Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
'
all compensatory measures necessary to
ensure that the overall coherence of Natura 2000 is protected
compensated for
'
or where
'
have
been taken. It is not possible in practice, because of the complexity of
ecosystems and of their interactions with each other and with the Earth
System, either to determine exactly how the resilience of an ecosystem
may be affected by disturbance or to assess the adequacy of measures that
seek to compensate for the harm concerned. A bottom line that legiti-
mises potentially damaging activity without any basis beyond hope for
making that damage good has no place in a legal framework that seeks to
preserve ecosystem functionality.
Proposals should be assessed purely by reference to their potential
impacts on places where deployment is proposed. It would be incon-
sistent, for reasons I explore in
Chapter 3
,
135
to permit ecologically
damaging development on grounds that it may contribute to minimising
some greater risk of ecological harm (e.g., climate change). Judgments on
the permissibility of such development should be made, in the
'
rst
instance, at the policy level in light of information reaped through
planning processes, rather than on a case by case basis.
136
Ecological
harm should only be legitimised under a system whose purpose is to
improve the protection of ecosystems where it is clear that this has
become necessary to replace more damaging options, and particularly
those earmarked for sunsetting, with alternatives.
An important consideration is how development proposals should be
dealtwithintheeventthatthereisinsuf
cient information, even when
applying broad qualitative criteria, to determine whether they would or
would not be ecologically compatible. This is a question which I explore
in
Chapter 7
in considering how law can be used to generate the
information on ecosystem behaviour that would be required to support
and enhance the operation of ecological governance.
137
Inoteherethat
in circumstances where progress in deploying preferred options identi-
ed in policies is not feasible, a sensible response would be to allow trials
of the development type where the issue is that there is insuf
cient
understanding of how it would interact with ecosystem components in
general. An alternative solution would be to authorise staged develop-
ment if this is possible where the dif
culty lies with knowledge of a
development
c ecological conditions. In both cases, the
trials can be monitored and informed decisions made if they yield
suf
'
seffectinspeci
cient evidence for conclusions on compatibility to be drawn.
135
Chapter 3,
Section 3.3.3
.
136
137
Chapter 7,
Section 7.4.2
.
Ibid
.
