Time for rapprochement
Not monsters, but indispensable hunters
When two people were killed in shark attacks in Hawaii in the early 1990s, the fear among beachgoers and surfers was palpable. There were immediate calls for targeted hunts of large sharks to protect the tourism economy. It would not have been the first shark cull in the US state. Between 1959 and 1976, the Hawaiian authorities carried out a total of six shark control programmes, catching 4700 predators and killing most of them – mainly tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier), sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus), blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus limbatus), Galapagos sharks (Carcharhinus galapagensis), great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) and various hammerhead sharks.
Local shark populations plummeted by an estimated 50 to 90 per cent as a result of these campaigns, prompting some experts to proclaim that people were now safer in the ocean. The large, allegedly more dangerous sharks had been removed after all. However, a 1994 study contradicted this assessment. Firstly, the number of shark attacks during the cull period remained virtually unchanged from previous years. During both periods, the Hawaiian authorities recorded an average of 0.6 attacks per year. Secondly, it was already known in the 1990s that the frequency of shark attacks depends primarily on how many people use the sea for work, sport, fun and recreation, rather than solely on how many sharks reside in coastal waters.
- But beyond the statistics, experts say there is a second argument against another mass cull: As predators, sharks play a key role in marine ecosystems. Tiger sharks, for example, like to hunt in seagrass meadows, and their appetite for sea turtles, dugongs and other grazers ensures that seagrass meadows are not overgrazed, preserving them as shelter, nursery and habitat for hundreds of other marine species, including those that humans catch and use. Killing sharks in large numbers may upset the balance of marine life, the authors wrote at the time.
Thirty years on, in 2024, this is one of the key messages from an international team of researchers after analyzing the ecological roles of more than 500 different shark species worldwide. Their study states: Sharks contribute to the health of the ocean in such diverse and sometimes still misunderstood ways that their dramatic decline is an urgent concern.
In particular, open-ocean shark species such as oceanic whitetip (Carcharhinus longimanus), mako and hammerhead sharks have been fished so intensively over the past six decades that their populations have declined by more than 70 per cent between 1970 and 2018, and by as much as 84 per cent in the Indian Ocean. Where once ten of these impressive predators patrolled the seas, there are now fewer than three. Moreover, almost a third of all shark and ray species are now threatened with extinction. Healthy and functioning shark populations are needed to ensure the long-term survival of marine life. Researchers are therefore calling for a change in the way we think about sharks: We have to get away from seeing them as monsters or an inexhaustible source of food, and towards seeing them as vital health watchdogs for the oceans.
A key question: What are people’s attitudes towards nature and the oceans?
The change in thinking that scientists are calling for requires us to be aware of how we think about nature and marine life, the importance we attach to each living being, and how our views influence our behaviour and decisions about the protection and utilization of nature and the environment.
In 2022, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) explored these questions scientifically in its Values Report (“Assessment report on the diverse values and valuation of nature”).
For this report, some 100 experts from around the world analyzed more than 13,000 scientific articles from a variety of disciplines, as well as a large body of indigenous and local knowledge, to examine how people from all over the world and from different backgrounds characterize their relationship with nature. It found that people experience nature in very different ways and perceive the non-human environment differently. For example, while one group of people may see humans and nature as inextricably linked, others see the two systems as separate and independent of each other.
- 3.1 > Mangrove forests provide people with timber and food. They protect coastlines from erosion and attract tourists. But the forests are declining in area in many places, driven by people’s hunger for land.
Extra Info Sharks: (predatory) fish with a wide range of ecological roles and functions
- Such differences in turn explain why people develop different understandings of the role that healthy ecosystems play in their own well-being and attach different values to them. The main determinants are:
- people’s world-view – this refers to the way in which people perceive and interact with the world;
- the knowledge system in which people grow up – this includes social and environmental knowledge, and the practices and beliefs that relate to the relationships of living beings, including humans, to each other and to their environment. Well known knowledge systems include, for example, academic learning and thinking, but also indigenous or local knowledge;
- broad values that guide people in their world-view and in their interaction with nature. Examples include moral principles such as justice, belonging and freedom, but also life goals such as the pursuit of pleasure, health and prosperity;
- specific human values that reflect opinions or judgments about the importance of certain things in particular situations and contexts. These include 1.) instrumental values, which state that something has value as a means to an end and is in principle substitutable; 2.) relational values, which denote something the value of which arises from people’s relationships with nature or with other people through nature; and 3.) intrinsic values, which state that something has value as an end in itself or has an inherent or moral value that is not tied to human ends;
- value indicators – these are economic, biophysical or socio-cultural parameters by which people measure, describe or compare the value of nature. A group of commonly used value indicators for marine fish stocks, for example, are indicators such as the catch quantity measured in tonnes (biophysical indicator), the market price received for the catch (economic indicator) or the proportion of women among the fishers involved in the catch (socio-cultural indicator).
- 3.4 > The artisanal fishermen on Bangladesh’s south coast still use their traditional boats to fish the Bay of Bengal. Their livelihoods depend directly on healthy and functioning marine ecosys- tems.
- Our own native tongue also has a major influence on our perception of nature. If people have many different words for the oceans and their inhabitants, as is often the case with indigenous peoples living in coastal regions, they are in the best position to engage more deeply with the oceans and their biological communities.
- 3.5 > People define their relationship with nature in terms of world-views, broad values, specific values and value indicators. This overview illustrates how these can differ between people, depending on their individual life frames.
- To handle the difficulties in categorising the many ways of looking at nature, the IPBES experts propose a typology that illustrates how world-views, knowledge systems, values and value indicators together influence the way people interact with and value nature. Their typology asserts that there are:
- People who live from nature;
- People who live with nature;
- People who live in nature, and
- People who live as nature, i.e. people who see themselves as part of nature and act accordingly.
- People who say they live from nature communicate that nature is important because it supports human life, needs and well-being through the uses, goods and services it delivers. For example, an ocean is valued by these people for the fish it provides for consumption.
People who live with nature see the cycles of nature, its life-sustaining processes, and the many species that have a right to flourish regardless of their contribution to human well-being. These people recognize the right to life of the fish in the sea, regardless of their own human needs.
The “living in nature” category includes people who understand physiographic regions as settings for their own lives, practices and culture. As a result, they value the sea and its coastal landscapes as areas that strengthen their own sense of place and identity and shape their own personal narratives.
However, humans can also see themselves as part of nature, or live as part of nature, perceiving it as a physical, mental and spiritual part of themselves. In this case, the sea is seen as sacred or familial, for example because it fosters a sense of unity, kinship and interdependence.
- The IPBES experts stress that none of these categories or perspectives is better than the others but, rather, that they are not mutually exclusive and people can harbour different combinations of these “life frames” at different times and in different contexts.
Understanding the different categories not only helps to understand the world-views, knowledge systems, values and value indicators that are important to people. They also make it easier to understand policy decisions.
In their values assessment report, the IPBES experts stress that the global decline in biodiversity on land and in the oceans is due to the fact that political and economic decision-makers primarily see the economic value of natural assets and focus on short-term financial gains. Long-term changes to the natural resource base on which our lives depend, such as nature’s contribution to climate regulation, are not or only inadequately taken into account. As a result, political and economic decisions are leading to a clear overexploitation of terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
In contrast, policy processes that respect, recognize and integrate the world-views, values and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities would lead to decisions that deliver better outcomes for people and nature. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) therefore concludes that both the causes of the global biodiversity crisis and possible solutions are closely linked to the way nature is valued in political and economic decisions at all levels.
Extra Info On the difficulty of valuing marine ecosystem services
Strengths and weaknesses of the concept of ecosystem services
The recognition that people place different values on nature is not new. Experts in science and politics have been working for several decades to develop concepts and methods that can be used to quantify the extent to which nature affects us humans, both positively and negatively. It is also clear that decisions affecting nature can be made more effectively if it is known what values are affected – in other words, what is at stake for whom.
One of the best-known and most widely used valuation schemes in science, policy and administration is the 1997 concept of ecosystem services, which aims to show how nature’s services improve people’s quality of life. It does this by dividing nature’s processes and services into four categories:
- Provisioning services: These include the oceans’ functions and processes that humans use to supply themselves with products such as food and raw materials, with the help of labour and technical tools. It also includes the spaces and areas that the sea provides, for example for shipping or for the production of renewable energy.
- Regulating services: This category captures the benefits and utility that humans derive from the oceans’ regulating effects. It therefore includes services such as marine climate regulation (heat transport and heat exchange); coastal protection by mangrove forests, dunes, seagrass beds and reefs; the provision of oxygen for respiration by phytoplankton and other marine plants; and keeping water clean by breaking down nutrients and pollutants released into the oceans.
- Cultural services: These include numerous functions that serve human well-being in an intangible way. They may have special social, religious or spiritual significance or be part of the traditions of a people. This category includes services such as the pure aesthetics of a seascape, its recreational and leisure value, or the inspiration that artists, scientists, architects and many other people draw from the oceans.
- Supporting services: These are the fundamental biological, chemical and physical processes that occur naturally in the environment and form the basis of life on Earth. In the oceans these include, for example, the production of biomass by algae and aquatic plants, the marine nutrient cycles, the oceans’ contribution to the global water cycle, predator-prey relationships, as well as species diversity and the different habitats themselves. Humans generally benefit indirectly from all these supporting services as they provide the basis for the cultural, regulating and provisioning services mentioned above.
3.8 > Whoever lacks awareness, when gazing at the sea, of what lives below its surface and how many vital services these organisms provide for us humans will be unlikely to commit to the protection and sustainable use of the oceans.- The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment published by the United Nations in 2005 made the concept of ecosystem services well known worldwide. The success of the concept resides in the way it illustrates how economic development and human well-being depend upon healthy ecosystems. However, experience has shown that the concept can make people tend to characterize the value of nature and its services mainly in terms of economic benefit. The focus is then frequently narrowed to how much financial profit can be gained from natural assets, or which financial damage is prevented by specific ecosystem services such as the flood protection services provided by healthy mangrove forests, seagrass meadows and salt marshes. This perspective has led to economic interests playing a dominant role in many individual, corporate and governmental decisions on the use of nature and the oceans. It thus manifests the life frame of living from nature, frequently promoting the overexploitation of terrestrial and marine ecosystems alike.
In response to this situation, IPBES developed its own concept of “nature’s contribution to people”. This aims, for one thing, to give more explicit consideration to values such as responsibility, reciprocality and respect for nature. For another, it takes account of knowledge systems that conceive of humans as being part of nature – such as the perceptions of indigenous peoples, local communities and new movements striving for the holistic well-being of people and nature.
In this manner, the IPBES experts hope, decisions on approaches to nature can be underpinned by diverse value indicators and will in the best case also take account of disparate perspectives on what constitutes a good life on Earth.
- 3.9 > Tourist deluge: a cruise ship at anchor off a small island in the Caribbean Sea. For one day, its passengers will eat, drink, swim and sunbathe on the island.
Widening disconnection from nature
IPBES has identified another barrier on the path towards better decisions for people and nature: the increasing disconnection between the two. In most industrialized countries, the experts note, people have lost any direct, sustained contact to nature in less than two generations. Today they live in cities, work in sectors entirely separate from fisheries, agriculture and forestry, and most of them no longer cultivate their own fruit and vegetables.
As a result, the preservation and functionality of nature no longer have any immediately tangible, existential importance for many of these people. The further welfare rises and urbanization advances, the less interest people have in animals, plants – and the oceans. This disconnection, combined with a loss of access to nature, impacts across generations on people’s understanding, values, attitudes and actions, IPBES concludes. The outcome is further degradation of nature.
- 3.11 > The sea shimmers green to brownish where macroalgae are cultivated off the coast of the Philippines. Some 200,000 fisher families gain a livelihood from this – mostly in economically less developed regions.
- Rethinking alone will therefore not suffice to halt the overfishing of sharks or put an end overall to the destructive exploitation of the oceans. Transformative change is needed. This implies a fundamental departure from values and attitudes focused on short-term, individual material gains. Instead, such concepts of value should be prioritized that are geared towards sustainability and are concerned with the well-being of all. In such a perspective, knowing which numerous and impressive services the more than 500 shark species provide may at least contribute to making fatal culling campaigns, such as those that have been carried out to protect bathers on Hawaii and elsewhere, a thing of the past.
