THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE PROJECT
ONLINE CONSULTATION
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From: Werner Flueck
Affiliation: Wildlife biologist
Remote Name:
Time: 18:05:44 +0100
As I see it, humanity is wrapped up in a predicament.
1. people, like any organism, strive for basics, and given the chance, information flow results striving towards a higher standard. At the lower end (basics) and middle (still striving for improving living conditions), there are no or very few incentives to act ‘responsible’ in favor of the globe.
2. we know there are not enough resources to allow all people living at the low end to move up. Resources are not here to even maintain standards as lived now. In addition, the population is growing.
3. It would take a globally coordinated approach (as opposed to a few local achievements) to be able to preserve, if not revert, what I assume we talk about: adequate environmental conditions (biodiversity, water/air quality, ecosystem functions etc).
4. Our biggest hurdle is that we are constrained by a ticking clock.
5. personal or local views are often very different than taking a system view
6. I am not aware of any move which has brought the necessary changes in time. However, there are lots and lots of movements like the present one, which clearly aim at introducing changes in the right direction.
Question: although we know with certainty that efforts are in the right direction, who is willing to claim that they are convinced that it will also be applied within the necessary frame of time and space? Or, do we leave it to some future people to determine if it worked or not? If the ship has a leak and 100 liter/sec of water enters, it will eventually go down. To stay afloat requires throwing out a 100 l/s. At anything less, the only parameter which changes is the time it will take to go down. PP certainly is a tool to slow things down, so is ‘sustainability’. In fact, PP cannot be separated from sustainability, and as the latter is a very slippery concept, so will be the former. Both are linked to time.
It may be easy to claim, even scientifically, that a given situation is sustainable if the chosen time frame is 5 or 50 years. But it might not be the case if we would choose 200 or 1000 years. Applying PP would therefore also depend on the frame of time/space. Current discussions on sustainability show how slippery it is, and its applications have even gone perverse such as in sustainable growth. Switzerland places much importance on environment. Government efforts seem considerable (www.umwelt-schweiz.ch). Current statistics: - inputs >100 million tons of materials/year into economy, mostly imported and non-renewable. =14 tons/habitant. - it has not been possible to disengage economic growth from energy consumption. Thus, ‘information age’ based economy has not yet proven possible. - economic/energy growth during last 10 years was 12% - since 1980 there has been a linear increase by 70% in numbers of private cars and >100% in light trucks - gas emission thus all increased and Kyoto CO2 amount will be surpassed by 2.5 million tons - energy use: oil (46%), gas (9%), nuclear (24%), hydro (14%), others (7%). Oil and gas are imported. - since 1980, loss of agricultural land was 250 km2/decade (3%), whereas 270 km2/decade were cover by housing and businesses - nearly 50% of all species are in red list (52% of animals).
In Switzerland there are many activities aiming at improvements, so far they only gained some time, but unquestionably by losing out in most aspects so far during this process. Unfortunately, voting in a democracy does not require to be an informed person. Most have no notion of the hierarchical structure of the earth system, and what all know, like relationships between gases, global warming and some 2 degree warmer Switzerland, does not influence their behavior in terms of owing cars and using it. As certain knowledge had been available and PP had been around, but had no influence on Swiss developments, indicates that other drivers are very potent. What should PP do to Swiss decision makings? Maybe to make PP more palatable, as sometimes seen with use of ‘sustainability’, there is much reference to people in the draft: - socio-economic feasibility should be taken into account - when implementing PP, attention should be directed to the socio-economic costs and benefits for different groups - threats to biodiversity and biological resources may need to be weighed against threats to livelihoods and food security - intra-generational equity, and widely recognised rights such as the right to development, the right to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment, and human rights to food and shelter. - application of the precautionary principle must respect human rights - in case of conflicts between PP and any of these other principles, the effects of the application will need to be analysed in order to reach a balanced solution. These allowances make PP extremely week, as happened with sustainable, which now is the new label for continued development. I am concerned that PP might follow the same path. I have seen socio-economic arguments result in National park areas given to use for squatters with goats, so as to improve their standard, which now includes a vehicle and satellite TV. PP in the present form certainly will assist in slowing a few things down, and that might be satisfying enough for many. But the big question remains, how to stop the ship leak, i.e 100 liter/sec must go out. They say that sometimes miracles happen.
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