Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
in deciding whether they should be authorised. Its aim is to advance our
basic knowledge of ecosystem components, of how their interactions con-
tribute to systemic properties, and of what is important to continued
ecological functionality so that we are better able to control the negative
impacts we have on them.
A related obligation is that we should put in place mechanisms that will
enable us to monitor systemic conditions so that we can adapt to reactions
that we failed to predict and to changes that arise naturally in dynamic
systems. Such provision is necessary because, if we are to maintain what we
value at the systemic level, we must employ the means available to us of
compensating for our inability to predict how ecosystems behave or to
foresee how they may evolve. The principal thrust is to use a precautionary
approach in decision-making, but monitoring can provide a back-up by
producing information that may reveal unexpected outcomes or the need
to strengthen measures to prevent ecological degradation. In
Chapter 7
I consider how legal mechanisms might be developed for improving our
knowledge of ecosystems and maintaining a
ow of information on
ecological conditions.
Whilst the obligations for ecological protection set objectives for
controlling the impacts of our activities, they do not themselves provide
us with any guidance as to how we should go about this. The following
principles are intended to give direction to decision-makers in determi-
ning which activities it would be appropriate to authorise and how
they might be conducted from an ecological perspective. Their breadth
re
ects the need for broad controls on what we do to protect properties
that are the result of multiple interactions at different systemic scales,
and the uncertainty over how our activities combine to undermine them.
The most effective means of bolstering systemic resilience would, on
its face, appear to be changing the way in which we live so that we place
less stress on ecosystems. The view that we ought to decrease our impacts
on living things by leading more simple lifestyles dates back to at least the
19th century and Thoreau
s ethic of simplicity.
133
It is also apparent in
the call made by ecocentric ethicists that we should exploit nature only to
the extent that we need to do so to meet our basic needs.
134
However, the
obvious dif
'
'
'
culty that the notion of
necessity
encounters as a reference
133
P. Cafaro,
'
Thoreau, Leopold, and Carson
'
,p.27.
134
For example see Naess
'
and Sessions
''
Eight Platform Principles
'
of
'
Deep Ecology
'
quoted
in Curry,
'
Ecological Ethics
'
p. 101 and J. P. Sterba,
'
Reconciling Anthropocentric and
Nonanthropocentric Environmental Ethics
'
(1994) 3 Environmental Values,229.
