganization or a new assignment. He is a bright person,

somewhat of an eccentric, but I've got nothing personal

against him.

My assignment was completed and I was assigned to

another project. I don't think that anybody was deliberately

out to get me. My new job is less of a hassle.

Case studies of individual fraud or deception provide

examples of what "unethical" means. Hypothetical

situations are used to illustrate the conditions that put

individuals under pressures to violate ethical norms.

Theoretical frameworks seek to provide guidelines to

people who are faced with pressures to violate norms of

acceptable practice. Surveys and interviews seek to

identify violations of norms, pressures to violate norms,

and how effectively individuals live up to ethical norms.

The systemic distortions I describe (fig. 1). however, do

not arise from individual violations of established norms.

Thus, the paradigms (as exhibited by case studies,

hypothetical situations, theoretical frameworks, and

research methods) that focus on individual violations of

norms have been ineffective and even misleading when

used to address systemic distortions.

In a discussion of the model (fig. 1, table 1), engineer

David Colony describes the limitations of ethics as

commonly understood.2

It is clear from the author's analysis that we lack a

system of ethics which can help resolve conflicts

between the interest of society and those of a

large and powerful organization. Existing rules of

ethics, including those prescribed for professional

engineers, seem to deal largely with relationships

between individuals or between an individual and

society; there is little consideration of organization

systems as potent forces in that society.

Systemic distortions arise from normal practices of what

may have been called bureaucratic individualism

(Maclntyre 1981). Values compatible to the systemic

needs of organizations become the norms for individual

behavior (Scott and Hart 1979). Moreover, such norms

have become necessary to sustain our technological

world. They can also lead to systemic distortions that

could have catastrophic consequences. Thus, normal

practices must be critically examined so deficiencies

can be recognized and corrective actions taken.

2

 The Journal of Professional Issues, ASCE, will soon

publish discussions of this model by seven engineers.

The quote given here is from a preprint of one of these

discussions.

24
Stated simply, normal practices are functional behaviors

that direct a person's efforts towards assignments and

activities that serve to advance that person's own

welfare. A pervasive function of assignments and

rewards is to sustain the organizational system. Scott

and Hart (1979) go so far as to say that "managers are

rewarded only for the expedient solution of

organizational problems, those who think about

anything else are derided." From the perspective of

functional rationality, "responsibility" means completing

assignments in accordance with accepted norms.

Questioning these assignments and pursuing inquiries

beyond these assignments is optional and usually

considered a waste of time with no prospect of reward

or advancement. Given the pressures typically placed

on people, the "optional" tends to be set aside, and time

is not wasted. Such functional behaviors are not

perceived as ethical deficiencies as long as ethical

norms are not violated in the completion of assignments

and advancing the Individual's own position. A person

who lives out such behaviors is a "functionary" (Howard

1969).

Such functional behaviors were identified in the study of

Impact assessments previously quoted (Matzke and

others 1976). Systemic distortions were found, and

individual behavior was described in the conclusions, as

follows:

Primary value seemed to be placed on meeting

the contractual obligations, fulfilled by one's

report, as opposed to the larger societal

obligation that would be met by production of a

full-disclosure environmental document, (p. 100)

Seemingly, they upheld the ideal of scientific

values and moral responsibilities, but largely

perceived themselves as contract laborers who

held to these values only insofar as was possible

within terms of their contracts. If society expects

that scientific participation ensures high

standards, It is liable to be disappointed, (p. 103)

Like the characters of table 1, they acted out functional

behaviors ("meeting the contractual obligations") that

were perceived as normal, proper, and even necessary.

Many years ago, I was asked to assist in developing

research objectives for the Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA). We developed some very general

objectives that would have permitted and encouraged

more critical questioning and open inquiry. An

administrator became angry at this approach. "We

don't pay people to think," he shouted, "we pay them to

deliver products." This is functional behavior and it is

widely practiced. Research products accumulate in the

form of reports; but few have time to study them and to

think. "We don't have time to think" is a common

complaint. Why? "We're too busy preparing products."

Even within the university, which has a thousand-year

tradition of open inquiry, the normal practice is first to

seek approval of questions and methods from those

who distribute funds. "Successful research efforts" are

typically measured in terms of the grant dollars

obtained. In his farewell address. President Elsenhower

(1961) warned about the "military-industrial complex."

Less well known is his warning about universities and

scholars, and the grave dangers of functional behaviors:

.... the free university, historically the

fountainhead of free ideas and scientific

discovery, has experienced a revolution in the

conduct of research. Partly because of the huge

costs involved, a government contract becomes

virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For

every old blackboard there are now hundreds of

new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by

Federal employment, project allocations, and the power

of money is ever present-and is gravely to be regarded.

Today, Eisenhower's words sound more like a

description of established practices than a warning

(Bella 1985). Of course, such practices influence

teaching; they instill functional behaviors, and emphasis

on preparing for jobs and assignments, with less effort

given to the education of the citizen scientists and

engineers who might serve to hold organizational

systems accountable.

Functional behaviors are useful, of course; indeed, the

services that all of us depend on are only possible

because such behaviors are acted out in organizational

systems. Moral failures arise when we tend to limit

ourselves to functional behaviors and fail to realize that

something more is called for (Bella 1987b, Ladd 1982).

We become functionaries. The deficiency is revealed in

our inability to even articulate this "something more."

Deliberate acts of corruption, fraud, and deceit-acts that

most of us reject-are much easier to talk about. We fail

25
to realize how the normal behaviors we do accept

enormously influence organizational systems that, in

turn, tend to sustain systemic distortions. Of particular

importance is the distortion of the "science" used to

assess the effects and consequences of the

technological changes that organizational systems bring

about.

Polls indicate that people trust science far more than

they trust organizations, and most scientists share this

perception. Thus, the public has supported the

education and employment of scientists. Indeed, they

have insisted on it. The expectation is that scientific

assessments can expose, deter, and correct distortions

of organizational systems. But what is science? More

to the point, what gives science its credibility? Why

should science be trusted?

Such questions have been in the forefront of inquiry and

discussion since the publication of Thomas Kuhn's The

Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn

reasoned that something is wrong with conventional

notions of science. Although Kuhn has been challenged

on many issues, significant agreements can be found in

the debates that followed his work (Bernstein 1983,

Mulkay 1983). A universal "scientific method" that

provides the basis for Identifying "facts" from distortions

is no longer credible. Any "universal scientific methods"

have been shown to be either too vague to describe the

history of science, or historians have demonstrated

significant departures from stringent criteria. Science

does not arise from "facts" that leap out of data through

the "objective" application of "the scientific method."

Nor does science gain its credibility because individual

scientists are of higher character than others.

Prestigious titles, elaborate equipment, sophisticated

data, quantitative analyses, and an abundance of

equations, charts, diagrams, and technical reports are

insufficient and often misleading indicators of credible

science. What is required?

Most of us like to believe that scientific communities

(including the social sciences and engineering) have

some degree of credibility. But why? Why should

scientific communities be considered anything more

than interest groups seeking more status, security, and

income for their members?

Science is a social enterprise and the trustworthiness of

science depends on the social character of its

communities. Such communities must engage in free

and open dialogue; hence, they may be called

"dialogical" communities. Within such communities,

disagreements should promote inquiries to see which of

competing ideas best meet the demands of

reasonableness, logical consistency, disciplined

real-world observations, and, for assessments,

prudence. Unlike organizational systems, inquiry and

information exchange must not be limited to

assignments and the allocation of funds. Ideas.

concepts, models, and assessments must stand or fall

on their ability to gain respect through open inquiry and

dialogue in concerned and disciplined communities.

The credibility of science rests on the ability of such

dialogical communities to expose and reject what

cannot survive the light of critical review and to retain

what the community freely accepts. But are

assessments of organizational activities based on the

actions of such open communities?

The open scientific community persists in some isolated

cells, but in the comprehensive assessments on which

modern society depends for impact assessment,

resource allocations, and public information, the

process more closely corresponds to the model in

figure 1. The organizational process rather than the

community process dominates. Trappings of science

abound; equations, data, graphs, charts, and computer

models. But with respect to the direction of inquiries,

the selection of questions, the review of analyses, the

selective gathering of information, and the interpretation

of this information, organizational processes are at

work. "Scientific" activities are largely determined

through the allocation of funds, divisions of

"organizational turf," and assignments of tasks within

organizational systems. Those who sustain such

organizational processes are seldom held accountable

through the open debate, dialogue, and inquiry within

the communities that should characterize science.

Instead, the organizational process directs debate,

dialogue, and inquiry through its allocations of

assignments, tasks, resources, and authority.

In virtually every field of applied science, accountability

is primarily administrative (that Is. organizational) and

"professional advancement" is nearly exclusively limited

to "administrative advancement" in organizational

systems. Those who advance in such a manner only

rarely have either the interest or ability to defend their

views in the open and disciplined communities that

should characterize science. Efforts of administrators

are directed toward sustaining the organizational

process and yet their efforts do influence the

information that is developed over time. Access to

26
information, time for studies, participation in

conferences, use of equipment, and distribution of

information are dominated by organizational processes

that have strong interests in the outcomes. If the

philosophers of science are correct that the credibility of

science arises from "dialogical communities," then the

credibility of applied science must now be called into

question. The practical rationality of assessments

arises, for the most part, not from autonomous

communities of open dialogue but rather from

organizational systems. The behavior of organizational

systems (fig. 1) does not provide a basis for scientific

credibility.

In the words of philosopher Richard Bernstein (1983),

"We need to reclaim the autonomy of practical

rationality." Bernstein goes on to say, "We realize that

today the type of dialogical communities that are

required for its (practical rationality) flourishing are being

distorted, undermined, and systematically blocked from

coming into existence." He concludes that we now

have difficulty finding "concrete exemplars of the types

of dialogical communities in which practical rationality

flourishes." What types of dialogical communities are

now required? This question should be the foundation

for professional ethics. It is not. It should be a

paramount concern for professional education. It is not.

How can "dialogical communities" be made more

effective and trustworthy in this age of large-scale and

technologically powerful organizations? Given the

power of large-scale organizations, how can such

independent communities be sustained? What can

professional societies do to address such questions?

Professional societies put on conferences and publish

journals. Individuals present results so that the

audience and readers-other professionals-can critically

examine and question assumptions, data, logic, and

reasonableness. We tend to believe that this is what

scientific communities are about, but it is insufficient in

applied science because, for the most part, it yields the

questions and inquiries to the organizational systems

that employ the members and fund the research.

Organizational distortions arise because unfavorable

questions and inquiries tend to be systematically

avoided. Scientists who work within organizations tell

me that unfavorable inquiries are not likely to be

sustained until external pressures force an

organizational system to take such inquiries seriously.

Individuals often state that nothing short of a

catastrophe will force some critical inquiries to be

seriously undertaken. By allowing organizational

systems to dominate the selection of questions and

inquiries, professional communities themselves become

caught up in organizational distortions. In a separate

paper (Bella 1987b), I have reasoned that professional

paradigms (the knowledge base of a professional

community) evolve in response to the questions,

inquiries, reviews, and observations that occupy the

attention of a community over time. If organizational

systems dominate the selection of questions, inquiries,

reviews, and observations, then the professional

paradigms themselves become distorted over time. If

adequate steps are not taken, "scientific expertise"

becomes a product not of scientific communities but of

dominant organizational systems; applied "science"

becomes the way organizational systems legitimate

themselves. As one field person told me, "Science

becomes the opiate of the people. It reassures people

that all is well, and anyone who disagrees is not

qualified."

If applied science is to recover its scientific credibility,

then professional societies must serve to strengthen the

activities of scientific communities in ways that

compensate for the inherent deficiencies of

organizational systems. Organizational systems tend to

avoid unfavorable questions and inquiries; therefore,

professional societies must serve to expose them for

open review. When organizations fail to subject key

assumptions, claims, and methods to independent

review, professional societies should promote such

review, exposing deficiencies and distortions. We know

that organizational systems tend to deal with more

immediate pressures ("brush fires") typically avoiding

longer term cumulative impacts, particularly those that

fail to conform to organizational routines, assignments,

divisions of turf, and funding needs. Professional

societies must make special efforts to address such

long-term concerns. Reports and papers that challenge

organizational behaviors and methods, such as the

assessment of forest practices by Overton and Hunt

(1974), tend to be set aside; they receive no followup.

Professional societies should give them exposure-and,

if necessary, re-exposure-so that the challenges they

raise do not escape critical review by scientific

communities. In these ways, dialogical communities

can reclaim applied science. If they do not, applied

science becomes merely another product of

organizational systems, produced to meet their own

needs and giving organizations, in the name of science,

the kind of credibility they inherently lack. How can

27
communities reclaim applied science? I have a few

suggestions.

Look again at figure 1. 'Troublemakers" can be seen as

internal "indicator organisms." They raise troublesome

questions, and consequently, they face organizational

pressures. Procedural disputes, administrative

reprimands, and other discomforts let individuals know

that life would be far more comfortable if they merely

did their assignments. Typically, the technical questions

and issues become lost. From a broader perspective,

these are adaptive mechanisms through which

organizational systems protect themselves from

disruptive information. In such cases, professional

societies should serve to expose what is often covered

up in such affairs. They should identify the substantial

issues and questions involved, separate them from the

organizational pressures, and arrange forums where

these issues and questions will be examined in a

manner befitting a scientific community. Those involved

should be prepared to defend the technical merits of

their statements and actions.

External "indicators" can also be used. Continuing

conflicts between opposing organizations or between

organizations and external groups can be interpreted as

indicators of significant but unfavorable questions and

inquiries. Unfortunately, when polarization becomes

extreme, the most significant questions become lost in

shallow and bitter exchanges. Indeed, one of the ways

to win such a polarized debate is to define the conflict

in terms that favor your own side (for example, in the

recent old-growth forest debate in the Pacific Northwest,

jobs vs. spotted owls). Such polarizations should serve

to indicate that important questions may be involved

and that these questions may be lost. Again, the role of

the professional society should be to identify the key

questions in such a way that the most significant

questions become a primary concern of the open

community.

Professional societies might also make use of

independent panels to examine the statements of

conflicting sides to identify crucial points of agreement

and disagreement. People could then identify, expose,

and examine the questions and inquiries that might

resolve such differences. Professional communities

could arrange for mediation between opposing views, if

necessary. A mediation process that could be used to

identify questions that should be the concerns of open

communities is outlined in table 2.

Table 2—Mediation approach to identifying key

issues, questions, and assumptions that are often

hidden in polarized conflicts

Each party summarizes on paper its position,

data, and reasoning.

Summaries are exchanged between opposing

parties.

Each party explains, in writing, the opposing

positions to the mediator until their explanation

satisfies the opposing party.

When all parties have thoroughly understood how

their arguments are related, the participants

(opposing parties) are obligated to write a joint

paper that explains each other's original

position, where and why they originally

differed, what has changed since the original

position summaries, which differences remain

(if any), what consensus has been reached on

the original issue, and what studies might

resolve the remaining differences.

The paper is published. The paper becomes a

valuable and frequently cited reference for

professionals, policy makers, and the broader

public because it is a primary source in which

proponents of different views spoke to the

same issues with the same language with full

awareness of the alternative arguments and

opposing concerns.

Based on the approach of Abrams and Berry (1977).

Professional societies should make special efforts to

expose for open and critical review those analyses that

organizational systems tend to protect from exposure.

Cost-benefit analyses deserve such exposure.

Self-serving assumptions and methods that would not

likely survive scientific review are commonly used to

support organizational actions. Such analyses are

presented as science; however, among the

professionals that I have met over many years, few see

them as credible. A cynical attitude toward cost-benefit

analyses is not uncommon even among professional

employees of the organizations that produce the

analyses. As an example, "fish and wildlife benefits"

claimed in analyses are not infrequently ridiculed by fish

and wildlife biologists. As one biologist lamented,

"There are a lot of paper fish swimming around." Those

28
conducting cost-benefit analyses should be required to

defend their assumptions and methods through open

professional communities. Currently, they are not. I

suggest, for example, that the cost-benefit analyses of

the Elk Creek Dam In Oregon be given such critical

review.

Special emphasis must be given to long-term cumulative

effects. Where information is lacking, margins of safety

(similar to the engineers "factors of safety") should be

used to preserve options and avoid large-scale

irreversible changes (Bella and Over-ton 1972).

Guidelines for the use of such margins of safety should

be developed by interdisciplinary task forces and, of

course, subjected to ongoing open and critical review.

Accountability for long-term consequences should be

sustained. In particular, independent reviews, studies,

and evaluations should be conducted so that ambitious

individuals do not advance to positions of authority by

neglecting and even causing long-term problems so

they will benefit in the short term. Jackall (1988)

describes practices that need to be challenged. Where

political influence is significant (Durbin 1990), open

professional discourse should identify consequences.

Objections to these suggestions include these:

organizations will merely avoid such open review; key

organizational members will not defend their decisions

or expose their assumptions for critical review; and no

one will accept professional responsibility for

questionable assessments and assumptions that form

the basis of organizational actions. What can be done?

We must draw on the best traditions of science without

becoming so narrow, as too often happens in science.

that the most significant concerns escape notice.

Scientific communities give high exposure to scientific

discoveries or claims of scientific discovery. Recent

claims for "cold fusion" provide an example. Applied

science must give the same intense exposure to the

discovery of deficient assumptions and methods.

Similarly, the discovery of neglected but critical

questions and inquiries must be exposed. Societies can

hold special sessions and conferences, appoint task

forces, request independent studies, and hold news

conferences. In all such actions, the societies must

demand accountability, particularly for clarifying

assumptions. Failure to address critical questions and

inquiries, the continued use of methods and

assumptions unable to withstand critical review, or

failure to define assumptions should meet strong

professional disapproval. If continued, such deficiencies

should be viewed as unprofessional and unscientific. In

all such cases, of course, the final authority must rest

with the open and disciplined community. Any claims

that do not survive the critical review of such

communities must be rejected as unscientific. In other

words, the dialogical communities must reclaim the

name of science.

Practical concerns must also be addressed. As an

example, professional societies should probably draw

more upon the services of retired members who are not

vulnerable to powerful interests through their employers.

We should also remind tenured professors to conduct

inquiries and pursue questions that might not meet the

approval of powerful interests. Often, however, they are

too closely linked to their funding sources (Bella 1985).

We should also promote interdisciplinary dialogue so

that we ourselves are not captive of narrow paradigms.

Finally. I support the recommendation made by Russell

Sadler at the 1990 meeting of the Oregon Chapter,

American Fisheries Society. We need a code of ethics

to support and strengthen those seeking to perform

their work in the most responsible way. Such a code

should reinforce the ideal that critical assumptions,

decisions, and policies that claim or imply the credibility

of science must, in practice, meet the tests of open

exposure, inquiry, and examination that characterize the

ideals of scientific discourse. Anything less is dishonest.

Thus, the code must clearly state that individuals are

obligated to promote such open discourse-not on the

terms imposed by organizations or political influence

but on the terms of open and independent scientific

communities. Few professional codes adequately

address these concerns. Thus, to develop such a code

requires extended effort, creative work, exposure, and

critical review. The code must meet the test of open

discourse that the code itself will call for.

Why should we sustain such communities? Why should

we seek to identify "unfavorable" questions or expose

self-serving assumptions? What is in it for us?

Functional behavior cannot provide satisfactory answers

to such questions. Those who accept ethical standards

that do not demand more than functional behaviors will

not sustain such communities. The extrinsic "payoffs"

for the actions I suggest are likely to be negative;

indeed, if they are not, one should be suspicious.

Functional behavior has become so much taken for

granted that we seldom even recognize it. The word

29
"professional" is commonly taken to refer to a job which,

in turn, means completing assignments. "Professional

work" means the tasks a person does for pay.

"Professional ethics" is about on-the-job situations and

behavior. "Professional education" means preparation

for "professional employment" which is, for the most

part, provided through organizational systems. The

word "professional" as commonly used assumes that

organizational systems will assign tasks, questions, and

inquiries-and the "professional" will complete all

assignments and be paid accordingly.

Case studies in the professional ethics literature

describe on-the-job situations and pose the question.

"Given the context provided by an organizational

system, how should a person behave?" But "given the

context." the characters of figure 1 behaved reasonably.

"Given the context," even Adolf Eichmann's behaviors

were declared "sane" (that is, mentally healthy, sound of

mind, rational, showing good sense-all definitions of

"sane" from Webster's Dictionary.) Consider Thomas

Merton's disturbing assessment (Merton 1966):

One of the most disturbing facts that came out in

the Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist

examined him and pronounced him perfectly

sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely

why I find it disturbing. ... He was thoughtful,

orderly, unimaginative. He had a profound

respect for system, for law and order.... We

rely upon sane people of the world to preserve it

from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now

it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the

sane ones who are most dangerous.

The correction of systemic distortions requires external

checks and balances, and these require independent

questions, methods, and inquiries. It is not enough if

people behave properly "given the context" of their

work. Consider Eichmann's own words during his

interrogation by Israeli police (von Lang and Sibyll

1983).

They were not personal decisions. If I had not

been sitting there, someone else would have had

to make exactly the same decisions on the basis

of the instructions, regulations, and orders of the

higher-ups. I wasn't expected to make any

decisions at all.

Such words sound too familiar for comfort. They reflect

deficiencies not limited to a gross insensitivity to human

suffering-even Eichmann suffered discomfort and

nausea when he faced the horrible sights and sounds

(Merton 1966, von Lang and Sibyll 1983). But such

words reflect an exclusive commitment to functional

behavior. Without denying the importance of individual

acts of malevolence, we must face the fact that sane

people, performing their jobs according to the accepted

norms and acting reasonably and properly "within the

context" can nevertheless bring about systemic

outcomes of unprecedented destruction (Silver and

Geller 1978).

We rely on independent communities to provide a

check on the distortions of organizational systems. But

such communities rely on something more than

functional behavior. The ethical problem for us is to

sustain this "something more." In other words, we must

take on tasks that offer little or no promise of payoff and

indeed, require sacrifice. We must actually live in ways

that are not dominated by the mindset of functionaries.

Without this "something more" that calls for initiative,

concern, and sacrifice, open communities of dialogue

cannot be sustained. Without this "something more," we

do not merely work for organizational systems, we

conform ourselves to them until our own perceptions

have become so much shaped by systematically

selected information that we have lost the ability to

perceive little else but what these systems feed us. We

all face such risks.

As a teacher, I should confront students with questions

like "How do you intend to use your education other

than making a living?" "Something more" than

functional behavior is essential. We should prepare

ourselves to discuss this "something more" in ways that

are meaningful and relevant to the world we live In. We

should sustain a language that is not dominated by

functional behaviors; as an example, we should again

refer to a profession as a "calling" that requires the

practice of "virtues" (Maclntyre 1981) and that

sometimes require sacrifices. We should insist that

questions and inquiries unfavorable to organizational

systems be pursued, particularly when powerful

interests and irreversible changes are involved. We

should hold administrators and analysts accountable to

open communities so that the assumptions and

premises behind decisions can be exposed. We should

insist that higher education prepare professionals not

merely for employment, but for citizenship in

independent communities. Certainly, much needs doing

and all of it requires that we insist on "something more"

than living out the life of an organizational functionary.

30
References

Howard, F.W. 1969. Functionaries. Chicago:

Quadrangle Books.

Abrams, N.E.; Berry, R.S. 1977. Mediation: A better

alternative to science courts. Bulletin of Atomic

Scientists. 33(4):50-53.

Anonymous. 1988. Excerpts from a memo by senior

DuPont aide. The New York Times: National.

138(47,650) :1. October 6.

Bella, D.A. 1985. The university: Elsenhower's warning

reconsidered. Journal of Professional Issues in

Engineering. 3(1): 12-21.

Bella, D.A. 1987a. Engineering and the erosion of trust.

Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering. 113(2):

117-129.

Bella, D.A. 1987b. Organizations and the systematic

distortion of information. Journal of Professional

Issues in Engineering. 113(4): 360-370.

Bella, D.A.; Mosher, C.D.; Calvo, S.N. 1988.

Establishing trust: Nuclear waste disposal. Journal of

Professional Issues in Engineering. 114(1): 40-50.

Bella, D.A.; Overton, W.S. 1972. Environmental

planning and ecological possibilities. Journal of the

Sanitary Engineering Division, ASCE

98(SA3):579-592.

Bernstein, R.S. 1983. Beyond objectivism and

relativism. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press.

Durbin, K. 1990. Politics helped delay timber

management plans. The Oregonian, September 18,

A12.

Elsenhower, D.D. 1961. Farewell radio and television

address to the American people. Public Papers of

the Presidents. Washington, DC: U.S. Government

Printing Office, p. 1035-1040.

Feynman, R.P. 1986. Personal observation on the

reliability of the shuttle. Presidential Commission on

the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. Appendix F.

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

p. F1-F5.

Jackal), R. 1988. Mosul mazes: The world of corporate

Managers. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kuhn, T.S. 1962. The structure of scientific revolutions.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ladd, J. 1982. Collective and individual moral

responsibility in engineering: some questions. IEEE

Technology and Responsibility. 2(2): 3-10.

Maclntyre, A. 1981. After virtue: A study in moral

theory. South Bend, Indiana: Notre Dame Press.

Matzke, G.; Weir, R.; Stuart, G.; Radford, R.; Lawler,

R.; Dorris, T.; Dodder, R.; Carney, G.; Butler, C.

1976. An examination of the moral dilemmas of

university scientists participating in the preparation of

environmental impact statements. Report to the

National Science Foundation, Ethical and Human

Values Implications Program. Washington. DC;

National Science Foundation, p. 36-37, 100.

Merton, T. 1966. A devout meditation in memory of

Adolf Eichmann. Raids on the unspeakable. New

York: New Directions, p. 45-49.

Mulkay, M. 1983. Science and the sociology of

knowledge. London: G. Alien & Unwin.

Overton, W.S.; Hunt, L.M. 1974. A view of current

forest policy, with questions regarding the future

state of forests and criteria of management.

Transactions, 39th North American Wildlife and

Natural Resources Conference. Washington, DC:

Wildlife Management Institute, p. 334-353.

Schneider, K. 1988. Ex-nuclear aids deny being told of

plant mishaps. The New York Times; National.

138(47,649) :1. October 6. p. 1, 46.

Scott, W.G.; Hart, D.K. 1979. Organizational America.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Silver, M.; Geller, D. 1978. On the irrelevance of evil:

the organization and individual action. Journal of

Social Issues. 34(4): 125-126.

31
U.S. Presidential Commission. 1986. Report of the Von Lang, J.; Sibyll, C., eds. 1983. Eichmann

Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle interrogated. Transcripts from the archives of the

Challenger accident. Washington, DC: U.S. Israeli Police. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Government Printing Office.

32
The Moral Uses of Future Generations

Ernest Partridge____________________________________________

ERNEST PARTRIDGE is a visiting associate professor of

philosophy, California State University, Fullerton,

California 92634.

While an undergraduate, I encountered the following

quotation by the literary critic, Joseph Wood Krutch

(1955), written in support of Aldo Leopold's "Land

Ethic":

The wisest, the most enlightened, the most

remotely long-seeing exploitation of resources is

not enough, for the simple reason that the whole

concept of exploitation is so false and so limited

that in the end it will defeat itself and the earth will

have been plundered, no matter how scientifically

and farseeingly the plundering has been done.

To live healthily and successfully on the land, we

must also live with it. We must be part not only

of the human community, we must acknowledge

some sort of oneness, not only with our

neighbors, our countrymen and our civilization,

but also with the natural as well as the man-made

community.

questions than it answered. In the quarter century that

has followed my encounter with that passage, I have

devoted much of my professional life to the task of

addressing those questions, and seeking and assessing

rational support for the land ethic. In these few pages, I

would like to attempt a sketch of what I have

discovered.

The title of this piece is deliberately paradoxical. After

all, how can future persons be "useful" to their

predecessors-as if the future could be a cause of the

past? Paradox notwithstanding, I will attempt to show

that. in an important sense, posterity is morally useful to

us. To accomplish this, my task will be to indicate that

morality itself is fundamentally paradoxical, not to

mention complex, controversial, and imprecise. And

when we lose sight of the paradox, the complexity, and

the imprecision of morality in our personal lives and

public policies, both moral principle and practical utility

are undone. We all lose: ourselves, our neighbors, our

community, our environment, and our posterity.

To be sure, the wildlife policy-makers, researchers, and

managers, as reflective human beings, share the burden

of moral responsibility with all humanity. But does the

work of wildlife professionals entail a particular moral

responsibility?

Though long on eloquence, the essay was short on

argument. And while Krutch's and Leopold's position

had a strong intuitive appeal to me, it raised more

Do they know, to a significant degree, the

consequences of their professional actions?

33
Must they, in this work, choose among a set of

exclusive options with variously foreseeable results?

Will these results variably affect the welfare and the

rights of present and future individuals?

Because the answers to these questions are all

affirmative, wildlife professionals in the course of their

work bear an inescapable burden of moral

responsibility.3

Given the anguish that accompanies the burden of

moral responsibility and the travail of moral deliberation,

we should not be surprised to find that many ingenious

devices have been designed to ease this burden and

anguish. In the realm of making and implementing

public policy, the foremost such device is cost-benefit

analysis-a scheme that evokes the enthusiastic

endorsement of many applied economists and

legislators, and which provokes the overwhelming

condemnation of most moral philosophers. As we shall

see, cost-benefit analysis is a scheme that is both

intuitively attractive on the surface, and ethically

troublesome in its implications.

The definition of cost-benefit analysis is simplicity itself:

"If a policy, P, maximizes benefits minus costs, then P

ought to be carried out" (VanDeVeer and Pierce 1986).

Stated thus, the rule scarcely seems open to dispute.

The troubles begin as we attempt to assign operational

definitions to the key terms "costs" and "benefits," so

that these various amounts and dimensions might be

measured together to produce a result on the bottom

line. The only available common quantity appears to be

cash value or willingness to pay. Enter the economist.

The significance of cost-benefit analysis in public

policy-making can scarcely be underestimated. About a

month after taking office in 1981, President Reagan

signed an Executive Order requiring that all agencies

and departments in his administration justify their

regulations with positive cost-benefit assessments.

The practice pervades public administration. Read most

environmental impact statements, and you will find them

saturated with the statistics, spreadsheets, and finally

the bottom lines of cost-benefit analysis.

The application of cost-benefit analysis to fisheries

management can only be guessed at by this outsider,

but operating variables might include such items as

costs of building and maintaining hatcheries and

fish-ladders, survival rates, costs of

transportation-leading, presumably, to "cost per

fish"-- and then numbers of fishermen, their impacts on

the State economy, and so forth.

Gather enough data, then "crunch" the numbers, and

presumably the policy-maker will eventually arrive at

bottom-line cost-benefit ratios that will allow her or him

to decide, between, say, a policy of stocking a stream

with hatchery fish or, on the other hand, protecting

upstream water quality and habitat sufficient to sustain a

native population of fish in a stable riparian ecosystem

into the future.

The apparent advantages of cost-benefit analysis are

that it is:

Relatively simple. However complicated this

procedure of policy decision, alternative procedures

are more complex.

Based on values that are commensurable. A

myriad of separate scales of measurement are

translated into a common scale of "cash value."

Objective. The variables can be determined by

open, public, replicable ("scientific") means.

Definitive. Once the data have been gathered, the

process will lead to an unambiguous result.

Value free. Because the process describes the

preferences of the public in terms of "willingness to

pay," it does not impose values on them. In true

democratic form, it reflects the opinion and values of

the public, not the analyst.

3

 This and similar analyses of moral responsibility appear in

numerous places in my published work. In particular, note my

Introduction to Responsibilities to Future Generations (Partridge

1981 a).

34
Closer inspection reveals significant drawbacks. Costbenefit analysis:

Is deceptively "simple." Simplicity is accomplished

by distorting or even excluding essential ethical

aspects of policy deliberation. (Imagine an offer to

"simplify" your escape from a despotic regime by

leaving your family in captivity.)

Devalues fragile, incommensurable, and

non-economic values, while it inflates factors that

can be more reliably and accurately measured and

readily expressed in monetary terms. For example:

Fragile Values Hard Values

Contacts and access

Productivity

Mineral resources

Technical training

Short-term demands

Return from investment

Military budget

Friendship and loyalty

Wisdom and virtue

Natural beauty

Humanistic education

Long-term needs

Ecological integrity

International respect

and esteem

The preference of hard over soft values is

reminiscent of the old tale of the fool, who knows he

dropped a coin in the bushes away from the street

but looks for it under the street lamp where the light

is so much better!

Favors the interests of the wealthy. If values are to

be assessed according to willingness to pay, then

clearly the interests of those best able to pay will be

favored. Thus, for example, the wealthy are able to

afford to live in safer neighborhoods, to eat healthier

foods, to pay for superior medical care. According

to cost-benefit analysis, their lives are "more

valuable." So much for the maxim that "All men are

created equal."

Discounts the future. It favors the present and near

future over the remote future. Future discounting

follows directly from the monetization of values. The

utility of a constant cash value is inversely

proportional to the term of investment-hence, the

necessity of interest rates. Accordingly, if human life

is to be assigned a cash value, at a

5-percent-per-annum discount rate, the value of one

life today is equivalent to a thousand lives in 200

years (Parfit 1981). Consider how such an

assessment might influence nuclear waste policy.

Is insensitive to "the paradoxes of morality." It

loses sight of the fact that 'There are circumstances

in which one can give a selfish justification for

unselfishness" (Scriven 1968). (Much more about

this shortly.)

Treats the public as an aggregate of consumers,

rather than as a community of citizens.

Preferences count more than principles because, if

principles are to count at all, they must be redefined

as market preferences (Sagoff 1981).

Regards value as reductive (to consumer

preferences) and aggregative (that is, the simple

sum of these preferences). Accordingly, it

disregards the contextual and holistic aspects of

morality.

Is value laden. Even if it could be totally detached

from the values of the analyst and policy-maker,

which I doubt, cost-benefit analysis would only

reflect the operative consumer preferences of the

public. Cost-benefit analysis is not free of the

analyst's values, however; they appear, in part, in the

selection and weighting of items in the analysis.

Most fundamentally, all policy-making is by nature

value laden because 4t is, by nature, a deliberate

choice among options that will affect the welfare and

rights of persons.

Three items on this list require special notice and

elaboration.

Economic preferences vs. community principles.

Why should our individual, free, and rational choices,

measured in economic terms, not add up to a valid

statement of public opinion? Because, to put it bluntly,

we don't merely function and evaluate as consumers.

We also act, on moral principles, as citizens of our

communities. Mark Sagoff (1981) points out the

contrast with admirable clarity and wit.

Last year, I fixed a couple of tickets and was

happy to do do since I saved fifty dollars. Yet, at

election time, I helped to vote the corrupt judge

out of office. I speed on the highway; yet I want

the police to enforce laws against speeding. I

used to buy mixers in returnable bottles-but who

35
can bother to return them? I buy only

disposables now, but, to soothe my conscience, I

urge my state senator to outlaw one-way

containers.... I applaud the Endangered Species

Act, although I have no earthly use for the

Colorado squawfish or the Indiana bat. I support

almost any political cause that I think will defeat

my consumer interests. This is because I have

contempt for-although I act upon-those interests.

The paradox of morality. It is an ancient insight:

Selfishness is self-defeating. Philosophers back to

Aristotle and beyond have reiterated that the

single-minded pursuit of personal pleasure is likely to be

less satisfying than a life focused outward on the

well-being of other individuals, institutions, and ideals.

Only recently, with developments in moral psychology

and game theory, have we begun to understand why

this is so. Time permits only three brief illustrations of

"the moral paradox" at work.

Imagine that you are an infantryman facing a year-long

tour of duty in combat. You are given the choice to be

an egoist in a platoon of egoists (like yourself, "looking

out for Number One"), or an altruist in a platoon of

altruists. In the latter case, you understand that each

member of the platoon (yourself included) is prepared, if

necessary, to sacrifice his life for the safety of the rest.

In which platoon would your self-interest in personal

survival best be served? Military history supplies an

unequivocal answer.

Consider the case of two couples, the Joneses and the

Smiths. Jack and Jill Jones agree to the marriage on

the condition that each will get his and her share of

personal gratification from the relationship. Each is

constantly on the alert to assure that this is so. In

contrast, the foremost and loving concern of Sam and

Sue Smith is for the happiness and well-being of the

other. I will leave it to you to guess which of these four

individuals are the happiest.

Finally, consider the tragedy of the commons-a

paradigm that is presumably familiar to most of you.

Following Garrett Hardin's (1968) original example,

imagine a pasturage in common ownership, stocked to

carrying capacity with individually owned livestock.

Each herdsman, pursuing his rational self-interest is

motivated to add a few additional animals to his

aggregate wealth. The result, of course, is destruction

of the common resource. The significance of this

paradigm is that analogous cases can be found with air

pollution, international whaling, and fisheries'

management. When carrying capacity is exceeded, the

result is the same: "Ruin is the destination toward which

all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a

society that believes in the freedom of the commons."

These examples, and many more, convey the same

message of the moral paradox: A life predicated on

self-interest is self-defeating. Sound self-interested

reasons exist not for acting purely in self-interest.

The Ecology of Morality. If my argument has been

successful so far, it has indicated that a moral

community is not accurately portrayed as a marketplace

comprised of rational, informed, self-serving consumers.

Thus the advantages of living in a morally well-ordered

society are not to be gained simply by calculating, then

implementing, policies that show a maximum

cost-benefit ratio. It then follows that policy-making, an

inherently moral enterprise, should not be based

exclusively on the cost-benefit method of analysis

because that method reduces moral attention to

individual preferences.

Moral enterprises, such as policy-making, should

instead lead our consciousness in the opposite

direction, namely outwardly, to encompass awareness

and effective concern to all beings and entities that

deserve our moral attention: namely, to people of other

cultures and races, to animals, to wilderness

ecosystems, and to future generations. The values that

direct our moral concern in this direction, are fragile

values-not readily translated into dollars and cents.

The impediment to clear-cut and definitive policy

analysis should not exclude effective concern for these

distant others from our public policy concerns. Indeed,

the lack of fit between cost-benefit analysis and fragile

values should be regarded as more troublesome for the

analysis than for these values.

Just as a zoo, with its isolated cages of specimen

creatures, does not represent nature, so too does the

market place of individual transactions fail to represent

the morally well-ordered society (although, to be sure, a

morally sound community sustains markets). And just

as the life of the individual organism and its species is

best understood in the context of a functioning and

ongoing ecosystem, the moral life of the individual

person is best understood in the context of a cherished

community, society, and culture, with a legacy from the

past and a continuity into the distant future.

36
In short, there Is an ecology of morality, just as there is

an ecology of life forms. Because the parts of each

system are in dynamic interaction, "you cannot do just

one thing." Remove a native species or introduce an

alien species into the ecosystem, and there Is no telling

how the whole might be affected. So too with our

moral and cultural systems. For example, who could

have foreseen the consequences-including some

regrettable moral costs-of introducing commercial

television into mass culture? What are to be

consequences of the personal computer? How might

its undoubted, if largely unknown, impacts be directed

to produce benign payoffs?

Our culture, and therefore our values, are in a state of

unprecedented flux. Amidst this confusion of change,

we are in peril of losing our sense of moral direction

and with it, our personal identity and justification. If we

are to find and sustain meaning and direction to our

lives and to our culture, we must look outside the flux to

constant points of reference-to fixed navigational points

in the moral universe and not to the moving masthead

lights of passing fads and fashions.

The science of ecology accomplishes a constancy amid

the study of flux, through such enduring concepts and

rules as energy flow, nutrient recycling, and Liebig's

Law. Similarly, some constant points of moral reference

may be available for those individuals who reflect

responsibly upon the human condition, and their place

in it. Among these points, I would suggest:

Acknowledgment of the inalienable worth and dignity

of personhood in oneself and one's neighbors.

Personhood, the core concept of moral philosophy,

refers to the gift of self-consciousness and reflective

thought, and the consequent capacity to reflect on

one's future, one's rights, and one's duties to others.

Due admiration and respect for such universally

acknowledged virtues as courage, compassion,

loyalty, sacrifice, love. and wisdom.

Perspective on the human enterprise as an adventure

of many generations, with a priceless legacy from

the past, and a responsibility to protect and enhance

this legacy for the benefit of future generations.

Respect for the natural conditions that nurtured our

species, and that sustain and enrich the human

adventure. In brief, a love and loyalty toward Mother

Gaia-our planetary ecosystem, too complicated for

us ever to fully understand, too marvelous for us

ever to adequately appreciate.

In this final point of reference, social morality and

ecological morality meet.

If we lose sight of these enduring moral beacons, our

society and ourselves will drift, among the immediate

currents of our egocentric preferences, toward

alienation and eventual destruction. Because of our

technological capacities, that last

possibility-destruction-is now an ominous

possibility-either by the "bang" of nuclear holocaust or

the "whimper" of global ecological collapse.

The moral uses of nature and posterity.-In the ecology

of morality, personal virtue and communal justice are

interdependent and mutually reinforcing. And both the

moral health of the person and the flourishing of the just

society are enhanced by the broad perspective-through

time, and across racial and gender divisions and

national boundaries. But the manifest rewards of living

a virtuous life in a morally well-ordered society exacts a

price: we must give up the easy psychological payoffs

of self-centeredness, of racism, of sexism, of

nationalism, of anthropocentrism, and of historical

myopia. However tempting, we cannot, in good moral

health, allow ourselves to believe that we are life's

culmination or history's favorites. Life on this Earth has

not evolved for more than two billion years, and

civilization has not advanced through a recorded history

of two hundred generations, just for the benefit of our

generation. We have neither the right nor the privilege,

albeit we have the power, to bring civilization, and

perhaps life itself, to an end. We must never allow

ourselves to believe, far less to act, upon such cosmic

conceit. For if we forget our past and ignore our future,

our lives will be drained of significance. As we face our

own mortality, and our personal days dwindle down to a

desperate few, we will be unable to recognize anything

of value that will survive us. Thus is egoism ultimately

its own punishment. If we injure the future, we damage

our present as well.4

Although I have, in this essay, been critical of some

economists, I can find no more eloquent statement of

my conclusions than that of an economist whom I

admire immensely, Kenneth Boulding (1970):

Why should we not maximize the welfare of this

generation at the cost of posterity? Apres nous Ie

deluge has been the motto of not insignificant

37
numbers of human societies. The only answer to

this, as far as I can see, is to point out that the

welfare of the individual depends on the extent to

which he can identify himself with others, and that

the most satisfactory individual identity is that

which identifies not only with a community in

space but also with a community extending over

time from the past into the future.... This whole

problem is linked up with the much larger one of

the determinants of the morale, legitimacy, and

"nerve" of a society, and there is a great deal of

historical evidence to suggest that a society

which loses its identity with posterity and which

loses its positive image of the future loses also its

capacity to deal with the present problems and

soon falls apart.

Herein we find the paradoxical "uses" of posterity,

suggested by my title. For if Boulding is correct, we

need the future, and we need it now. Judging from the

deteriorating condition of our moral and global

ecologies, that need may be desperate.

The moral "uses" of posterity, suggested above, provide

an effective answer to the cynic's taunt, "What has

posterity ever done for us?" Paradoxically, future

generations-not yet born and presently merely

potential-offer us a great deal, by very reason of their

potentiality. To fully appreciate the gift from posterity,

we must be reminded that the human achievements of

rationality and moral agency are not free bestowals of

evolution.

They carry a heavy price. For self-consciousness and

knowledge of our human condition burdens us with the

knowledge of our own mortality. And this knowledge is

especially heavy to the egoist and the alienated, who

are without self-transcending values and concerns. To

those of us with expansive moral perspective-with

self-transcending love and loyalty for enduring families,

institutions, ideas, landscapes, and

traditions-succeeding generations offer continuity for

those things we value, and through this, a

life-transcending significance for our own brief

existence.

Posterity offers us all this-provided we keep our part of

the bargain. We must leave future generations a

flourishing moral order, just political and legal

institutions, and free and productive scientific and

intellectual activity. And if all this is to be sustained far

into the indefinite and enforceable future, we must

cherish and preserve an abundant and diverse planetary

life community.

References

Boulding, K. 1970. The economics of the coming

spaceship Earth, P. 96-101 [99-100] In Garret deBell,

ed. The environmental handbook. New York:

Ballantine.

Hardin, G. 1968. The tragedy of the commons.

Science. 162: 1243-1248.

Krutch, J.W. 1955. Conservation is not enough. Salt

Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Parfit, D. 1981. An attack on the social discount rate,

QQ: Report from the Center for Philosophy & Public

Policy. 1(1): 8-11.

Partridge, E. 1981 a. Introduction. In: Partridge, E., ed.,

Responsibilities to future generations, Buffalo, NY:

Prometheus Books, p. 1-16.

Partridge, E. 1981 b. Why care about the future? In

Partridge, E., ed., Responsibilities to future

generations. Buffalo. NY: Prometheus Books.

p. 203-220.

Partridge, E. 1982. Are we ready for an ecological

morality? Environmental Ethics. 4: 175-190.

Partridge, E. 1984. Nature as a moral resource.

Environmental Ethics. 6: 101-130.

4

 Time constraints allow only a statement of these views, without

elaboration or supporting argument. Accordingly, these remarks are

more rhetoric than philosophy. My supporting arguments may be

found in Partridge 1981b, 1982, 1984.

38
Sagoff, M. 1981. At the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, VanDeVeer, D.; Pierce, C. 1986. Cost-benefit analysis:

or why political questions are not all economic. Are we bewitched by numbers? In VanDeVeer, D.;

Arizona Law Review. 23: 1283-1298. Pierce, C., ed. People, penguins, and plastic trees.

Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co. p. 238-242.

Scriven, M. 1968. Primary philosophy. New York:

McGraw-Hill.

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