SUMMARY: Biodiversity means different things to different communities. Co-operation between disciplines requires acceptance that biodiversity is big enough for both of us.

As Ekko van Ierland stated, "the relevant aspects and perspectives on a scientific problem vary largely between the gamma and beta sciences". There is indeed an issue of scale involved in approaching biodiversity in a multi-disciplinary way, and it's not just between the "social" and "natural" sciences.

In the Amsterdam meeting of the EPBRS, Dr C.L. Kwa (U. Amsterdam) told us that biodiversity is a boundary object. But what is a boundary object?

Susan Leigh Star and James Griesemer introduced the concept in 1989 to describe information used in different ways by different communities. Since then it has been defined in many ways: the "boundary object" is itself a boundary object, but Dr Kwa used it to mean a concept that is shared by different communities, but whose details differ from community to community.

So what "is" biodiversity? Biodiversity is not just what it says in the CBD definition. It goes beyond, and is more far reaching and ambiguous, than that already rather complicated formula. The definition belongs among the set of ideas, beliefs, feelings, objects, relationships between objects, documents and vocabulary that allows people from different backgrounds and perspectives to agree that they are working towards a common understanding of biodiversity. Those different perspectives all contribute to a working arrangement between very different ways of thinking and doing business.

The term, and the concept, allow people to co-operate. Geneticists, taxonomists, sociologists, ecologists, modellers, economists, bio-chemists, conservationists, policy makers, TV documentary makers and many other groups interpret "biodiversity" differently. But they all agree they're talking about biodiversity. This encourages us to interact across communities. And as we interact, our perspectives shift and our own interpretation of the concept evolves. Boundary objects are flexible if the person thinking about the object is willing to accept new angles, flux, and even ambiguity.

But boundary objects are resilient, too, since each community will see valuable elements in their own view that are not included in the perspective from another community. People waste effort when they try to get others to agree to their definition of biodiversity. While I may (possibly) be able to explain it, I cannot impose my vision of biodiversity on you. At best you may like some aspect of my vision, and adopt it as part of your own - but there may well be aspects of my vision that you really dislike, or simply do not understand. Thus a geneticist and an economist, for example, will probably never share the same vision of what biodiversity "is" - not for lack of good will, but simply because their backgrounds and training bring them to the boundary object from different points of the compass. What is most important about biodiversity to the geneticist may be something that the economist legitimately regards as a trivial detail from her perspective.

From a philosophical point of view, it should not concern us that we all understand biodiversity differently. This is is a characteristic of a useful boundary object. But the characteristics of a boundary object, particularly the difference in understanding about what is important about biodiversity, is one of the reasons that it is so hard to get agreement on indicators. What are we measuring? That depends on the details, about which different communities tend to have fundamentally different opinions.

As we change scales from a single-discipline view of biodiversity to a multi-disciplinary one, we are obliged, therefore, to change our understanding of biodiversity in a qualitative way. To do so properly we must absorb a new set of concepts and adopt a new vocabulary, which is part of the reason that it is so hard to find effective multi-disciplinary co-operation.

Martin Sharman, Biodiversity Sector, Natural Resources Management and Services, European Commission Directorate General for Research

Reference:
Star, S. L. & Griesemer, J. R. 1988. Institutional Ecology, Translations and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social Studies of Science, 19(4):387-420.