Lidmila NĚMCOVÁ,
Václav NĚMEC
Czech
Republic
Ethics is a kind of
philosophical discipline, its practical application is rather difficult. No
direct recipe exist that could be used in any situation. Various dilemmas and
conflicts are to be solved in everyday life especially by managers and
specialists. Ethical competency is needed for any ethical decision - the
deciding person has to be convinced about the importance of applying basic
ethical rules.
Nowadays efforts to introduce
ethical behaviour in the political, economical, social etc. life can be already
considered and treated as a movement; its further development and intensifying
are irreversible.
Ethical decision levels
There are many levels where
decisions are to be made (personal, organisational, community, region, state,
international, global).
Personal level:
Any single person has to
improve ethical behaviour contributing by this way to improve ethical climate
in the society. Everything depends on the ethos of the civil society. Various points of view of personal ethical
responsibility from corrective and pro-active to perceptive and voluntary
conduct are expressed in the following table:
_____________________________________________________________
ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY
CORRECTIVE PRO-ACTIVE PERCEPTIVE VOLUNTARY
Have I made How can I Can I help? What
good
damage to sb.? respect
others? can I do ?
How
can I What principles What happens Have I any
redress? are applied? when I shall opportunity
not help? to
choose?
OBLIGATION
CHOICE
Organisation
level:
Various instruments for introducing
ethics exist at that level:
-
ethical codes
-
hot lines
-
ethical ombudsman
-
director or deputy director for ethics
-
ethical commissions or committees
-
social and ethical audit
-
ethical criteria for admitting new employees
-
ethical training
-
round tables
-
quality standards
-
best practices, etc.
There are differing
experiences with the effects of introducing these instruments into the
practice. Any purely formal approach seems to be not completely sufficient for
the final success. A great attention is to be paid to principles that should be
respected when the aforementioned measures are being introduced into practical
application.
The public life level:
Public servants and political
representatives at various levels of the administration are taking many
decisions including those that concern environmental and geoethical policy and
dilemmas.
Following principles for a
behaviour model in the public life are recommended:
- selflessness - any decision is made purely in the public
interest,
- integrity - avoiding any obligation able to influence the
service in a public function,
- objectivity - decision - making based on merits, without any
nepotism and similar inclinations to private interests,
- accountability - any public function has to be open to any
public control,
- openness (transparency) - information can be suppressed only in
justifiable cases of public interest,
- honesty - any private interest is to be published if related to
public obligations in order to avoid any conflict of public and private
interest and to protect public interests,
- leadership - to serve by the own
example (L.Rychetník, 2004, p.16).
The democratic order should be regulated and maintained at any level of
decision making processes. It should be based on the precautionary
principle. The term precaution is well known in the environmental
policy; it expresses a measure taken beforehand to avoid possible harmful or
undesirable consequences.
In accordance with the
precautionary principle any risk of a possible danger in any decision-making
should be taken into consideration as a really existing danger (even if
such a risk is justified only by a preliminary scientific opinion not yet
completely verified). The application of this principle helps to exclude or
at least to minimise lot of various troubles, difficulties or tragic surprises
and also to organise in advance measures for the protection against
potential disasters. All short and long term personal, political,
financial, technical etc. consequences should be taken into consideration.
Ethical approach is also necessary with the respect to the needs of future generations.
Therefore the precautionary principle is often presented jointly with the
general co-responsibility principle. In this way a needed order in the society
can be supported and maintained.
Applications of the precautionary principle in environmental protection
and in geoethics
Obviously the above described
principle - valid in any common situation of the private or public life -
should be applied also in environmental protection and in geoethics. All
other rules can be taken in consideration as being derived from it. E.g.
other principles of environmental policy complementing the precautionary
principle that are valid in the European Union are presented as follows:
-high level of environment protection;
-prevention principle: negative
consequences to the environment should be prevented by avoiding already their
potential sources; by this way the "end-of-pipe"
principle focussing attention on already existing contamination
should be replaced;
-"polluter pays" principle: any
damage to the environment should be paid by those who are responsible for it;
-principle of integration: environmental protection should be integrated into the policy of all EU
countries;
-subsidiarity principle: any
decision should be made at the nearest possible level to the citizen;
-sustainability principle as
one of the basic principles is in the EU policy accepted as formulated by the
United Nations Commission for Environment and Development (UNCED) 1992 in Rio de Janeiro:
any development should satisfy needs of today’s generation without threatening
needs of future generations.
The aforementioned principles obviously should be applied also in cases
closely connected with the natural phenomena studied by the Earth sciences. Specific geoethical aspects are to be incorporated into any decision making when needs and real possibilities of a
sustainable use of mineral resources or dangers of
potential natural disasters are
to be considered.
A high
responsibility to future generations is to be cultivated not only among earth
scientists; also managers, leaders, politicians and statesmen (responsible for long-term decisions concerning mineral
economics and policy but also for precautionary
arrangements concerning possible and predictable high order natural disasters) have to cultivate their own geo- and eco-ethical
way of thinking.
Possible unavoidable international co-operation of Earth scientists and
leaders of the political and economic life can be presented in connection with
the recent tsunami in SE Asia, with floods in Central Europe in 1992 and with
many other phenomena of exceptional size(earthquakes, floods etc.) occurring
elsewhere. They all commemorate a great potential danger for both present and
future generations of the mankind and indicate the need to improve a large
co-operation of Earth scientists with the top leaders of the political, social
and economic life on the whole planet.
Many natural phenomena both in space and in time have a periodical and
hierarchical character. Many phenomena connected with tsunamis, floods and
other natural disasters can be studied
in the geological history; their evaluation can help to improve predictions of
possible occurrences of analogous potential dangers in the future and to
organise a far better protection against them. In practical life we often
neglect exceptional phenomena in a periodicity of more than 100 years.
Geoethical way of thinking can help to establish needed public relations of
Earth sciences and links from the research of space and time regularities to
necessary monitoring systems, transmission of information to the population and
its leaders with their final moral, financial and technical support.
Experiences concerning undesirable
effects
In fact a strict formal application of the preliminary principle -
prescribed by the law and other legal instruments - can result in
contraproductive undesirable effects. In various situations this principle
could be applied vice versa.
Experiences concerning undesirable effects and responsibility when
protecting Earth resources have been described by Zdeněk Hora, a
Czech born geologist who has been working for many decades in Canada (his
private comment follows):
Various protected areas
and national parks are being officially declared and recognised by purely administrative measures. The small local deposits of
gravel and crushed rocks cannot be used at all in such territories and these
raw materials - if needed in that area - are to be transported from other long
distant territories; consequences are evident: energy frustration, increasing CO2 and also multiple increase of costs
as well as the sterilisation of deposits existing in the area. Also any
approach to other very important deposits in such territories - very distant
from any civilisation - has been denied (e.g. until nowadays the
largest known deposit of high grade Cu ores Windy Craggy in British Columbia as
well as another high quality barite deposit). In the second case the respective
mining company started to develop mining activities in China.
On the other hand practical recent experiences
from Canada (Alberta - British
Columbia) already prove that the resulting
reclaimed territories after the coal exploitation are much better from the ecological point of view than the original field. Or in California (the state considered to have
in the world the most severe laws for environment protection) the gold ore mine
Homestake in Napa Valley can operate with the zero waste of
harmful constituents (lot of Cu and As) of the ore.
Other interesting examples of
contraproductivity are presented from the Czech Republic also by J. Chyba in
these proceedings (paper GC 1).
Conclusion
Any governance
and management where decisions concerning geoethical problems are to be made
should completely respect the precautionary principle.
Various existing effective instruments (rules of order, ethical codes,
etc.) express the mankind
interests even nowadays. Perhaps a purely technocratic system should be changed
into a humanist regime protecting both the nature and the mankind (future
generations included).
Literature:
Rychetník, L.: Introducing words on
experiences from Great Britain
in discussion of the Czech Society for Ethics in Economics (private notes -
October 6, 2003);
Rychetník, L.: Regulace lobbování ve
Velké Británii (Regulation of lobbying in Great Britain). - In: Lobbyismus
versus korupce. - Institut pro středoevropskou kulturu a politiku, Praha, 2004
- pp-13-23;
<www.ekolist.cz/eu-pol-eko.shtml>.