Reparations after species extinctions: An account of reparative interspecies justice

The “standard” story of reparative justice goes something like this: an individual or a group of individuals (an agent, a community, etc.) has been the subject of injustices. These can be understood as human rights abuses, persecution, misrecognition, discrimination, distributive injustices embodied in the theft of cultural goods or natural resources, and so on. These injustices can then in turn be addressed by mechanisms that may include reparatory, restitutive, or restorative justice. Particularly historic injustices targeting communities are commonly described as appropriate objects of state reparations, such as widely discussed in the context of colonialism and slavery. Against the background of currently high levels of human-induced biodiversity loss, the question that now poses itself is whether a similar (albeit in many respects quite different) story can be told about anthropogenic species extinctions. In light of human-caused extinctions, can (some) humans or human institutions like the state be approached with reparative claims to respond to those losses?

One place to start this inquiry would be to take inspiration from the environmental ethics literature, which already offers different accounts of moral repair (Almassi, 2017) or restitution (Basl, 2010) and links these to practices of ecological restoration as moral restitution and/or reparation.¹ Such arguments could plausibly be extended to the subject matter of species extinctions. Yet, in this paper, we aim to show that species extinctions can also be integrated within a non-anthropocentric account of reparative justice that is significantly similar to how reparation is understood within the political theory literature and, thus, linking concerns of environmental ethics to political philosophy. That is, in how far are species extinctions a matter of reparative interspecies justice that is owed to individual nonhuman beings? And consequently, which entities are owed reparation and what would this reparative duty entail?

That is a novel area of inquiry. Yet, we do not have to fully start from scratch, because several political, environmental, and animal philosophers have already articulated different non-anthropocentric theories of (distributive, capabilities, recognition, etc.) interspecies justice on which such an account of reparative justice can be built (e.g., for book-length renditions, see Baxter, 2005; Cochrane, 2018; Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; Garner, 2013; Low & Gleeson, 1998; Nussbaum, 2023; Schlosberg, 2007; Wienhues, 2020. More on this literature and our understanding of interspecies justice in Section 2.1). Against this background, reparative justice within the context of interspecies justice has not received much philosophical attention to date (apart from Welchman, 2021),² and a full account of reparative interspecies justice has yet been proposed. In what follows, we propose an initial (and, thus, incomplete) account of reparative interspecies justice specifically for the case of human-caused species extinctions. For that purpose, we narrow our scope in two ways.

First, we investigate species extinctions as a concern of reparative interspecies justice. Since the early 1990s, anthropogenic climate change has permeated the practice of much of environmental, legal, social, and political philosophy. This dedication, however, contrasts with the attention given in the discipline to another equally serious and morally problematic consequence of human actions, namely, anthropogenic species extinctions; a predicament that, like climate change, is closely connected to social, economic, and political struggles, and an existential threat to continued life on the planet.³

Second, reparative duties can be plausibly built on a range of different theories of justice. In this paper, we only outline, as an example, how a responsibility to repair results from collective distributive interspecies injustices implicated in species extinctions, such as the loss of habitat, and related transitive wrongs. It is nonhuman individual beings which are subjected to these injustices. Thus, by taking a non-anthropocentric perspective on distributive justice as a starting point, which conceptualizes extinctions as the outcome of injustices as opposed to constituting injustices themselves, we address the question of whether we can make sense of a duty to repair following species extinctions. That is distinct from (but potentially compatible with) two further justice-based lines of argumentation with respect to extinctions. That is, first, additional non-anthropocentric arguments that claim that extinctions themselves are injustices (e.g., by attribution justice claims to collectives like species or ecosystems). A second additional line of argumentation is more apparent anthropocentric justice-based arguments on this issue that consider species extinctions as a problem of our duties toward future human generations (e.g., Feinberg, 1974).

Defending an extinction-specific reparative duty owed to nonhuman beings entails, first, elaborating on the relationship between extinctions and interspecies injustice that provides, in turn, the groundwork for enquiring whether, second, demands of reparative interspecies justice follow, once a species has gone extinct. Because theories defending the first step have already been elaborated (e.g., Wienhues, 2020), the second step is the focus of this paper. This topic is theoretically interesting insofar as anthropogenic species extinctions can lead to counterintuitive consequences—a form of moral hazard. After all, if we do not owe anything to nonhuman beings in terms of justice once they do not exist anymore, then failing to prevent extinctions would be “rewarded” by reduced duties of interspecies justice in the long run—if no reparative duties would follow. Moreover, this topic is also of practical relevance because our suggested account provides some general guidelines about how a state and its institutions should act in response to past injustices that led to species extinctions.

This paper is organized as follows. The second section offers a brief introduction to anthropogenic species extinctions, underlining specific characteristics of this phenomenon that are especially relevant to our argument. Moreover, we also explain our starting premises with respect to interspecies justice. Thereafter, in the third section, we develop our argument about the reparatory demands that result from extinction-related injustices. Based on the premise that the state and international institutions more broadly should be the vehicle of enacting that responsibility to repair (as opposed to restoration or restitution), we will argue in the fourth section that responsibilities to repair to the nonhuman dead can be met with symbolic forms of reparation. These reparations both honor the life of the victims of past injustices that contributed to their species' extinction and benefit other still-living nonhuman beings through a commitment to interspecies justice. That makes our view on reparations both retrospective and prospective and, thus, reparations can take different forms. That includes, for example, the preservation or restoration of habitat to materially repair the interspecies justice relationship in itself. As we will argue, this form of repair is the core of reparative action, which is supplemented with symbolic acts and educational programs, such as monuments and natural history museums to honor the nonhuman dead.

As part of ongoing evolutionary processes, species extinctions are an inherent part of life on Earth. However, not all extinctions are morally equal and some clarifications are in order to explain more precisely what phenomenon our argument addresses. To underline our interest in the link between species extinctions and interspecies injustices, we advance four qualifications concerning the type of extinctions that are relevant to our present purposes.

First, we are not interested in “background extinctions”—an ordinary form of extinction event—but in anthropogenic species extinctions. This anthropogenic origin conceptually differentiates the current mass extinction event from previous mass extinctions (Aitken, 1998). Relevant activities driving extinctions include practices of deforestation, indiscriminate use of pesticides, and widespread pollution, amongst other drivers. These human activities, taken collectively, have transformed nearly all of the Earth's surface and thereby have reduced and are in the process of reducing “natural” biodiversity even further (see IPBES, 2019). Thus, our focus is on the current mass extinction process, driven by human impacts on the environment, that some scientists have argued marks the end of the Holocene and that is predicted to be the sixth extinction event on such a large scale (Ceballos et al., 2015; Wake & Vredenburg, 2008).⁴ Applying this massness requirement to human-caused extinctions (in combination with the structural requirement mentioned below), in turn, lowers the epistemic burden for proving the anthropogenic causation of each individual species extinction.⁵

Second, we are interested in final extinctions of wild species. Final extinctions can be differentiated from other extinction processes that do not lead to the end of the respective phyletic branch.⁶ For example, our concern here lies with species like the Dryopteris ascensionis and not the Coregonus fera. This is the case because no individual member of the D. ascensionis—a plant from Ascension Island in the Atlantic—exists anymore (its extinction is final), while the Coregonus—a fish once common in Lake Geneva—exists in a hybridized form as the Coregonus palaea. Having said that, while the creation of a new daughter species is not covered by our argument, localized and near (final) extinctions are included. Yet, in terms of possible reparatory actions, such cases go beyond the different forms of reparation discussed in Section 4.

Additionally, we focus on the extinction of species such as the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus) and not on the extinctions of domesticated varieties such as the tautersheep. While the former is an extinct “wild” marsupial from Australia, New Guinea, and the islands of Tasmania, the latter is an extinct breed of domesticated sheep from Norway (part of Ovis aries). One aspect that differentiates these two cases is the conceptual difference between the loss of species and the loss of specific breeds. However, our main reasoning behind this distinction is that the relevant community of interspecies justice in our following argumentation is limited to “wild” nonhuman beings. That does not mean that domesticated nonhuman beings are not within the scope of justice (they might be), but their relationship with humans will ground different principles of justice than what justice might demand towards more or less “wild” nonhuman beings.⁷ While there is certainly concern not only about “wild” species but also old grain and vegetable varieties being lost, the debate about the current mass extinction event primarily concentrates on “wild” species or the loss of “natural” biodiversity. That is what people worried about the current mass extinction event as a moral problem usually imply and that is what we will focus on as well, setting all moral matters related to domestication aside.

Third, the term “human activities” is meant to refer to the general anthropogenic source of those planetary transformations and should not obscure the fact that, first, not all humans are implicated to the same degree (or at all) in the activities that contribute to species extinctions and, second, that these activities should not be primarily understood as individual choices but rather as practices that are part of broader collective economic and social processes and developments, such as industrialization. In other words, anthropogenic species extinctions, which are part of the current mass extinction event, are caused by larger economic processes and structures in which individuals are collectively implicated and which contribute to the drivers of extinction such as land-use change leading to the destruction of habitat (e.g., by the conversion to agricultural fields and a changing climate). In combination with the magnitude of the phenomenon (involving domino effects), this structural origin of anthropogenic species extinctions indicates that those practices may not only impact upon members of one species but rather on members of multiple species simultaneously.⁸

As a final and fourth clarification, we should note that this focus on extinctions driven by collective human endeavors does not exhaust all relevant aspects of the wrong implicated in anthropocentric species extinctions. Accordingly, this paper rather provides a further explanatory story of why extinctions are morally problematic in addition to other individualist or species-based arguments that explain the moral wrongness or badness involved in anthropogenic species extinction.⁹ For one, even within the individualist interspecies justice framework in which our argument is operating, there is space to consider whether other kinds of wrongs and injustices are implicated in species extinctions that go beyond drivers of extinction perpetuated by human collective practices and complementary reparative claims. Second, while our aim is to provide an individualist argument for the injustices implicated in extinctions, this is compatible with (yet does not necessitate) a range of claims that see other moral wrongs or losses situated on the species level. For example, nothing in our argument precludes maintaining that the loss of a species involves the loss of intrinsic, instrumental and/or relational value.¹⁰ However, because the non-instrumental value of species is contested (see Sandler, 2012), an additional individualistic argument for the wrong implicated in species extinctions is particularly valuable for the environmental literature.

If anthropogenic extinctions occur and these are outcomes of injustices, then it is important to reflect on what would constitute an appropriate moral response to these past injustices. As said, injustices are the kind of moral wrongs that are usually understood as resulting in an obligation to be addressed. So, what would be an appropriate response if not only the wronged individuals are gone but also their entire species has gone extinct? In the following we are aiming to illustrate the plausibility of framing this response in terms of a responsibility to repair. That is, we take reparations to be the right (but not necessarily sole) response to past injustices that resulted in species extinctions.

To further specify, distributive injustices (such as the loss of habitat) and the respective transitive wrongs can be implicated in three different kinds of extinctions—final, local and near extinctions—which in turn allow for different kinds of reparative actions (Figure 1). Because local and near extinctions often ultimately amount to final extinctions, and because final extinctions are also the most difficult case for making sense of possible reparative duties, we primarily focus on this latter possibility.¹⁴

Illustrating the content of the duty to repair should aid to soften the counter-intuitiveness of owing duties of reparative justice to the nonhuman dead. We cannot benefit the nonhuman dead directly, particularly when one is concerned with nonhuman beings which do not have interests concerning the time after their demise (in comparison to some human interests that can reasonably extend beyond one's passing, as we mentioned above). However, even if directly benefitting the dead is not possible, we can do justice to the nonhuman dead (i) by repairing a lost balance within the human–nature relationship resulting from past interspecies injustices, (ii) by recognizing the transgression of the demands of justice, and (iii) by committing not to repeat past injustices.³⁰ All these aspects are expressed by the idea of reparations for past injustices as a form of honoring; not only the dead whose species disappeared because of those past injustices but also the justice relationship to them “as such.”³¹ Honoring that justice relationship means to make the values that constitute that relationship an integral part of one's present life.

As an example, honoring truthfulness means to make efforts to be truthful or, in other words, to make this value an integral part of one's life, a value that marks one's life. Analogously, to honor the dead—which here means honoring the justice relationship we had (or should have had) with those who are now extinct—is to strive to make present the values that constitute a just relationship with those individuals. We cannot bring the dead back to life, but we can inform our life with the values that would have constituted a just relationship with those now extinct. Thus, the idea that reparations are a form of honoring the dead, specifically those long-gone individuals who suffered injustices that brought about the extinction of their species, is grounded in the fact that reparations aim to underline and bring to the present the values that comprise a just relationship with those now deceased individuals.

As the examples below show, reparations are burdensome; they require time, reflection, and contrition on the part of those who repair. They may also demand collective action and, on occasion, they require postponing or adjusting collective projects so that the acts of reparation may be adequately conveyed. All this is done (or should be done) under the recognition of the worth of those that would deserve these reparations and the importance of paying attention to cultivating just relations with them. Were they not worthy of these burdensome acts of reparations, there would be no duty to repair. Thus, honoring the nonhuman dead should be taken to mean and express an acknowledgment and respect for the moral standing of these individuals with whom we had or could have had a just relationship. In this respect, our position is not too dissimilar to the earlier-mentioned positions on reparative duties that do not rely on justice arguments, but we maintain that this honoring is owed to the nonhuman individuals instead of constituting a more general acknowledgment of the wrongness implicated in extinctions as an appropriate moral response.

In the case of reparations for interspecies injustices that resulted in extinctions, it is neither necessary nor possible to benefit or favor the originally harmed individuals, as is normally the case when victims of injustice are still alive. For our specific case, we contend that symbolic forms of reparations are an alternative that should be considered and should not be easily dismissed as a relevant form of political action (compare Palmer, 2010, 2012; but see also Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011). Based on the three kinds of responses to injustice mentioned above, we consider four possible symbolic forms of reparation.

First, while it might not be possible to support any interests of the nonhuman dead directly, in the case of distributive injustices, it is possible to favor (or at least to infringe on their interests to a lesser degree) currently living nonhuman beings in the same currency (i.e., land) in which the original injustices have occurred. More specifically, that involves enacting reparations through habitat conservation. So, while this constitutes a symbolic form of reparation, it is aimed at actually materially repairing the interspecies justice relationship in itself, by reducing and ultimately fully avoiding the human overuse of land (e.g., by refraining from converting more habitat than necessary into land used for human purposes such as agriculture) while also taking actions to reduce and ultimately stop the degradation of habitat (e.g., by reducing anthropogenic pressures on environmental sinks). Accordingly, these two distinct but connected dimensions of reparative action can address the first point about repairing a lost balance by addressing injustices within the human–nature relationship. Due to its material dimension that has the potential of “repairing” the interspecies justice relationship as such, the conservation of habitat should be seen as the central form of reparation.

In practice, this form of reparation would require taking the current demands of distributive interspecies justice seriously and implement ambitious policies in its support. Despite its backward-looking dimension, meeting reparative responsibilities will certainly favor conditions for future interspecies justice and further strengthen arguments in favor of pursuing interspecies justice in the present. Accordingly, reparative duties that concern the preservation of habitat provide an additional backward-looking justification for conservation policies that are already justified on forward-looking grounds based on the demands of interspecies and intra-human environmental justice.

Second, in addition to conservation, ecological restoration can also be engaged as a means of symbolic reparation in the form of habitat restoration. Engaging ecological restoration as an environmental management practice for the purpose of recuperating a lost balance by addressing the interspecies injustices within the human–nature relationship avoids the strong requirement of historic fidelity typically involved in ecological restoration. That is, while ecological restoration of an ecosystem as an environmental management practice is usually understood as the restitution of a past state of affairs or a return to a “historic trajectory” (Society for Ecological Restoration, 2002), the symbolic aspect of reparative justice is less demanding in that regard (in contrast to ecological restoration as restorative justice). In this context, habitat restoration as a reparative action does not necessitate the restoration of habitat of already extinct species to resemble past conditions, but it allows for the adaptation of restoration practices according to the needs of currently living nonhuman beings within the context of large-scale environmental changes such as climate change.³² Thus, complementary to the preservation of habitat, ecological restoration of habitat also has the potential of materially repairing the interspecies justice relationship in itself by reversing (to a degree) the degradation of the overall amount of available habitat.³³

Third, these kinds of reparation can also be combined with other forms of symbolic reparation such as in the form of monuments for extinct species (see Jørgensen, 2018). Such monuments, for example, would be a way to enact the second point about recognizing the transgression of the demands of justice, and would be a material way of signaling that “each anthropogenic extinction is [figuratively] a memorial for past injustices” (Wienhues, 2020, 157 italics in original) and could be the basis of public debates on extinctions. These symbolic reparations are an act of remembrance that, when genuinely conveyed, allows for a rebalancing of the justice relationship that past injustices flouted. These acts honor the moral significance of just interspecies relationships, making explicit in the present a collective commitment not to repeat the injustices that made those species disappear. So, here again symbolic reparations combine backward- and forward-looking elements.

The public building of monuments and memorials, apart from representing a collective response to past injustices, constitute “honorific representations” of those who were victims of historic injustices. Benjamin Cohen Rossi has argued that these monuments designate “any representation of an individual in a public space that depicts that individual as an exemplar of a value or values, such as courage, integrity, or justice” (Cohen Rossi, 2020, 50 without original italics). Adapting Cohen Rossi's view for our non-anthropocentric purposes, these public representations—monuments, memorials, frescoes, and so on—can honor in the public sphere the value of those now extinct individuals and the justice relationship to them; and express the present societal commitment to interspecies justice.

Yet, honoring the nonhuman dead and the justice relationship with them is not necessarily limited to the medium of art. A relevant part of this form of reparation is its educational aspect about species extinctions which can also be well implemented in other ways such as by natural history museums and other educational programs. These could not only embody the societal commitment to interspecies justice but also foster such a commitment as a means of reparation in the first place.³⁴ All these different forms of symbolic reparations that enact remembrance and honor the representation of the deceased can work as a starting point for intra-human exchanges at all levels, facilitating reflections about the wrongs involved in species extinctions, and pushing for changes. Thus, these symbolic reparations are not a form of communication aimed at the wronged individuals themselves.

And fourthly, such a societal commitment—implemented by and inscribed in appropriate policies that genuinely aim to mitigate currently ongoing species extinctions as far as possible—would also address the third point about not repeating past injustices. While the individuals that belong to the species that are now extinct cannot be benefitted anymore in any way that matters to them, it is still possible to favor other still-living nonhuman beings who are also owed interspecies justice by avoiding and mitigating injustices as embodied by our proposal to materially repair the interspecies justice relationship in itself. This last aspect of interspecies reparations is reminiscent of—while not being identical to—the “guarantees of non-repetition” as a part of reparations in international law concerning human rights violations (United Nations, 2006). These guarantees not only make explicit a commitment to the prevention of future injustices, particularly human rights violations, but also represent a form of loyalty to and promotion of human rights principles (United Nations, 2006, IX 23 (e, f, d)). This is analogous to our proposal in the sense that our suggested reparative practices should also entail a commitment extended over time to adhere to and promote just relationships with other species.

Accordingly, we argue that these four forms of reparation for past injustices are ways of honoring just interspecies relationships that were flouted by past injustices against individuals of now extinct species. These are significant ways of rescuing and underlining the value of those individuals whose species have now disappeared. Additionally, the first two forms of symbolic reparation are also directly relevant for addressing the transitive wrongs to which living individuals belonging to different species might be subjected. While some of the ecological changes that were induced by other species' extinctions are irreversible, still-living individuals can also potentially benefit from habitat conservation and restoration programs.³⁵

These four forms of reparation are not only compatible with each other but also, on many occasions, reinforce each other. For example, public policies in favor of habitat conservation and restoration can convey a commitment to the rest of society that permits and potentially positively influences the education of children and the fostering of respectful attitudes towards nonhuman beings. Of course, other morally relevant concerns also need to be considered. These include matters of practical implementation and of other relevant moral demands (such as other duties of intra-human and interspecies justice) to assess what all-things-considered forms of reparation should be pursued to what extent in different contexts. Yet, the first point about reparation as a recuperation of a lost balance should be considered the central aspect of reparative interspecies justice, because it not only acknowledges the past injustices but also aims to fundamentally (materially) repair the human–nature relationship, which is not only backward-looking as a means of reparation but also provides a way forward.

Taking a particular but still general view on interspecies justice as given, we have argued that these demands of justice—if not fulfilled—lead to demands of reparation. In the case of species extinctions, these demands take the form of obligations owed to the nonhuman dead and to living nonhuman individuals that are subjected to transitive wrongs. Moreover, these demands can be met, in turn, with symbolic forms of reparation. These involve, for example, favoring other still-living nonhuman beings within the same currency (e.g., land in the form of habitat) in which the original injustice occurred via habitat conservation and restoration. Other forms of symbolic reparation, such as monuments and museums, should also be considered as forms of honoring the dead whose species disappeared as a result of historic injustices.

Accordingly, our aim was to elucidate how extinctions—as a typical species-level concern—can be made sense of within an individualistic theory of interspecies justice by employing the notion of reparative justice, which is a common lens for addressing past injustices within the political philosophy literature. For that purpose, we presented the broader theoretical landscape of reparative interspecies justice with respect to extinctions to illustrate its similarities and differences to the standard case of reparative duties in intra-human justice relations. Moreover, our account is meant to be complementary to other arguments found in environmental ethics that illustrate the wrongness of species extinctions in different ways.

Nevertheless, the ideas presented in this paper still require further elaboration, as we have left unanswered many relevant questions that require further consideration to provide a complete theoretical account of reparative interspecies justice. More thought will have to be given to, amongst other things, the respective responsibilities and actors involved in addressing species extinctions, the theoretical possibility of owing duties of justice to the nonhuman dead, the notion of honoring, the different forms of symbolic reparations, and so on.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.