After reading this article you will learn about the common resources and objectives of environmental crisis.
Common Resources of Environmental Crisis:
An important perspective on the environment crisis, which sets it into context even if it does not fully explain it, is the idea of the environment as a commons (common property resource) which is freely available—at least in theory—to anybody who wants to use it.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The way in which herdsmen treated their medieval commons has many similarities with the way we treat the environment today:
1. We think of it as freely available without restriction;
2. We regard it as our right to be able to use it;
3. Each of us wants to get as much as we can out of it;
4. We forget that it can tolerate only a certain level of use before it is damaged;
5. We compete for a larger share of it than other people.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The ‘tragedy of the commons’ analogy applies just as well to common property resources, including atmosphere outside ‘national air space’, the ocean outside ‘territorial limits’ and wilderness (unspoiled land that is not privately owned).
Growth, competition and private ownership are hallmarks of modern Western society, yet these are the very forces that threaten and damage the commons. UNEPs Global Environment Outlook 2000 stresses the need for a much better understanding of the interrelationships between economic, social and environmental change as a basis for a more sustainable future.
Little wonder that many scientists and politicians have recently argued that these forces must be replaced by cooperation and sustainable use, and that the commons debate was rekindled at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (Box 1.7).
Critics of modern development practices often argued that many environmental and socio-economic problems (including poverty) can be traced to enclosure of the commons and the domination and dispossession of local communities by enclosure.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources (PSNR)—which emerged in the 1950s as a legal concept to formally recognise the sovereignty of developing countries over their resources—is also part of this wider debate.
Although most of the world’s media attention was focused on the conference itself, the debates that took place were effectively open forums where the views of different countries were reported and the draft documents were finally approved.
Most of the hard work of drafting documents and position papers, preparing agreements for signing, ironing out many political and bureaucratic differences between the countries represented, and agreeing on the main agenda items had been completed during the preparatory meetings.
Objectives of Environmental Crisis:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The key outcomes of the Earth Summit are incorporated in five formal documents—two conventions, two statements of principle and an action programme:
1. A convention on climate change
2. A convention on biodiversity
3. A statement on forest principles
4. The Rio Declaration
1. The Convention on Climate Change:
One of the most important product of UNCED, this convention calls on countries to commit themselves to stabilise emissions of greenhouse gases by the year 2000.
Oil producing countries were concerned that limitations on the burning of fossil fuels (a principal source of carbon dioxide) would be a direct threat to their economies, so there was heated debate, and a great deal of behind-the-scenes negotiating was required to get the convention accepted. Five years after Rio, in 1997, the debate was still raging (Box 1.7).
2. The Convention on Biological Diversity:
This convention is designed to preserve plant and animal life. It was also hotly debated, partly because it defined wild (as well as improved) species as having economic value, and it proposed that genetic resources be recognised as national assets that can only be exploited on the basis of agreements between signatory states.
US President George Bush did not sign the convention, allegedly out of consideration for the country’s biotechnology industry.
3. The Forest Principles Document:
The proper title of this document is the ‘Non-legally binding authoritative statement of principles for a global consensus on the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forest’. It includes important principles on replanting, establishing new forests and protecting the rights of indigenous people.
4. The Rio Declaration:
This declaration is a general statement of intent that centres on the well-being of people, on the right of states to control their own natural resources and on their obligation not to damage the environment of other countries. Among other things, it recommends the precautionary principle, internalisation of environmental costs, use of environmental impact statements and the pollutery-pays principle.