Investments in Nature Will Be a Reflection of Our Own Moral Ecology
How we understand nature and our relationship to it will influence how we invest in it. We will likely fail to understand how we can best preserve and help regenerate it unless we shift our mindset away from nature as capital, nature as a predictable system, or even from projecting a human sense of morality on nature. The investment choices we make will constitute the foundations of a moral ecology that nature itself does not offer.
A Natural End to Utilitarianism
“Nature as capital has a value of x and if we do not preserve it, the future costs will be y.” There are no doubt good intentions behind this kind of statements. But they repeat the very mistake that has led to the depletion of nature: considering nature as a commodity, a thing that is scarce. The logic follows that we are free to use it as pleases us as long as we leave enough of that thing for the next generations. This is not to say that we cannot take from nature or that we do not need to consider the impact on future generations. Rather, the problem is that considering nature a thing fails to understand it and therefore value it for what it is.
The utilitarian reification of nature cannot fully answer how its beauty is to be valued. The aesthetics of utilitarianism are notoriously ugly: we do not have to be Marxists to perceive how the workforce can too easily become objectified and made slaves to capital-owners. The beauty of work, of creativity and of individual dignity are ignored for their own sake, only to be instrumentalised and monetised. If our economic thinking renders us unable to see beauty in ourselves and what we do, how are we then able to ascribe value to something other?
Attempts at giving it value to nature in financial terms may elicit utilitarian investors to plunge into their deep pockets out of self-interest, or rather for the sake of their progeny’s survival. But that should not mean that nature should as a result be reified or commodified. Attempting to maintain or re-establish it in terms of monetary value will lead to bizarre ethical choices: with limited financial resources, do we save this species or that one, based on their respective usefulness? Rather, we are invited to enter into more complex considerations because nature is constituted of interrelated ecosystems and its preservation cannot be reduced to its individual constitutive elements. Indeed, how can we fully value something if we do not fully understand and account for its complexity?
Irreducible Complexity and Intellectual Humility
Anyone living in the Netherlands will appreciate the limits of weather forecasting. The complexity of meteorological patterns means that prediction is difficult and accuracy is always contingent on events not deviating from their statistical average. If philosophers of science were to talk about the weather, they would speak of probabilities and never of certainties. It is this differentiation that should serve as epistemological umbrella for our discussions on nature.
Evolutionary theory can provide guidance as to how to think about nature whilst avoiding over-simplifications: the ability of a species to survive explains why some genes are passed on rather than others. But that does not, in turn, necessarily mean that we can predict survival based on the level of fitness of a particular species. The crux is that determinism is at times a helpful device to simplify our understanding nature but it risks being too blunt and outright erroneous. Further, no one theory or discipline can explain natural processes: emergence means that different disciplines and theories are necessary to begin comprehending what goes on in nature.
More specifically, nature can be construed as a series of independent subsystems that are not directly related: what happens to bees in Arkansas is not directly correlated to what happens to penguins in the Antarctic. But these ecosystems are not entirely independent either: if the migration of a particular species stops, it will have an impact on other ecosystems, and vice-versa. The relationships between those subsystems may be mapped over time. But the complexity makes it close to impossible to predict unless we reach full understanding of the entirety of the sub-systems and how they relate. And more likely, chance will continue to play a role. Nature cannot – at this stage in our knowledge, if ever – be fully reduced to deterministic models.
This is why the consequentialist underpinnings of impact investing are likely to be inadequate: let’s invest x so that we get impact y. Anyone versed in the impact world will know that predicting outcomes is often shooting in the dark at best. In the case of social investments, carrots and sticks are used to make investments impactful: “We will not invest if you do not implement our ESG policy.” We justify power asymmetries in the name of making the world a better place, but nature is likely to ignore well-meaning investors.
We are not dealing with human beings who respond to financial incentives. Nature does not care, perhaps because it cannot be bought, but certainly because it does not and cannot follow a Code of Ethics. Nature has a mind of its own and cannot be coerced. At best, restoration can be facilitated but the exact outcomes may not easily be predicted. Impact will therefore need to become a looser concept, not because the intention is not there but because we cannot fully control it. This leads us in turn to face how our daily lives depend on nature, putting us not in a position of absolute power but much more one of vulnerability.
The Deification of Nature
Gaia, Mother Nature, and other folk personifications and totemisation of nature may be na?ve but they highlight something too easily dismissed: the fact that we need to present nature in a way that turns our relationship with it on its head. We rely on nature’s relative predictability for our own survival: we cannot so much master it but rather learn when to trust it. And yet, nature cannot be ascribed human moral categories such as kind or unkind: what meaning do we attribute to a pandemic? Can we even do that? We can maybe explain but certainly not blame nature – arguably not even ourselves.
We are at times left without words in describing our relationship to nature and all we are left are analogies based on our human experiences. People projecting human qualities onto God is alas also true when it comes to nature: if not reifying it, we also risk deify it, portraying the reality of its being in insufficient or inadequate ways. No, nature does not punish us for our sins and we should not seek to redeem ourselves. Rather, we should learn to live on better terms with a not-always-so-predictable and somewhat ineffable stranger who simply gives no single thought to our existence.
As argued above, investing in nature cannot be for instrumental reasons. But, equally, it cannot be about making up for our past mistakes; nature does not care about our guilt and does not need us. Rather, we are invited to understand better how our actions affect nature and vice-versa. Learning to live alongside a being that is complex but not scient calls on our intelligence: enlightened choices need to not only be science-based but also the result of a moral discernment that nature itself does not possess.
The relationship we have with nature must be based on the accountability of our actions. In such a moral ecology, investing in nature means engaging with a paradox: that nature does not make moral choices and leaves us in a position where we have to care for it. It calls on us to make investment choices that are the result of not only purely financial and “impact” factors but also the ethical choices we make on behalf of nature: we are the ones having to balance human and environmental considerations because nature cannot do that for us. And, ultimately, we will always intrude on nature. The question is how much should we do so and why?
Option for the Poor
"There can be no renewal of our relationship with nature without a renewal of humanity itself" - Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ (§118)
Understanding our place and rightful claims to nature demands that we look at ourselves in the mirror. The Covid-19 pandemic has cast us out of our habitual comfort and into a cold new reality: our relationship not only to nature but to each other is fragile and uncertain at all times. The New Eden – a renewed paradise where both people and planet flourish and live in harmony – remains a far distant promise.
Regardless of one’s religious beliefs, we cannot escape having to make ethical choices for ourselves and on behalf of nature: the values on which we act are never detached from a moral ecology that also puts the poor, those most reliant on and vulnerable to nature, at the centre of our decisions. The creation of economic opportunities that are considerate of the environment are an obvious starting point. But more profoundly, the dignity of nature and the dignity of human beings, in particular the poor, should never be separated.
Shaping Our Future Relationship with Nature
Reframing investments in nature from an instrumental logic to one that acknowledges the complexity and unpredictability of amoral ecosystems will be no small shift for the impact investing world. In particular, this will require a refined ability to make case-by-case ethical investment decisions, balancing nature restoration and preservation with the needs of the poor, together with the requirements for sufficient financial returns and acceptable risk.
I personally expect that something will, most of the time, have to give in: returns, risk mitigation, options for the poor, or environmental “impact”. Whichever order of preference we put these in will not only tell something about our values. It will tell us how much we are willing to understand ourselves, nature and the delicate relationship we have with it.
Four guiding principles should help us make better investments in nature:
(1) Science-based investment decisions that account for complexity. The consequentialist models of impact measurement will need to be reviewed to better reflect our relative lack of control on outcomes;
(2) An ongoing discussion on the impact of investments on the poor and those relying on nature for their income. We must acknowledge the inherent tension and that having our cake and eating is rarely the norm;
(3) Acknowledging that our relationship to nature – including through investments – is one of dependence as much as one of control, and that nature is more than just a thing. Nature cannot be instrumentalised, let alone reified. Our language should reflect that it is not another form of capital or we risk repeating the same mistakes, making skewed decisions on perceived relative values as result;
(4) That we will never be able to escape the question of our subjective moral compass when investing. KPIs in themselves will never absolve us from contemplating the ethical dimension of every choice we make. In an ideal world, the fetishisation of quantifiable metrics common in impact investing should be replaced by a clear sense of intersubjective responsibility if we are to be more than Pontius Pilates when it comes to investment decisions. I acknowledge this will be probably the most challenging ask and the most difficult to implement and monitor. But we can encourage the hiring of individuals who already demonstrate moral qualities as well as the institution of corporate cultures that facilitate adequate ethical decision-making.
Investing in nature is not an option anymore; it is a necessity. But so is a an engagement with our own moral ecology, acknowledging both our epistemological limitations and ethical responsibility towards nature and the poor.