Event: PIZZA TALK: Uncertainty and Ethics

Dr. Jonathan Ashley-Smith
Getty Conservation Guest Scholar

Abstract:

This presentation will discuss the inevitability of prediction in conservation activities.
Routine activities such as condition assessment and risk assessment rely on the ability to
predict future environments and future physical and chemical states of objects. Yet for the
results to be useful they have to be presented as positive statements that hide the huge
uncertainties in such predictions. Codes of conservation ethics imply predictions about the
future behaviours of people and objects. Despite the inherent uncertainties of such
predictions, such codes have become the bedrock of the conservation profession.