The evolutionary analysis of human behaviour: its potential to increase plant conservation success

Abstract

Humans derive most of their well-being from plants, a self renewing natural resource. Yet human activities aimed at increasing well-being are threatening self renewal of some of these species. Some are directly threatened by over exploitation. Most become threatened as an unforeseen consequence of other activities principally agriculture, commerce, industrialisation and the manufacture and use of artificial fertilisers. The evidence suggests that the evolutionary need for reproductive success in humans has led our use of natural sources to be unsustainable throughout our species history. The need to acquire resource to achieve mate selection remains the same today as for our earliest relatives. Only the extent and rate of acquisition has changed in recent times and with it the environment and the diversity of plants that survive. Throughout our history, human ingenuity has often been required to rebalance the demand for plant derived benefits for well-being with their supply. Both technical and social ingenuity have been used to achieve the necessary outcome. The targets set within the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation reflect the need for both social and technical ingenuity if the loss of plant diversity is to be halted, with 10 of the 16 targets focussing on social change and only 4 requiring technical innovation. Yet, inspection of the literature shows little use is made of the evolutionary analysis of human behaviour (evolutionary psychology, human behavioural ecology and dual inheritance theory) in the design of projects seeking plant conservation. This paper attempts to begin to close this gap.