Synthetic Biology and the Goals of Conservation

ABSTRACT

The introduction of new genetic material into wild populations, using novel biotechnology, has the potential to fortify populations against existential threats, and, controversially, create wild genetically modified populations. The introduction of new genetic variation into populations, which will have an ongoing future in areas of conservation interest, complicates long-held values in conservation science and park management. I discuss and problematize, in light of genetic intervention, what I consider the three core goals of conservation science: biodiversity, ecosystem services, and wilderness. This uneasy relationship, however, does not forgo the use of such interventions. I argue there is a case for the application of this technology within some interpretations of the moral frameworks of wilderness and biodiversity, despite apparent conflict between these values and the technology, and the possibility that this technology's use displays some limitations of the ecosystem services framework. Ultimately, the advent of biotechnology assisted restoration highlights the need for us to reevaluate our ethical concepts of conservation at times of global environmental and technological change.

KEYWORDS:

• Synthetic biology
• wilderness
• biodiversity
• ecosystem services
• conservation

1. Introduction

The Earth is facing multiple environmental crises. Sometimes referred to as the sixth major extinction event, worldwide, the number of wild organisms is rapidly diminishing (Ceballos et al., 2010). As population numbers drop, the extant genetic variation in wild populations is disappearing. This leads to inbreeding, which can contribute to extinction (Frankham, 1998). The loss of variation in a population creates further risks. The lack of genetic, morphological, and behavioral variation can make these populations vulnerable to human-induced environmental change. Significant human-driven environmental changes include habitat loss, invasive species, exposure to novel pathogens, and climate change. Larger populations with more genetic variation (and thus more adaptive potential) are better equipped to respond to these stressors, while smaller populations will be highly susceptible.

One way to protect wild populations and allow them to respond to these new stressors is to cultivate phenotypic features that will allow them to avoid extinction. Current conservation programs look to subject a focal population to ‘assisted evolution’. These are selective breeding programs that identify biotic traits in a population that will allow it to survive, and then selectively breed these traits into the wider population of that species. For example: in Australia, there is the Quoll assisted evolution project. The Northern Quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus), a marsupial predator, is threatened with extinction by the spread of Cane toads (Braithwaite & Griffiths, 1994). Quoll populations have dropped by 75% throughout Australia due to invasive Cane toads poisoning and killing them (Reese, 2018). Researchers discovered that some genetic markers in the Quoll population correspond to Cane toad avoidance behavior in a Quoll population that had been heavily exposed to Cane toads (Jolly et al., 2018; Kelly & Phillips, 2019). They have since attempted to breed this trait into naïve populations that have not been yet exposed to Cane toads.

Assisted evolution requires standing genetic variation in the species of interest. If there are no genetically-influenced traits that can be bred through the target population, then this method cannot be utilized. A lack of genetic variation in a species is made more likely by small population sizes. Further, selective breeding is inefficient. Recessive or complex traits will require many generations of breeding for the traits to breed true in the wild population, and it will take considerable time to isolate these advantageous features. Selective breeding can itself lead to inbreeding as variation in non-associated traits is lost. Individuals who do not carry the selected trait, say genes that influence Cane toad avoidance in Quolls, could have important features which could be lost in the selective breeding process. This is particularly problematic when the species has a small population size and removing multiple individuals from their natural habitat endangers that species further. Finally, selective breeding takes many hours of manual work, driving up the costs of these programs and making them unfeasible in many cases.

These drawbacks make genetically engineering wild populations a tempting option. New DNA editing tools (e.g., CRISPR) allow for the efficient alteration of species’ germlines, and scientists are considering using this technology to achieve conservation aims (Church & Regis, 2014; Piaggio et al., 2017; Redford & Adams, 2021). The efficiency of introducing new variation, and the targeted nature of these alterations, make the process more precise and avoid many of the drawbacks of selective breeding. Projects like the insertion of genes to protect the American Chestnut from Chestnut blight, which was accidentally introduced from Asia, have demonstrated positive effects on the target species with few negative effects (Powell et al., 2019). Other projects, exemplified by the de-extinction research currently underway to create a Thylacine ecotype to be released back into Tasmania, represent radical interventions where numerous changes are being made to the genome.

What is shared between these projects is the use of biotechnology to restore or preserve ecosystems by preserving or reintroducing species or ecotypes. Turner (2022) refers to this as Biotechnology Assisted Restoration (BAR). These interventions will lead to wild populations with permanent changes in their features, to allow them to respond to the human-affected environment (Section 2). My aim with this paper is twofold. First, I will argue the alteration of wild populations necessitates a reevaluation of the norms of conservation science. Three values dominate Western conceptions of conservation science and conservation planning and I address each in turn. These are the preservation of Wilderness (Section 3), the preservation of Biodiversity (Section 4), and the maintenance of Ecosystem Services (Section 5). The advent of this technology illuminates’ tensions intrinsic to the wilderness framework between competing goals in wilderness conservation, it displays the value of biodiversity has not been thoroughly assessed in light of the possible creation of new biodiversity, and it displays the risks of the ecosystem services framework. I show in the final section (Section 6) how these issues all emerge due to the question of whether we should preserve or maximize features of environmental value. My second aim is to thoroughly assess whether synthetic biology can be justified within these frameworks. I will argue these technologies can be deployed if there is a conservative preservationist principle within the conservation ethical framework that tempers the drift toward radical interventions that will undermine conservation in the long term.

2. Biotechnology-Assisted Restoration in Conservation Science

The introduction of new variation into populations is not a new practice in conservation, the tools that can allow this to occur rapidly and precisely are not. Synthetic biology is the science that is driving new biotechnological possibilities. Synthetic Biology refers to a research cluster that employs biotechnology to redesign organisms: introducing genes and metabolic pathways into species where they were not present; constructing new metabolic pathways, organelles, and sub-cellular structures; and eliminating genes and pathways to streamline biotic design (for an influential description see Benner & Sismour, 2005). Primarily, the focus has been on altering microbes to create biochemicals of utility to humanity. The modern practice of synthetic biology is continuous with gene editing techniques that have been occurring since the 1970s, such as in the case of creating insulin producing E. coli (Goeddel et al., 1979; Kaebnick et al., 2014). The introduction of genetic engineering into agricultural systems has garnered an immense public response and academic literature (e.g., Gustafsson & Jansson, 1993). The use of genetic engineering in conservation, however, raises new and separate moral issues, rather than replicating these existing issues (Brister & Newhouse, 2020; Sandler, 2020). The existing uses of these technologies have been constrained to heavily managed systems and the release of organisms into the conservation areas requires wrestling with justificatory frameworks found within conservation.

Synthetic biology and genetic engineering have been used in complex multicellular organisms and it is primarily the use of these technologies to introduce genes into species to meet conservation goals that I am enquiring into, with one caveat. I am addressing the introduction of new biotic features into extant species where the intervention will lead to the ongoing presence of this introduced variation into extant populations of conservation interest. As such, I am not addressing two other major uses of synthetic biology in conservation, gene-drives for eliminating species as its effective use will eliminate the genetic variation introduced through these methods or the recreation of extinct species through ‘de-extinction’.¹

A major BAR project underway is the attempt to protect coral against climate change. Coral is facing mass die-offs along coastlines due to rising temperatures. Increased temperature leads to coral bleaching, which if sustained will kill the coral. Even if the global temperature increase was maintained at the extremely optimistic projection of 1.5℃, large sections of the earth’s coral reefs and their associated habitat will be destroyed. This has led multiple groups of researchers to propose that synthetic biology should be employed to fortify coral reefs against climate change (Anthony et al., 2017; Novak et al., 2020). Recently, researchers have aimed to introduce genes for heat shock proteins that will allow coral species to respond to temperature increases (Cleves et al., 2020). This has become an appealing program, with signs of significant public support. A survey of over 1000 members of the public showed that 55% had a positive response to the proposal (Hobman et al., 2022). Given the support for prominent projects and the clear advantages of using synthetic biology, it looks likely that the genetic modification of wild populations will become a significant tool in conservation in the future.

The projects underway using synthetic technology are diverse, and given this diversity, there are many different risks to gauge, both moral and practical. There are strong objections to the use of synthetic biology, both generally and specifically within the context of conservation. The use of synthetic biology uniquely troubles the normative frameworks of conservation science, compared with its use in medicine and commercial production. Conservation science’s values are constructed toward ends that are less immediately anthropogenic and there are competing frameworks for explaining our ethical duties toward the environment. This paper looks to address the conservation ethical frameworks that feature heavily in conservation science and drive policy in systematic conservation planning; wilderness, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. This is not meant to be exclusive or exclusionary of other conservation practices. Many people in the world, likely the majority of humanity, have developed conceptions of conservation tied to religious or other cultural and intellectual practices. Common groundings include preserving God’s dominion or forms of Animism, where natural features are agents with self-interest who deserve moral consideration. These moral belief systems can be involved with scientific conservation planning and be incorporated into conservation practice (e.g., Blicharska & Mikusiński, 2014). Equally, I will not address at length important environmental concepts like intrinsic value, which can connect to the values I discuss, particularly wilderness (McShane, 2007). A range of intellectual and social traditions toward the environment are important but, in this paper, I am prioritizing an enquiry into how the science of conservation and park planning conceives or has conceived of the goals of conservation. I will now address these three conservation goals in turn and describe how the use of synthetic biology complicates and illuminates previously hidden issues within these ethical frameworks.

3. Wilderness

Wilderness is a concept that emerged from a cultural practice rather than any centralized set of decision-makers, which makes the concept’s deployment varied and difficult to delimitate. The wilderness concept has changed over time, but its origin is the description of an area outside of human governance. This concept took on deep cultural significance during the Romantic period, where it was contrasted with the increasingly industrialized society that was emerging. They were considered places of value where a person could experience ‘the sublime’, or areas that inspired combinations of awe, fear, and majesty (Burke, 1757/1958; Kant, 1764/2003). It was in such spaces that individuals could cultivate their character and find God. The idea of wilderness is deeply embedded in Western intellectual history and has motivated the preservation of areas of esthetic and biological significance throughout the Western world. Its proponents, e.g., John Muir, argued that land should be kept ‘wild’, motivating the creation of the first national park in the United States of America; Australia shortly followed this lead. These parks were designed to exclude people and administrators did this to good and ill effect. Allocating an area as wilderness removed the possibility of commercial development and exploitation but also justified the removal of indigenous peoples, who had been the inhabitants of these areas, to horrific effect.

Wilderness’s legacy has been complex. Serious criticisms have been raised against it. These objections include that the concepts ‘Wilderness’ and ‘natural’ are conceptually incoherent as they incorrectly presume a divide between humanity and nature (Ereshefsky, 2007). Further, there are strong objections to its political use. It has been used against indigenous peoples, who suffered genocide and removal from their land under the justification of creating wilderness areas (Cronon, 1996). But despite this history, it was and remains a significant concept in conservation. It is part of the USA’s legislation (Wilderness Act, 1964), and it features as a core concern in the public despite variation in how it is interpreted (Cordell et al., 2003; Zoderer et al., 2020), and many still consider it (or similar terms like ‘nature’) as the primary goal of conservation (Katz, 2022; Maier, 2012). Many authors have looked to separate the horrific practices that have been done in the name of wilderness from the concept as a goal of conservation (see Petersen & Hultgren, 2020 for references). It was the primary intellectual lever that moved the Western world toward conservation in the 19^th and early 20^th century and was, until the 1980s, the central goal of conservation practice. Given its historical use and continuing role in conservation, it is crucial to consider how new conservation techniques and practices sit within a wilderness conservation framework.

Wilderness conservation, while heavily debated, is intuitive to many who have engaged in conservation practice. A good start is Minteer and Collins (2014) definition: ‘1) wild or “pristine” landscapes are the bearers of ethical value and the focal points of advocacy and policy, 2) technological interference in nature should be minimized, and 3) historical integrity is the primary conservation and restoration target’. (P. 458).

This is a good first pass from a wilderness perspective. Tenet 1 of the above definition only makes sense once a definition of ‘wild’ is present, such a definition will tend to rely on ideas resembling tenet 2 and 3. Many within the wilderness community would view 2 as too weak, instead advocating for nonintervention of any kind. A famous set of arguments introduced by Robert Elliot (1982), developed by Eric Katz (1992), and supported by later environmental philosophers (Siipi, 2014), suggests that all biological restoration, be it ecological or genomic, degrades or destroys the value of natural systems. These philosophers argue that natural systems are not designed by human intention and these systems have a unique esthetic value born from their autonomy. For areas to have a unique conservation value they, therefore, require an autonomous etiology without human intention and intervention. Autonomy features as a primary driver of wilderness considerations and hard-line proponents use it to reject ecological restoration and even park management (e.g., Turner, 1996).

Considerations of historical integrity in wilderness drive the rejection of hard-line views that emphasize solely autonomy (see Higgs, 2003; Light, 2000). Ecological systems have been degraded by human actions and inaction will allow these systems to further degrade. Ecological integrity tends to be defined through wilderness, and therefore nonintervention by humans, but also by historical continuity and fidelity, the resemblance of the system to historical precedents (Karr, 1996; Rohwer & Marris, 2021; also see; Saltz & Cohen, 2023). If one considers historical fidelity as part of historical integrity or wildernesses value more broadly, then restoration is warranted as without intervention the system’s historical features will be lost. This concern with the maintenance and restoration of the historical features of ecosystems is likely why Minteer and Collins (2014) state ‘technological interference in nature should be minimized’ rather than reject interference entirely (technological and otherwise). As such, I consider wilderness to be a concept that has two conceptual underpinnings, the autonomy of the ecological system and its historical fidelity to previous states. These two concepts often can be antagonistic, and this antagonism explains the disunity and conflict between the views of wilderness proponents.

Interventions that introduce new variation and biochemical pathways into species to preserve them antagonizes the wilderness principles of autonomy and historical fidelity. As a cutting-edge technological innovation, it will interfere with nature to produce environmental outcomes that are otherwise impossible or unlikely to be reached. Proponents of environmental autonomy have argued directly against the use of this technology as human intervention would imbue conservation areas with conscious human design and thus make nature into artifacts of human decision-making and, therefore, not wilderness (Katz, 2022). This would interfere with the autonomous self-designing process, which wilderness proponents argue grants nature its unique value (Rolston, 1986; Sandler, 2020). Equally, synthetic biology can conflict with considerations of historical fidelity (Brister & Newhouse, 2020; Palmer, 2016; Sandler, 2020; Siipi, 2014). Conservation practitioners can introduce novel genetic and biochemical pathways into a species without historical precedent. Depending on the grain of analyses (see below) these interventions could change the character of these ecosystems.

Despite this antagonism, when we consider the trade-offs between autonomy and historical fidelity there may be a role for BAR within wilderness-based conservation planning. Historical fidelity and autonomy are graded rather than binary concepts and could apply to different components in ecosystems to different degrees. Biological hierarchy is nested, with genes sitting in organisms, organisms in populations, and populations in ecosystems. Interventions by humanity can act to preserve the historical fidelity of features at one level of the biological hierarchy by modifying another.

When synthetic biology is used to preserve endangered populations, the modification of one gene, while changing that gene, could allow a population to overcome an environmental stressor that maintains the rest of the genome, population, and ecosystem (the constituent species and their relations) in the face of extinction. While BAR may infringe on the species’ autonomy in the sense of not being affected by humanity, it will allow it to continue to autonomously evolve and interact with its environment independently from humanity (Lean, 2022; Rohwer, 2022). This first sense of autonomy I describe as Authenticity-based Autonomy and the second Self-Willed Autonomy (Palmer, 2016).

In contrast, traditional conservation might involve assisted evolution, habitat monitoring and restoration, and ongoing interventions to maintain the population and ecosystem. Inaction and not using this technology or traditional conservation techniques will result in a more radically different ecosystem than the other options. These changes will ultimately be due to the ongoing damage caused by human actions such as habitat clearance, the introduction of invasive species, or climate change. While in one sense autonomy is preserved by nonintervention, radical changes are created by human actions that infringe on the organism’s ability to have ongoing ecological interactions. The contrasts will depend on the local conditions of the community e.g., how badly endangered the species is, how much intervention is needed, how important the species is for the community food web etc. I outline the contrast between these approaches in Table 1.

Table 1. Wilderness-based strategies.

	Ecosystem Species Composition	Focal Species Genetic Identity	Authenticity-Based Autonomy	Self-Willed Autonomy
Traditional Restoration	Maintained	Maintained (altered if Assisted Evolution)	Reduced	Maintained or reduced through relocations.
Biotechnology Assisted Restoration	Maintained	Altered	Reduced	Maintained
Non-Intervention	Altered	Maintained until the point of inbreeding or extinction	Maintained	Maintained until the point of extinction

If we believe historical fidelity, up and down the biological hierarchy, is important in wilderness-based conservation then there is a strong reason for Biotechnology Assisted Restoration. When a key population is on a trajectory for extinction, nonintervention sacrifices the historical fidelity of species and ecosystems and the ability of the population to live an autonomous self-willed existence to solely preserve authenticity-based autonomy. Further, if one values historical fidelity on the species-level and ecosystem composition-level more acutely than the historical fidelity of a whole genome, as I do, then minor changes in a genome to save the species’ and ecosystem’s character are a preferable option.

The view described here, however, would likely be rejected by many wilderness proponents but similar positions are supported by other environmental ethicists (Brister & Newhouse, 2020; Palmer, 2016; Rohwer, 2022). The use of synthetic biology in conservation is antagonistic to the goal of preserving wilderness on the first pass. If the public, conservation scientists, and managers view wilderness as an important conservation goal, there are good reasons to be conservative in the use of synthetic biology. Wilderness comes in degrees and features trade-offs between its two components, autonomy and historical fidelity. There is therefore, in my view, some warrant for using synthetic biology in limited cases if these changes preserve as many of the historical features as possible, up and down the biological hierarchy, and maintain autonomous wild populations.

4. Biodiversity

Preserving biodiversity emerged as a major goal of conservation within the last 30 years. From the 1970s there was an increasing number of scientists discussing the value of ‘natural diversity’, ‘biotic diversity’, or ‘biotic variety’ (Faith, 2021; Myers, 1979; Terborgh, 1974). These terms were codified in the 1980s as biodiversity and by the 1990s it was incorporated by the UN as a global conservation priority for all 160 nations that signed the UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD, 1992; Lovejoy, 1980; Wilson, 1988). The core idea is that preserving the diverse forms of biotic arrangements will preserve entities desirable both for humanity now and in the future, and preserve features that will allow biotic systems to self-maintain. This differs from the preservation of wilderness because it is seen as a more scientific foundation for conservation, considering the preservation of the biotic features that vary with the natural world rather than areas that are conjectured to have limited human impact.

Standardizing the quantification of biotic diversity has been a contested matter, with different accounts emerging. The primary public-facing account of biodiversity is found in the UN Convention of Biodiversity (1992), which states that biodiversity is ‘the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems’. This broad definition is extremely effective as a political tool in conservation. All biotic features that could be valued by political actors are contained within this definition. This is because diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems includes all biological phenomena. This, however, creates problems for implementing it within conservation planning. When biodiversity is defined as all of biology, it is difficult to make claims that some areas should be prioritized over others for conservation.

This difficulty has led to the formation of different stances toward biodiversity. Some defend a normative account of biodiversity and either argue biodiversity is equivalent to the biotic features people happen to value, or that we should eliminate the concept of biodiversity and simply focus on preserving systems that people currently value (Maier, 2012; Morar et al., 2015; Santana, 2014). Some argue for deflationary views of biodiversity, where systematic measures of biodiversity must be selected through a process of stakeholder engagement (Sarkar, 2019). Others hold realist views, according to which biodiversity is a measurable objective quantity present in the world. Within the realists there are strong pluralists about which measures best represent biodiversity, arguing there are multiple equally legitimate ways to measure biodiversity (Burch-Brown & Archer, 2017; Frank, 2016) and those who believe a variety of measures are important in quantifying biodiversity but there is a single priority measure of biodiversity (Lean, 2017; Lean & Maclaurin, 2016; Maclaurin & Sterelny, 2008).

In this paper, I assume that biodiversity includes measurable differences in the biological world rather than the immediate preferences of groups of humans. Such an interpretation follows the rationale that biodiversity conservation is aimed at preserving material differences between biotic forms. The biological world is varied with many different evolved forms, and we should preserve the best range of these forms for both their current use and their future possible use (Arrow & Fisher, 1974; Faith, 1992; Lean, 2017). The differences shown in modern biota are the result of millions of years of trial and error through natural selection and as such represent ‘irreplaceable design’ that has been imperfectly optimized to survive (Cline, 2020). These differences are a material instantiation of the deep history of life, with genetic sequences separated through the splitting of lineages over millions of years (Preston, 2014). Given this coded deep history of life, biodiversity is a record of the history of life on earth, holding epistemic utility. This epistemic utility creates heritage value, a form of esthetic value. Just as ancient texts have deep heritage value given, they contain information about the deep history of humanity, biodiversity has heritage value as it reveals the history of life on earth (see Turner & Han, 2023 for a similar argument). This emphasis on preserving deep history intimately attaches the value of biodiversity to phylogenetic diversity, where the history of lineage evolution and divergence is prioritized in biodiversity conservation (Lean, 2017; Lean & Maclaurin, 2016).

Given this understanding of biodiversity, BAR using synthetic biology could be considered an acceptable practice for conservation, but it does raise some conceptual problems for the biodiversity normative framework. If we alter the genetic sequences of non-cultivated wild populations to preserve biodiversity, we will face a conceptual problem that was hidden from previous debates over biodiversity. Altering the genetic and biochemical systems in lineages does not solely preserve biodiversity through maintaining a lineage, it introduces new biodiversity. For example, in the case of coral, the aim of altering the coral is to preserve the coral lineage and the biodiversity it instantiates, but this is done through introducing new functional and genetic features into that lineage. This is not just the case within conservation synthetic biology projects but in synthetic biology more widely. The creation of a minimal genome of Mycoplasma genitalium by the Craig Venter lab represents the creation of new biodiversity (Gibson et al., 2010). This is because the genome was modified from the wild-type populations through the removal of coding and non-coding DNA and adding coded ‘watermarks’ in the DNA that include a web address, the authors of the paper, and three quotes (Sleator, 2010).

The enhancement rather than the preservation of biodiversity poses a serious problem for conservation. Is there an ethical equivalency between preserving and creating biodiversity? Gyngell and Savulescu (2017) argue there is. They argue that if we believe that biodiversity provides us with some form of value or goods that are worth preserving, then there is a reason to increase biodiversity to access more of this value or bundles of goods. They claim natural entities’ biodiversity value is symmetrical over maintaining features and adding new features. As such, they argue the creation of a population through de-extinction would be equivalent to preserving a species that would have otherwise died out. Equally, increasing genetic diversity through introducing genes would be equivalent to preserving a genetic variant in a sub-population. Initially, the cost inefficiency of the creation of new biodiversity versus preserving biodiversity should make preservation the preferred option but in time creation could become more cost-effective. If one accepts a symmetry between preserving and increasing biodiversity, then increasing biodiversity through synthetic biology could be defended as an implication of this moral framework.

This situation could lead to dangerous norms in how conservation is conducted, with some unfortunate precursors already existing. Many countries have a Biodiversity Offsetting Scheme or Biodiversity Credits. When developers want to clear biodiversity-rich habitats they can purchase another area of land as a biodiversity offset to counteract the biodiversity loss in the area being cleared. Often the purchased land is in a more remote area, and in Australia where I am familiar with the local policy, these areas of biodiversity offsetting are often restored ecosystems rather than old-growth habitats. Old-growth habitats tend to have richer more biodiverse assemblages with more endemic species. In such cases, these biodiversity offsetting schemes often result in net biodiversity losses (Bekessy et al., 2010). With the opportunity to restore or increase the diversity of genomes or create new populations, we could likely find a recapitulation of this dynamic with biodiversity offsetting becoming genetic. Unique species possessing biotic features millions of years in the making could be allowed to go extinct with the promise, a promise that is unlikely to be fulfilled, that new biodiversity could be created to replace these losses. This can create a ‘moral hazard’ or ‘complacency problem’ where current conservation may be curtailed due to the belief future technology can replace current losses (Turner, 2014, 2017).

A lack of urgency in conservation now will undoubtedly result in extant biodiversity loss. This issue of complacency in the face of the biodiversity crisis is the same as faced by climate change where, instead of reducing emissions now, governments are increasingly relying on intensive technological interventions to remove carbon from the atmosphere (Kolbert, 2021). In both cases, prudent action to stop environmental destruction now is the most effective way to preserve the environment as these new technological interventions will not be perfect or may not be timely. They will create new externalities of risk as their use will be unpredictable and the application will be put in the hands of the powerful, creating new asymmetries of power.

Fears against complacency, just in the case of climate change, can also justify the use of this technology. There is a cost of inaction and not using the available technology and resources to address current environmental damage. In the case of using biotechnology for biodiversity preservation, small changes in a lineage’s DNA and functional features can preserve that lineage’s features and deep evolutionary history. For example, the genetic modification of chestnuts to protect them from chestnut blight will only change one gene to preserve that entire species’ genes (Powell et al., 2019). The biodiversity moral framework does not reject human intervention in the same manner as the wilderness framework, so the act of intervening to save biodiversity is not troubling within this ethical framework.

In emphasizing biodiversity, as being represented by deep history and the divergence of lineages, we can also circumvent many of the issues associated with biodiversity supplementation. Changes in small sections of DNA or a limited set of functional characteristics will not substantially increase biodiversity, as they will not force a large change in that lineage and its historical features. Such small changes cannot recover the value loss of losing a unique lineage while preserving the deep history of the lineage and its heritage value. Biodiversity supplementation is a more acute problem for those who emphasize functional or morphological differences as the primary differences relevant for biodiversity. Even in this case, where the changes are conservative, the features changed will be outweighed by the features preserved. Some versions of de-extinction are a more threatening application of this technology for the biodiversity conservation framework, as it involves radical changes to a lineage to create a new species which is an ecological proxy for an extinct population. In such cases, we would not be preserving historical biodiversity but rather creating novel biodiversity by creating an approximate replica of an extinct species.²

The introduction of synthetic biology into the toolbox of conservation will provide significant methods to overcome environmental stressors that wild populations are subject to. With targeted conservative interventions, it may protect threatened ecosystems, like coral reefs, or introduce genetic variation into highly inbred populations. Genetic interventions can preserve other populations in ecosystems, thereby preserving or promoting biodiversity, such as in the case of engineering keystone species like the American Chestnut against chestnut blight (Brister & Newhouse, 2020). However, this method complicates grounding conservation in biodiversity through introducing the possibility of biodiversity supplementation. One could accept that there is no asymmetry between biodiversity preservation and biodiversity production, like Gyngell and Savulescu (2017). This, I believe, would be deeply unacceptable to most of the public and conservation practitioners, and I would like to see a strong argument for why an asymmetry should be maintained. I have instead argued that enthusiastic biodiversity supplementation has risks that make it undesirable. I believe it is dangerous to treat new biodiversity as equivalent to extant or extinct biodiversity. Just as in biobanking where old-growth forests are treated as equivalent to newly less species-rich restored systems, deeply unique species may be fallaciously treated as being equivalent to recently modified species. The focus should be maintained on preserving lineages that are distinct, rather than creating new diversity. This, however, justifies the use of biotechnology to preserve lineages in the face of otherwise existential risks, as limited changes to biodiversity could preserve a lot of biodiversity.

5. Ecosystem Services

The final way I consider normatively grounding conservation is that conservation value is based on gaining access to ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are, ‘the conditions and processes through which natural ecosystems, and the species that make them up, sustain and fulfil human life’ (Daily, 1997). This normative framework is the most recent, being created to directly explain nature’s value in economic terms to connect conservation with economics and policy. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment identifies four types of service: provisioning (e.g., wood, food), regulating (e.g., water quality, climate), cultural (e.g., recreation, aesthetic), and supporting (e.g., carbon cycle, soil formation) (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). This is an anthropocentric conception of conservation because to satisfactorily maintain ecological services, one would preserve ecosystems, or parts of ecosystems, that provide utility to the public.

Synthetic biology, as it is standardly practised, is conducted with the goal of engineering biology to suit anthropocentric ends. The alteration of genomes and species to produce goods, be they agricultural, medical, or industrial, all correspond to a normative framework where biological systems are valued for the services they produce. Ecosystem services validate the engineering outlook of synthetic biology, where we not only value these systems for the goods and services, they provide but actively alter them to produce more. Within the ecosystem services framework, I perceive a tacit assumption that we are preserving systems rather than engineering them for these goods and services. The novelty of synthetic biology, and its affordances, have not yet led to serious considerations of what these capabilities mean for conservation more widely. However, aspects of this engineering stance do appear within conservation science in the discussion of restoration and novel ecosystems.

The restoration of damaged ecosystems necessarily involves human agency and decision-making. Traditional restoration was done with the primary aim of restoring systems to a historical baseline, that is restoring the system to resemble the ecological system that had previously been present. The increasing interest in the value of ‘novel ecosystems’ has, however, made historical fidelity not the only goal in ecological restoration (Hobbs et al., 2006, 2009; Marris, 2011). Novel ecosystems, as the name indicates, are ecological arrangements without historical precedent. Novel ecosystems result from human actions altering the local ecological conditions and facilitating population migration into new spaces creating new ecological arrangements. Within the novel ecosystem literature, their value is often defended by recording the ecosystem services these areas produce (Evers et al., 2018). While initially novel ecosystems were discussed in the context of valuing the novel ecological arrangements that were a by-product of human-influenced ecosystems they have also been discussed in the context of consciously creating novel ecological arrangements (Perring et al., 2013).

The incorporation of novel ecosystems into restoration ecology involves a limited engineering approach to ecosystem design where ecosystems are constructed for the goods and services they provide. These novel ecosystems are defended as being more ‘productive’ in that they cycle more resources or produce more biomass than the extant ecological systems (see Lean, 2021). This development, however, has only been discussed at the level of ecological arrangements rather than engineering the populations themselves to contribute to these services. But if we accept this engineering stance at the ecological level it would be a natural extension of this moral framework to take an engineering stance on the genetic composition of populations in ‘conservation’ areas. As such, considering ecosystem services as the primary goal of conservation is a moral framework that validates the use of synthetic biology in conservation practice.

Altering wild populations for anthropogenic ends has been considered and some projects could yield positive results. Charles (DeLisi et al., 2020) suggest that significant investment needs to be made into engineering wild plants to increase carbon sequestration.³ Wild organisms may lack the capacity to address environmental damage we have caused and synthetic biology has a huge potential for bioremediation of pollutants and debris caused by humanity. Proposed examples include plastic and TNT decomposition and the sequestrations of heavy metals like arsenic (Rylott & Bruce, 2020). Such unique services could not exist without human intervention and provide utility for humanity and remediate areas for other species to occupy these spaces. In cases where the addition of services aids both humanity and other species, there is a case for the creation of such services. The ecosystem services framework, however, does not include shared gains as a moral imperative within its framework, only anthropocentric gains are morally salient.

There are, however, stark risks involved in combining an ecosystem services framework with synthetic biology. The instrumentalization of nature to anthropocentric ends could cause significant losses of the features of the environment that many people value, which include its separation from strong human intervention (see Wilderness). Initially, the ecosystem services normative framework aimed to translate such values into language amenable to economics and policy (Gómez-Baggethun et al., 2010). This includes all the ways humans value the environment including the aesthetic, spiritual, and cultural valuations of these systems. Through assigning market value to these ‘recreational’ values, ecosystem services conservation must be inclusive of wilderness and biodiversity values (as they are understood by the public). If taken seriously, this will limit the use of synthetic biology in conservation areas as many within the public would oppose it. If the public perceives that these systems are of diminished value due to technological interventions, then the ecosystem services framework should prevent their use.

Whether ecosystem services are a value-neutral description of current ecological values is debatable. I do not think this is the case, by changing the language of conservation into that of systems being valued for their market value I believe there has been a trend toward describing ecosystems as themselves needing to be more productive to produce more market value. This undermines many of the values that the public brings toward ecosystems and the other values within scientific conservation design. Synthetic biology then illuminates a tension within the ecosystem services framework, whether it redescribes the values we hold toward the environment into market values or whether it introduces new values. If ecosystem services function under the first interpretation it is parasitic on all other stances toward conservation, scientific or otherwise, and if it brings a new moral outlook then in my view it is a dangerous one.

The slide toward market values in conservation is a primary fear of many critics of these new technologies. Consider the objections Diehm (2023) raises against American Chestnut restoration. He argues that the use of biotechnology for conservation aims could open the door for ‘lax regulatory structures’ that would allow the engineering of wild populations for forestry and industrial purposes (p. 73). If chestnut conservation is justified through ecosystem services, I would agree that there is a real risk of a slippery slope toward these uses. The chestnut provides economic utility to people, so it is equally acceptable to allow for other populations to be adjusted to increase their utility. But when interventions are justified through the preservation of wildness or biodiversity, there is a clear partitioning between these types of projects, and the objection is much muted. The chestnut is valuable due to its contribution to historical wilderness in that region or the biodiversity it supports, more efficient pine plantations diminish these other values.

The introduction of novel ecosystem services could have a positive impact on not just humanity but other populations within ecosystems, particularly in cases where they restore ecological damage. This unique potential makes the provision of ecosystem services a good making factor for an intervention in natural systems. I have, however, argued that justifying biotechnology interventions solely on the provision of ecosystem services is risky. There is a real threat in the creeping normalization of treating natural systems as being valuable only insofar as they are units of economic production. Synthetic biology, if used and marketed unwisely, could exacerbate this issue. It could provide support for the commodification of natural systems and undermine other conservation goals.

6. A Diagnosis: Preservation and Maximization

The moral frameworks for preserving wilderness, biodiversity, and ecosystem services are complicated by the use of synthetic biology to assist in the restoration of ecosystems and species. This uneasy relationship is derived from the new capacities synthetic biology affords humanity. Conservation historically has been a backward-looking endeavor, seeking to preserve, maintain, conserve, or restore systems according to some historical baseline. Whether this baseline is a particular species composition at a time, or set of ecological dynamics, or a history of human interaction with the system. The affordances created by synthetic biology allow for conservation to move away from the preservation of biological systems that have existed toward creating new biological systems. This creates a mismatch between our current ethical frameworks and the futures made possible by synthetic biology.

This mismatch has been noticed by others. Sandler (2020, p. 382) states: ‘to the extent that certain types of values (e.g., cultural, natural, or esthetic) are based in part on historical and relational properties, an engineering approach to conservation could undermine them’. Equally, this mirrors the conceptual issues synthetic biology raises more broadly for biology. The ability to create novel biological arrangements necessitates a more universal a-historical notion of biology and its causal structure than what has previously been considered (Baxter, 2019; Ijäs & Koskinen, 2021; Simons, 2021).

For each of the conservation frameworks I have discussed, synthetic biology disrupts these normative frameworks because engaging in its use alters the historical arrangements of biological systems in ways not previously possible. On the first pass, the clearest mismatch is between the use of synthetic biology and wilderness preservation. Wilderness preservation is aimed most directly at maintaining the historical features of biotic systems by excluding human interference, and synthetic biology is human interference. Biodiversity conservation has always been implicitly about preservation, this was dictated by the capacities that we have previously possessed. There was no way to increase biodiversity so there was no reason to engage with the issue of increasing biodiversity intellectually and/or ethically. Synthetic biology creates a capacity that was not even considered when biodiversity was conceptualized as an ethical goal in conservation (Faith, 2021; Soulé, 1985).

The ecosystem services framework, through the discussion of novel ecosystems, has been used to toy with the idea of conservation as a project of maximizing some good rather than preserving that good. Synthetic biology provides new means to maximize the yield of biological goods and services, and in doing so makes us confront the implications of a normative framework that is guided by translating the value of biological systems into economic values. Economics generally assumes that growth is one of the most desirable features of a market, and in treating ecosystems as valuable due to their market contribution we import the norm that the ecological services market should grow.

The moral framework of maximization of some moral good differs from the norm of preservation for two reasons. The first is that being able to increase a desirable quantity makes this quantity fungible. This creates a ‘moral hazard’ as the promise of restoring or ‘improving’ biotic systems may lead to diminished actions to preserve existing biotic systems. The second is that without history as a guiding principle for biotic design, we are left with questions about what other norms guide the design choices we make and what norms remain to constrain design choices. This creates slippery slope risks for increasingly drastic interventions as synthetic biology is normalized as a conservation method.

Moral hazard has been discussed earlier in this paper and has been explored in some detail as it applies to de-extinction (Katz, 2022; Minteer, 2015; Turner, 2014). The possibility of recreating lost species diminishes the psychological barrier of the finality of species extinction, which may allow people to believe we can simply recreate the species that are lost. This could ultimately undercut the message of conservation, licensing further lax attitudes to environmental loss, and lead to irreplaceable losses of the biotic world under the naïve assumption these losses can always be recouped. It is, however, overlooked how general this issue is, the replacement of lost units of environmental value with a novel entity of supposedly similar value is a general issue once new units of value can be created, be that units of ‘wilderness’, ‘biodiversity’ or ‘ecosystem services’.

The second issue that arises from the use of synthetic biology in conservation is the risks associated with normalizing genetic interventions and creating a ‘slippery slope’ for synthetic biology’s usage in natural systems. Preservation uses history to dictate the structure of biological systems. What history to use is debatable and subject to human decision-making but history will frame what systems are the targeted goals for conservation. Without history, we must question what we are preserving. If we adopt an ethical framework for the maximization of a conservation good, be it biodiversity or ecosystem services, we must consider what constrains what we create and what other values should influence biotic design.

In moving away from the belief system that conservation is conserving the biotic structures that exist, we leave open the question of what other norms should be incorporated into organismal design for wild populations. Changes to increase biodiversity or ecosystem services could be realized in many ways, other norms will be used to pick which way to increase these values. Social, ethical, or esthetic norms could be used to decide how to increase such values. Selective breeding already heavily involves not just increasing the functional utility of populations but also norms of increasing the esthetic appeal of these organisms, this is true of not just companion or ornamental organisms but agricultural populations as well. Radical animal welfarists have already considered genetically modifying carnivorous animals to become herbivorous despite the obvious devastating effects on ecosystems and the species themselves (Bramble, 2021).

This sudden shift from biotic design being dictated by history to the design being dictated by human norms is what I believe drives many of the public’s objections to the use of synthetic biology. ‘Playing god’ can be understood as not just a set of actions but the assumption of decision-making about the structure of a world that was previously a given. Once biotic design is dictated by human choices, we import our cultural and political debates into the very structure of the biotic world as a set of design choices. The imposition of agency on large-scale natural processes is what Christopher Preston (2019) calls the advent of the Synthetic Age. The perception that nature is now the domain of those with power to dictate the design of its organisms could undermine the widely held belief that the natural world is for all people and environmentalism more widely.

Synthetic biology is incredibly powerful in its potential to preserve populations at risk. This makes this technology unwise to dismiss, and dangerous to avoid. As such, I cannot agree with hard-line wilderness advocates who reject its use wholesale (Diehm, 2023; Katz, 2022). I agree with Sandler (2019, p. 227) that there is no reason to in principle reject the use of genetic technologies in conservation. But the incorporation of synthetic biology in the toolset of conservation raises significant questions about how to conceptualize the ethical goals of conservation. This warrants deep conservatism in organismal design, the norm of creating organisms that are closely in accord with historical populations should be advocated.⁴ Conservatism in design will mitigate the risk of unintended consequences and make synthetic biology conservation projects more acceptable to the public. Importantly, it will make synthetic biology’s use in conservation correspond to the implicit norms conservationists have always held. There is considerable work to be done on the moral foundations of conservation. Restraining our actions will provide our moral theories time to develop in response to the new capacities humanity finds itself in possession of.

7. Conclusion

Synthetic biology has an immense capacity to aid conservation. While this capacity should not be dismissed, it raises serious issues for the normative foundations of conservation science. The major goals of conservation, as it is currently practised, are complicated by using synthetic biology. Synthetic biology illuminates’ tensions and inconsistencies within the conservation values of wilderness, biodiversity, and ecosystem service. This is because synthetic biology provides new technological abilities to design biotic systems discontinuous with biotic history. This allows for conservation to move away from an act of preserving what is of value to increasing desirable features in the biotic world. In doing so it allows for other human norms to be incorporated into biotic design and creates risks. These risks will be material, social, and moral in the form of ‘moral hazards’ and a ‘slippery slope’ toward increasingly radical interventions. Significant work remains to be done explaining what constrains organismal design when we utilize synthetic biology for conservation, but I suggest the best means to avoid these risks is to be explicit that we should be conservative in the changes we make and intervene only when it preserves features of value.

Acknowledgment

I wish to thank all those that gave substantial feedback on drafts of this paper this particularly includes Kate Lynch, Yasmin Haddad, Francois Papale, and Tyler Brunet. Audiences in the Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology, the Centre for Public Awareness in Science at ANU, the University of Leeds, the University of Melbourne, Prof. Ford Doolittle’s research group, and Prof. Paul Griffiths Theory and Methods in the Biosciences Group all gave insightful comments. I also wish to thank the two reviewers for their feedback, and particularly the editor Ben Hale.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Christopher Lean received funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council Centres of Excellence funding scheme [project CE200100029] and the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects funding scheme [project number FL170100160]. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the funding bodies.

Notes

1. I have previously addressed de-extinction in Lean (2020, 2022) and intend to address the use of gene drives on invasive species in future work.

2. This, however, is not true of all de-extinction techniques and applications but rather just the use of heavy genetic modification to create ecological proxies. Another de-extinction technique is cloning. The cloning of deceased individuals in heavily inbred populations could be an effective way to protect that population through restoring biodiversity within an ongoing, evolving lineage. Two recent cases of this technique are the cloning of the Black-Footed Ferret and the Przewalski Horse (Fritts, 2022; San Diego Zoo Alliance, 2022). Similarly, the de-extinction and hybridization of North White Rhino (NWR) genetic variation into the South White Rhino (SWR) could be similarly considered as preserving the lineage variation of the NWR and fortifying the SWR in the face of extinction (Callender, 2021).

3. I believe that it would be more efficient to directly invest the research money into rewilding, as plants can already effectively sequester carbon, there just needs to be more of them.

4. Consider Sandler’s (2019, p. 228) first four criteria for ethically engineering species: Sustainable conserves species, addresses population declines, conserves species in their historical ranges, and conserves the value of species. These are all conservative principles for the evaluation of using genetic technologies in conservation projects and are indicative of the type of assessment I see as necessary.