Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
loops. Their model attempts to show that failures to address environmental
degradation may occur at various points in systems and may affect the driving forces
by either mitigating or aggravating them. Although deliberately simplified, their model
is an attempt to depict the integration and mutual interdependence of the social,
political, economic and environmental. Once society has recognized the signals
denoting environmental changes, risks or threats, social institutions like the media
and environmental groups, journalists and the lay public can, together with the
experts, evaluate their nature and scope. The way this is done, the values and methods
applied, and the social and psychological assumptions exercised are likely to mean
that these risk signals may be attenuated or amplified. Whatever the case, this social
processing will influence the perception of risk and shape individual, group and
institutional behaviour.
The precautionary principle
Principle 15 of the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development states:
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be
widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats
of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be
used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental
degradation.
In other words, the precautionary principle suggests that it is wise to act prudently
when there is sufficient scientific evidence, where action can be justified on reasonable
judgements of cost-effectiveness, and where inaction could lead to potential
irreversibility or demonstrable harm to people and the environment now and in the
future. However, the precautionary principle takes on different hues depending on
perspectives or worldviews. For example:
Weak sustainability
- precaution has a place as a spur to innovation and
managerial adaptation to make up for losses of environmental resources.
Cost-benefit analysis is consequently very important.
versus
Strong sustainability
- precaution defines an approach to living that is in harmony
with the natural world.
Risk, complexity, uncertainty and the partial nature of knowledge have led to this
important guiding principle becoming central to the sustainability debate. For
O'Riordan and Cameron (1994), global environmental change means that the
precautionary principle ought to be understood in three ways, as:
•
the requirement of collective action;
•
the requirement of burden sharing; and
•
the rise of global citizenship.
Three other factors are also important:
