Q. Explain about precautionary principle?
The ethical values of biodiversity highlights the intrinsic value of biodiversity for its own sake and it is independent of the varied economic, social and cultural uses of the large number o f species discovered by human communities. It underscores the fact that humans are only one of the millions of species that inhabit the earth, while each species is unique and is the result of evolutionary processes without human intervention, so that every species has a natural right to exist.
However, it is also difficult to maintain all of the existing biological diversity for purely ethical reasons. Whilst the killing of any living organism, or a particular species may be morally unacceptable to some people, there are problems in extending this argument to the conservation of biological diversity. As you have studied earlier, any individual organism that is not genetically identical to another represents a distinct component of biodiversity, and accordi ng to ethical arguments it is difficult to justify the destruction of any facet of biodiversity. It is easy to understand the objection to the killing of a charismatic species such as an elephant on ethical grounds, but it can be argued that ethically it i s equally objectionable to eat rice which is grown from genetically diverse seeds or to destroy pests and disease causing organisms as we are reducing genetic diversity! However it may be more difficult to justify this on ethical grounds.