The BBVA Foundation recognizes philosopher Thom van Dooren for his contributions to understanding and addressing species extinction from the perspective of the environmental humanities

For two decades now, Professor van Dooren has explored the diverse social contexts in which the global extinction crisis is unfolding, analyzing the value and the multiple meanings that endangered species hold for different cultures, and how the loss of an animal or plant can alter the ways of life of the communities who share its space.

The awardee defines his work as “field philosophy” whose mission is to analyze in real-world settings not just the ecological costs but the social, economic, political and cultural impacts of each extinction process, in order to articulate the most appropriate ethical response and the best conservation strategy.

The committee deciding the award singled out two of Van Dooren’s essays: his first monograph, Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (Columbia University Press, 2014), which looked at the multiple impacts triggered by the disappearance of critically endangered birds in North America, Australia, and India; and his latest book, A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions (MIT Press, 2022), a study on the fight to conserve snail species on the verge of extinction on the islands of Hawai’i.

In sum, the committee has recognized Professor van Dooren for his key role in “shaping the interdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities,” and “developing innovative ways of understanding and responding to the biodiversity crisis.”

The BBVA Foundation Biophilia Award, funded with 100,000 euros, distinguishes contributions from the realms of the humanities, social sciences and communication that help reframe humankind’s relationship. Its aim is to recognize narratives and interpretations which, while being reliant on or compatible with environmental science knowledge, contribute from these disciplines to shaping the perspectives, conceptual frameworks and values of society as a whole with regard to the environment.

A “field philosophy” to articulate the best possible response to the biodiversity crisis

“When species become extinct, whole worlds are lost,” remarked Thom van Dooren (Canberra, Australia, 1980) in an interview granted shortly after hearing of the award. “A lot of my work is about documenting and giving an account of these worlds that are lost with the extinction of a living being.” In ecological terms, that being may have been the pollinator that a plant depends on to reproduce or else an important food source for another species, with multiple effects that ripple out through the ecosystem in question. “Each species also represents a unique mode of sensing, experiencing, perhaps socialising, and ultimately moving through the world.” But at the same time, each extinction brings a chain of what Van Dooren calls “biosocial” and “biocultural” impacts for the human beings whose lives were bound up with the now extinguished species: from the symbolic, religious or cultural value of a plant or animal to a given community, to its social, political and economic relevance.

“To grasp the extinction phenomenon in all its dimensions, we must of necessity take a multidisciplinary approach, with the natural sciences engaging with the environmental humanities and social sciences,” the awardee explains. “Only in this way can we get an accurate picture of all that is lost when a species disappears, ecologically, socially and culturally. And the lessons we glean from this analysis about the full implications of a given extinction can help us adopt more effective conservation strategies.”

Van Dooren’s interest in nature grew from a youthful concern to understand our place in the world: “As a teenager, I had a deep sense that the living world required our respect and consideration, that it was lively, animated, and even sacred. That led me to study philosophy and religion at university, as well as dabbling in biology and ecology. I was also very inspired by the work of thinkers like Charles Darwin, Richard Lewontin, Lynn Margulis, and also E.O. Wilson, who developed the term ‘biophilia’. They help us see that there is no opposition between science and a sense of wonder or appreciation for the natural world. But finally it was philosophy that gave me the language and the tools I needed to think through our place in the world, how the rest of the living world matters, and what our obligations are to it.”

Asked about the global biodiversity crisis, Van Dooren sees his role as to develop a philosophical project that articulates an ethical response commensurate with the challenge: “We are living in the midst of what many experts now call a mass extinction event, and I think that that process of human-induced extinction places us under particular kinds of moral obligations. So a lot of my work has been trying to make sense of what those obligations are, not just to stop species from going extinct wherever possible, but also to protect the well-being of individual plants and animals, and that of the human communities who live alongside them.”

Van Dooren’s favored approach is what he calls “field philosophy,” where the idea is not to “sit in an armchair pontificating about ethics” in regard to nature and other living beings, but to study on the ground the whole web of biological, ecological, historical, social, political, economic and cultural entanglements involved in every extinction process: “We cannot reach solid conclusions or propose effective solutions to address the biodiversity crisis without an empirical methodology that allows us to look in depth at all the complex factors at work in each case.”

We have to realize, he insists, that many extinction scenarios give rise to competing ethical claims that must be thought through in detail: “For instance, conserving an animal or plant may require the killing of individuals of an invasive species, or may pose a threat to the way of life of a local human community. So we can’t decide a priori to apply the same ethical theory or formula across the board. Instead we have to work with scientific experts on each species and ecosystem, as well as with the affected populations, to find the solution that is the best possible fit.”

This multidisciplinary approach is essential to avoid mistakes and failures in the implementation of conservation strategies, as Van Dooren points out. “We need to consider the complexity of human social, economic and cultural structures with the same degree of attention that we pay to climate systems, geological systems or hydrological systems. Otherwise the solutions we propose to conserve biodiversity will very likely fail, because they will not gain traction with local communities, and may even worsen the inequalities and social divisions that are frequently the causes of the problems.”

The “biocultural” impact of extinctions and the ethical paradox of “violent care”

In his first monograph, Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction, Van Dooren looks at how the disappearance of five critically endangered birds – the Indian vulture, the albatross in the Midway Islands of the Pacific Ocean, penguins in Australia’s Sydney Harbour, cranes in North America and crows in Hawai’i – engenders what he calls a “a process of biocultural unravelling” whereby the animals’ disappearance not only causes ecological damage to the fabric of biodiversity but also impacts the ways of life of the human beings who share their space, because of the multiple meanings they hold for the communities under study.

The book also explores the ethical paradoxes that may result from efforts to conserve critically endangered species. To save the North American whooping crane, for instance, conservationists designed a captive breeding program where, in the absence of adult birds, the chicks’ human carers taught them to follow migratory routes with the aid of ultralight aircraft. “A lot of birds were kept in captivity for their whole lives, subjected to stressful artificial insemination processes. Others were killed while learning to migrate by crashing into electrical cables and things. So there’s a lot of animal suffering that often goes into conservation work, a notion I’ve described in my work as ‘violent care’. When intervening in this way, we must be aware that our obligation to try and prevent an extinction may come into ethical conflict with our obligation to respect animal welfare. Again, the only solution is to work through the specifics of each case and figure out what’s best, rather than having recourse to a predetermined ethical conclusion and making that the basis of your conservation strategy.”

In his latest book, A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions, Van Dooren tells the story of how the disappearance of Hawaiian snails has meant the loss of an animal held sacred by the islands’ native people. The conclusion again, as the author puts it, is that each extinction process requires “a multidisciplinary analysis that weds biological and ecological research with the perspective of the humanities and social sciences.”

The power of stories that engage society with the issue of biodiversity loss

For Van Dooren, a key role of the environmental humanities in combatting the biodiversity crisis is to tell stories that capture all that is lost when a species disappears, and to do so in a way that is both scientifically accurate and appeals to a wide audience beyond the bounds of academia: “The storytelling I have taken up as a central methodology in my books seeks to show how extinction matters differently for different living beings, as a way of drawing audiences into a connection, so they feel a sense of ethical accountability for what is going on.”

With this goal in mind, a key message he wants to get across in his work is that our identity as a species, i.e., our own understanding of who we are as humans, has emerged “in relationship with particular landscapes, plants and animals”, shaped in an ongoing dialogue with nature and the particular living beings with whom we have coexisted throughout our evolutionary past. The extinction of other species is, in this respect, “a loss of ourselves; the loss of an essential way to make sense of our lives.” Despite the scale of today’s environmental challenges, Van Dooren maintains hope, not so much in any particular outcome or solution, but in our capacity to “cultivate the best kinds of relationships with the natural world, the best kinds of futures that are still available to us.”

Academic bio sketch

Thom van Dooren is Professor of Environmental Humanities in the School of Humanities and the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney (Australia). From 2024, he is also a Humboldt Research Award funded Fellow at the Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH) research hub at the University of Cologne (Germany).

Holder of a PhD from the Australian National University, from 2011 to 2017 he helped found then worked with the Environmental Humanities group at the University of New South Wales, home to Australia’s (and one of the world’s) first undergraduate degrees in the environmental humanities, before moving to the University of Sydney in 2018.

He is the author of three of the past decade’s most highly cited books in the environmental humanities: Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (Columbia University Press, 2014), The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds (Columbia University Press, 2019) and A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions (MIT Press, 2022). All three titles have been translated into French, with some available in Japanese, Italian and Chinese.

His lead role in shaping the environmental humanities as a field of scholarship is evidenced by his role as founding co-editor of Environmental Humanities (Duke University Press) in 2012, the first international learned journal devoted entirely to research in this emerging multidisciplinary field, which he co-edited up to 2020.

About the BBVA Foundation and the Biophilia Award

For two decades now, the protection of our planet has numbered among the BBVA Foundation’s key focus areas, translating as support for scientific research, the funding of projects to conserve species, habitats and ecosystems, the promotion of an environmental culture in society at large, and the recognition of communication professionals who have contributed decisively to inform individual and collective engagement with the ecological issues of our time.

In 2004, it created the BBVA Foundation Awards for Biodiversity Conservation, distinguishing projects in defense of nature in Spain and worldwide along with achievements in communication and knowledge dissemination on environmental matters.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards, established in 2008, recognize scientific excellence in an environmental category – Climate Change and Environmental Sciences – which takes its place alongside the other fields of research and cultural creation addressed by these international prizes: basic sciences, biomedicine, information technologies, economics, humanities, social sciences and music.

In 2019 the BBVA Foundation launched its Biophilia Award for Environmental Communication with the aim of distinguishing the efforts of professionals and organizations in any country that have contributed exceptionally to improving public understanding and awareness of environmental issues. In the award’s 6th edition (2024), its conceptual perimeter was expanded by expressly and preferentially including contributions from the realms of the humanities and social sciences that help reframe humankind’s relationship with nature.

The name of the award alludes to the “biophilia hypothesis” proposed by naturalist Edward O. Wilson, 2010 Frontiers of Knowledge laureate in Ecology and Conservation Biology, to denote the deep connection that we as humans instinctively feel with nature and all forms of life.

The award in the previous edition went to Professor Ursula K. Heise, Professor of Literary Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), for pushing forward the formation and implementation of the environmental humanities at a global scale.

Evaluation committee

The committee in this edition was chaired by Rodolfo Dirzo, Bing Professor in Environmental Science and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment Stanford University (United States), with members Silvia Churruca, Director of the BBVA Foundation’s Department of Communications and Institutional Relations; Pablo Jáuregui Narvaez, Head of Scientific and Environmental Communication at the BBVA Foundation; Richard Kerridge, Coordinator of Graduate Studies and Research Management in the School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities at Bath Spa University (United Kingdom); Lydia Millet, writer of novels and story collections, and a conservationist at the Center for Biological Diversity (United States); and María Isabel Pérez Ramos, a Ramón y Cajal research fellow in the Department of English, French and German Studies at the University of Oviedo.