Image: 'Maestra' by Luke Martin

PAN-GAEA ENVIRONMENTAL WATCHTOWER

ETHICS

by Bronwen Griffiths

No. I will not use this forum as a place to point out all of the reasons why this is so distressing and why this pattern of corruption is making the lives of ethical professionals in the environmental field harder. Rather I want to take a slight detour into the concept of environmental ethics and what by implication this means to the average Pagan.

Environmental ethics forms a significant part of discussion at every environmental get-together. Be that a heated electronic debate, a formal or informal meeting between environmental professionals representing some grouping of authority/ies (national, provincial or local government), environmental consultant (or Environmental Assessment Practitioner (EAP) in the new terminology), and/or green organisation/s (e.g. WESSA, EWT, Earthlife), to branch meetings of professional organisations (e.g. IAIAsa – International Association for Impact Assessment South African affiliate, see www.iaia.co.za) and then on to national, regional and international conferences.

And the point is? Quite simply, without ethics in environmental practice from ALL parties concerned, the environment is sunk. And that leaves us with a dead or badly injured Gaia. Not a good situation.

Going back to basics, what is meant by 'ethics'?

The online Oxford Dictionary (www.askoxford.com) defines ethics as:

(1) the moral principles governing or influencing conduct,
(2) the branch of knowledge concerned with moral principles.

The underpinning control of all legislation in our country is the South African Constitution (Act No. 108 of 1996). A critical part of the constitution is the Bill of Rights (Chapter 2 of the Constitution) which can be seen to be the enshrined moral and ethical code that all South Africans should be held accountable to.

The Bill of Rights states:

7. (1) This Bill of Rights is a cornerstone of democracy in South Africa. It enshrines the rights of all people in our country and affirms the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom.
(2) The state must respect, protect, promote and fulfill the rights in the Bill of Rights.”

An aside – most Pagans will be aware of Section 15 which relates to the freedom of religion, belief and opinion. This has been considered at length in various forums and will no doubt continue to be of importance to the community as a whole. But in terms of the Environment, the critical section to be considered is Section 24.

24. Everyone has the right –
(a) to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being; and
(b) to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations, through reasonable legislative and other measures that –
(i) prevent pollution and ecological degradation;
(ii) promote conservation; and
(iii) secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development.

Now the problem becomes where do we draw the limits? What is morally correct and what not. Make no mistake this is very difficult to determine at times, especially when you are dealing with the environment. Remember that in terms of South African legislation the Environment is seen holistically as the biological, physical, social and economic (and some cases legislative / judicial / government) factors combined. That means the run-of-the-mill rather naive definition sees only the animals and plants they rely on, maybe with the physical considerations thrown in as well. This is NOT underwritten in law.

In terms of the National Environmental Management Act (NEMA, Act No. 107 0f 1998, as amended), the following definition is used:

“environment” means the surroundings within which humans exist and that are made up of the land, water and atmosphere of the earth; micro-organisms, plant and animal life;
any part or combination of (i) and (ii) and the interrelationships among and between them; and the physical, chemical, aesthetic and cultural properties and conditions of the foregoing that influence human health and well being.

As guidance to wade through this morass, the NEMA states in its preamble that:

“Whereas many inhabitants of South Africa live in an environment that is harmful to their health and well being; everyone has the right to an environment that is not harmful to his or her health or well being; the State must respect, protect, promote and fulfill the social, economic and environmental rights of everyone and strive to meet the basic needs of previously disadvantaged communities; inequality in the distribution of wealth and resources, and the resultant poverty, are among the important causes as well as the results of environmentally harmful practices; sustainable development requires the integration of social, economic and environmental factors in the planning, implementation and evaluation of decisions to ensure that development serves present and future generations; everyone has the right to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations, through reasonable legislative and other measures that prevent pollution and ecological degradation; promote conservation; and secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development; the environment is a functional area of concurrent national and provincial legislative competence, and all spheres of government and all organs of state must cooperate with, consult and support one another; And whereas it is desirable that the law develops a framework for integrating good environmental management into all development activities; that the law should promote certainty with regard to decision making by organs of state on matters affecting the environment; that the law should establish principles guiding the exercise of functions affecting the environment; that the law should ensure that organs of state maintain the principles guiding the exercise of functions affecting the environment; that the law should establish procedures and institutions to facilitate and promote cooperative government and intergovernmental relations; that the law should establish procedures and institutions to facilitate and promote public participation in environmental governance; that the law should be enforced by the State and that the law should facilitate the enforcement of environmental laws by civil society”

Obviously blatantly ignoring the controlling legislation on the part of the so-called competent authorities is breaking the Constitution and the principles of NEMA, and if I don’t miss my guess some bright lawyer will take the various environmental authorities to the Constitutional Court for a little bit of debate and censure. However, the consideration of smaller less clear-cut situations is where the application of ethics and morals comes to the fore.

Section 1.1.1. of the draft Guideline: Detailed guide to implementation of the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulations: 2006 (Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, currently unpublished), refers to the guiding principles are follows:

Early application
∙ This legislative process should be applied as early in the proposed activity’s planning stages as practicable and before irrevocable decisions are made, in order to ensure that environmental considerations are incorporated pro-actively into decisions taken.

Accountability
∙ Applicants are accountable for the potential impacts of activities being undertaken as well as managing these impacts, as related to the specific proposal at hand.
∙ Decision-makers are accountable for decisions taken with regard to authorising identified activities.

Open and participatory approach
∙ The public is involved in decisions taken with regard to the undertaking of identified activities.

In overview, the administrative procedures detailed in the regulations aim to ensure that:

1. The minimum information necessary be provided to allow for informed decision-making;
2. The information provided must allow for interested and affected parties (I&APs) to participate in an effective manner;
3. Issues, ideas and concerns raised by I&APs are properly considered;
4. Issues, impacts and alternatives are considered and assessed in a structured and objective manner, and;
5. The management of impacts to an acceptable level over the life cycle of the activity are integrated into the final product.

The problem comes in with the need of all bureaucracies to generate and/or request tonnes of information, much of which is not actually of importance, or given the scope and scale of the proposal more than slightly over the top. In the corruption cases, the requirements have gone too far the other way with environmental approval given on far too little information, as in this situation it is usually very obvious that the provision of all necessary information would have torpedoed the proposal.

The social facet of the environment is due to our history a critical factor in all legislation in South Africa. The problem is that the issues caused when the social systems fail have direct and indirect impacts on the wider environment. So how does one decide that an exemption should be made and the standard process overturned, even though by overturning it you are causing loss of an effectively irreplaceable footprint, but on the flip-side halting another form of degradation?

The concept of the 'spirit of the law' comes into play. Those dealing with legislation will often refer to the spirit or intent of the law. That is, if a piece of legislation is open to debate, the legal system will return to the principles of the law at hand, and if that does not indicate the valid intention of the specific item of legislation, the constitution will be consulted. This is not only because the constitution contains the Bill of Rights, but also because the constitution considers a wider range of facets than say environment alone. This is not to say that everyone will agree with the final decision, but at least the decision may be ethically defensible IF the spirit of the law was applied.

A classic example of this dilemma is as follows. You have an illegal informal settlement, the environmental law states that it should be removed and the site rehabilitated. The standard process says you should then prepare and submit a formal application to the environmental authorities and after the full process is carried out, obtain legal environmental authorisation. That will take a minimum of 6 (six) months if not 2 (two) years. Otherwise, go ahead formalise the development, while doing all necessary studies and putting as many mitigation measures in place as you can, while lodging an application for rectification. This application in terms of Section 24G of NEMA effectively states 'yes the law was broken, but authorise it anyway with conditions because it's needed, and even though the environment has been trashed it’s ok'.

Ethically what should one do? Environmentally (bio-physical environment) obviously the first option is the better one especially as without fail such developments usually occur in flood lines or on ridges, and on or close to sites of Red Data plants or animals. But rectification would get them into better situations sooner – pity about the impact to the wider environment if a vulnerable plant is lost. Reasons for rectification could include the fact that failures in other systems have lead to this situation. It is fine to say that if settlement and re-settlement programmes had been rolled out correctly the problem wouldn’t exist. That makes it a social or planning issue. It would be true to say that if South Africa controlled access via its border correctly there would be sufficient homes for South African citizens. It would even be right to say that past government policies caused the issue. We could even say that family planning over the last few decades (definitely post Victorian period with the related radical improvement in medical technology and thus survival rate to adulthood) is to blame and that too would be right. Continued uncontrolled settlement will lead to massive localised environmental damage and potential impacts via contaminated groundwater to even larger areas. But from a social viewpoint, removal may not be considered to be ethical. But if the informal settlement is allowed to continue uncontrolled until rectification is eventually obtained, would it not also be right to say that the occupants of the site and the surroundings are having their rights in terms of Section 24 denied or compromised?

Okay, I’m not going to be able to answer all the questions, nor do I put myself out as the moral judge of all environmental issues. So long as I have made you think a little on this issue, then I have done my job.

Now to attack the issue from another side. The common facet tying most neo-Pagan belief systems together is that of preservation of Earth, and this in a sustainable manner. Some will happily leave humans out of the equation and believe that removal of 99% of all humans would solve all the problems. But this is short-sighted, let alone the issue of how such a ‘reduction should be carried out. No matter what we do, we humans are created as part of this system and anything – yes ANYTHING! – we do is by definition 'natural'. Before you have hysterics, yes the potential is that given this premise we humans are currently moving towards a situation in which we will change Earth so much that we and many of the existing species will be wiped out. But that premise works and is ethical only if we discount the fact that humans have ethics, and yes a whole lot of those ethics are self-preserving as well. If we factor in the fact that we have consciences and believe that destruction of Earth’s biosphere as it now exists is wrong, and given that we define this to be ethically correct, then we are obliged to ‘save the Earth’. In terms of higher consciousness, if we wipe ourselves out now, what will this mean in terms of larger goals that go unfulfilled? The stark reality is that we wouldn’t be around, so from our viewpoint that option is not going to work.

Where does that leave us? We cannot go back to the Middle Ages with limited technology, high mortality, short life span, and a baby Ice Age thrown in for fun. That would require a mortality rate of about 95% or more and such a situation would not necessarily be selective and allow survival of those who could do Earth the most good. Instead we would have a totally fractured society looking back and saying 'when we...'.

Maybe in terms of the environment as a whole that would be a good solution, but that is without factoring in the long term impact of pollutants etc. that would not be rehabilitated / mitigated for. Equally we all acknowledge that we cannot continue as we are going as global change, in whatever form it comes, will wipe out the majority of human civilisation. The only viable option is for each and every one of us as morally upright, Gaia loving humans (Pagan and otherwise), to make small changes in our individual lives to make our own footprints on this Earth lighter.

The ways in which we can do that are numerous and to list them all here would be rather pointless. As noted in passing in a magazine I was reading this weekend, it is clear that sustainability is not just a lunatic fringe occupation when a book called 'Compost' hits the number one best seller list – and that’s non-fiction!

A final suggestion, for those who enjoy reading, may I suggest that you read books by L.E. Modesitt Jr., especially his Sci-Fi books e.g. 'Adiamante', 'The Ethos Effect'. The author started as a fighter pilot, was an aide to a Senator, an EPA Director and has a very, very interesting take on life, ethics, value systems and the future. And for a mind jarring take on magick and the implications thereof, read his various fantasy series, especially the best-selling ‘Recluce’ series.

Amendment to the notice: "leave only footprints behind, and take only memories".

Make those footprints beneficial to the wider environment.

 

Contact Bronwen Griffiths