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CONCERTED ACTION: Environmental Valuation in Europe (EVE) |
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Summary of EVE Workshop 4Sustainability: Valuation and Indicators
Contributions:
Workshop Summary:Sustainability as a concept is often linked at the level of environmental decisions to public policy-making. In Germany, for example, the Green Party has a new paper addressing environmental policy under the heading of sustainable development, whereas in Switzerland, it is regarded as part of the scientific process, rather than policy-making. The drawback with the increased use of the term, is that the concept itself becomes too vague. If meanings and definitions are to be rationalised, there is a need to go to the scientific and political level, and to look at interdisciplinary, normative and justificatory aspects. Dale Jamieson was sceptical concerning the sustainability concept from a biocentric point of view. He concentrated on the usual arguments against weak sustainability, and tried to show that strong sustainability would fail as it was bound to an anthropocentric human view of natural goods. Felix Keinast argued that sustainable development as a concept was too vague, and needed to be given context within a specific area. He sought to bring in the concepts of economic integrity, and the definition of 'natural areas'. He argued that there was a dependency between natural areas and those which surround them there is pressure on the surrounding areas and if sustainability was assured within the natural area, there would be a growing non-sustainability in the surrounding area. Keinast did not actually make use of any of the existing concepts of sustainable development, but came up with new ones to match his purpose. In the case in point, this seemed more advisable, but if the practice were to become more widespread, it would lead to concern over the importance of the concept. The positions adopted by most economists present at the Workshop can be summarised by the following points, which were neither uniformly accepted, nor subjected to uncritical reception:
Brian Norton's paper introduced the 'Adaptive Management Theory'. The background to this was pragmatism, and Norton argued that there were no monistic values, only a plurality of values. Accepting a multitude of values requires a theory which is both scientific and political, and provides the pragmatist's view of science. The theory goes beyond deliberative democracy theory, and assumes that science is already democratically structured and the deliberative process is part of the core. The theory has three components: experimentalism, multiscalarity and place-sensitivity (combining communitarianism and pragmatism, giving special premium to local values and traditions). Douglas MacLean's 'Deliberative Democracy Theory' took a more standard political theory and substituted cost-benefit analysis with an unusual theory of deliberative democracy, which was argued to apply to everything and avoid the concept of modelling conflicts. There was a conflict between this and Norton's approach on the question of premiums in sustaining an area as a place to live, and how far an (inter)national perspective has precedence. The point of human goods, or 'what is the good life for a human being' was discussed in the Workshop, but remained unresolved. If the idea of 'optimal impecunity' is added to the pure human good concept, then problems of future changes in preference, perspectives towards nature and so on can be avoided. Thus, giving future generations the opportunity is important but what they actually do with it is irrelevant. There was disagreement with the dichotomy between the ideas that nature has intrinsic value and the anthropocentric idea, which hinged on the way intrinsic value was defined. One the one hand, it was compatible with anthropocentrism (the value comes from the humans and that there is something out there which fixes the value); whereas on the other, the point was that valuing comes from humans because the value is already there and that people somehow see or experience that value. It depends how the experiential process between valuer and the object being valued is constructed. Anthropocentrism would be, in any case, a position where the valuing process rests on the human valuer. The debate over connections between ethics and biocentrism was left unresolved, but ended on the point that to take into account the interests of animals (e.g. the territory they require), would be a massive extension, and would make a major impact on the world. It was argued that ethics and ethicists have little influence with regard to nature, animals, or humans, but the point was raised that 'rights' is a very strong international language, and are being used to change the world in a different way. This is easier to see with single issues, where people can be galvanised rather than on small-scale local issues. Every now and again an issue such as GMOs catches public awareness and causes large scale reaction, but in general this has been rare. Perspectives traditionally attributed to philosophers, were being rediscovered by economists, some of whom are realising that distribution issues, notions of liberty and so on are within their remit. There are also economists working on the interface between the two disciplines, and setting up dichotomies that are too strong, which may cause problems in the future. Forcing agreement was seen as undesirable, and the aim was to build bridges which allow participants to move towards an interdisciplinary position. The Workshop recognised that economics and philosophy are both wide disciplines and there are large differences within them. In summary, there were two main points which arose from the Workshop:
Workshop Participants:
Contact Details: Anton LeistKlaus Peter Rippe Arbeits- und Forschungsstelle fuer Ethik Ethik-Zentrum der Universitaet Zuerich Zollikerstr. 117 8008 Zuerich Switzerland E-mails: [email protected] [email protected]
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