THE MORAL VALUE OF BIODIVERSITY

The article considers how the preservation of biodiversity is morally justified in some of the key texts on environmental ethics, i.e. wheth er or not biodiversity can be justified as a moral end in itself. The views are classified according to the criteria which they hold to be t he ultimate moral beneficiaries; positions are named as anthropocentri sm, biocentrism and ecocentrism. In general, they are not in favor of regarding biodiversity as intrinsically valuable, but think its moral value as derivative. This means that the myriad characters of life on Earth are to be maintained as diverse because of their instrumental va lue for the constituents. It seems that Naess's deep ecology is the on ly major position that argues for biodiversity's intrinsic value, but this view has proved to be problematic.