Competing values and moral imperatives: An overview of ethical issues in biological control

Abstract

This overview and synthesis of the papers presented in this Special Issue suggests that there is a remarkably rich set of ethical issues having direct relevance to the development and practice of biological control for the management of agricultural pests. The perception and resolution of ethical issues appear to emerge from a set of factors that includes one's ethical viewpoint (anthropocentric or biocentric), agricultural system (industrial or sustainable), economic context (rich or poor), and power structure (expert or public). From this set of parameters at least five major ethical questions can be formulated: (1) How should we regulate and apply biological control in the face of persistent ecological uncertainty regarding environmental impacts? (2) How ought we to balance the established and expected benefits of biological control to human and ecosystem well-being against the known and anticipated risks? (3) Who should be empowered to develop policies and make decisions regarding the study and practice of biological control? (4) How can we assure a more just distribution of benefits and costs associated with biological control technologies (e.g., sharing the costs of nonmarketable goods and services that benefit the public, and compensating people from whom biological control agents are acquired), and (5) Can biological control be justified as a resource substitution for pesticides or is its ethical application only possible as part of a reconceptualization of agricultural production? These central questions and possible answers are presented in a varied set of provocative analyses by some of the leading thinkers and authorities in their fields.