Aesthetics, Biodiversity, and Ecosystems

Biodiversity loss is a major ecological crisis of our time. Although the seriousness of the issue is widely acknowledged, communicating its complexity – such as the deterioration of ecosystems and the erosion of genetic diversity within species populations – remains a challenge. The concept of biodiversity, and its decline, may be too abstract for the general public to fully grasp, especially as urbanization increasingly distances people from direct contact with nature, making it difficult to generate broad support for its protection. 

Interestingly, many biologists, naturalists, and philosophers have argued that one of the strongest cases for protecting biodiversity may lie in its aesthetic value, as beauty and other aesthetic qualities are thought to have the most compelling impact on humans. Aesthetic experience may certainly exert considerable power in eliciting psychological and affective responses. Throughout history, aesthetics has been employed to serve political, religious, social, psychological, and economic purposes. Among these, aesthetic values have historically played a central role in motivating environmental conservation. However, the shift in environmental conservation from the preservation of isolated natural areas to biodiversity conservation everywhere introduces new complexities to the already problematic role of aesthetics in environmentalism.

In our recent study, we explored the aesthetic appreciation of biodiversity in terms of the classic triadic conception of species diversity, ecosystem diversity, and genetic diversity. We argued that there is a mismatch between “real” and “apparent” biodiversity, primarily because human perception offers only a limited view of biological diversity at all its levels. However, we only touched upon a central issue – namely, that biodiversity is dynamic and that nature exists as a web of interactive systems. Organisms affect each other and their environment, and the environment affects them. In this presentation, we expand our approach to the aesthetic appreciation of ecosystems by examining the issue from the perspective of biotic and abiotic relations. We continue to argue that people's direct perception and experience of biological variation – as reflectred in their aesthetic experiences of nature – differ from scientifically assessed biodiversity.