The Impacts of Invasive Non-Native Plants: A Normative and Conceptual Analysis

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The project examines the normative and conceptual framework in which plant breeders, nursery professionals, plant ecologists, government officials, and others may understand and assess the possibility that plant breeding, crop domestication, and the introduction of plants for ornamental purposes may lead to the release of invasive species that cause unwanted effects to natural systems, to biological diversity, and to the environment. The research seeks to understand which impacts on natural systems are undesirable, which desirable, and why. It will try to clarify the concept of an invasive plant and related concepts of damage to native biodiversity and to ecological systems. The project will result in analytical papers that probe distinctions between the native and the exotic, between the natural and the managed, between colonization and invasion, and between changes in and harms to ecosystems. In particular, the project will explore the problems and prospects of attempts to predict and to assess the threats and opportunities invasive plants may pose to the intrinsic and to the instrumental value of natural systems. The Principal Investigator will address such questions as 1) the role and reliability of economic estimates of the damage invasive plants cause to natural systems; 2) the ability of ecological science to guide social decision making by predicting the ecological impacts of non-native plant species; and 3) the character, cogency, and importance of normative arguments for protecting unique natural areas against the homogenizing effects of global commerce in varieties of plants. The proposed research will contribute to an emerging philosophical literature on the concept of ecological invasion and on related concepts of environmental harm. The anticipated analytical papers will inform debate over invasive species policy and can influence policy itself by clarifying the claims, assumptions, distinctions, and beliefs that characterize current concerns about the economic and ecological harms or benefits associated with the growing presence of non-native species in the natural environment. Public policy for -- and courses taught about -- ecological invasions need philosophical analyses that question and clarify the underlying assumptions and distinctions.