Environmental Risk Management Handbook

By Pedro J. Toranzo

'Environmental Risk Management Handbook' It is a reference work with technical and non-technical content –humanistic-, simple –easy to read-; that brings together concepts, information on the controversial environmental issue.
This work is a reference text for academics, students, journalists, businessmen and public servants, who are interested in finding concepts explained in a simple and direct way.
A handbook intended to be a reference work applicable to any jurisdiction, which has precisely taken examples from countless regions, jurisdictions and cultures.
This title would not have been possible without the support of the following institutions, who provided support on the printed version available only in Argentina.
• Argentine Chamber of Mining Businessmen or La Cámara Argentina de Empresarios Mineros o CAEM
• The Institute of Environmental Policy or "El Instituto de Políticas Ambientales", part of the Argentine National Academy of Moral & Political Science.
• The Austral University of Argentina.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667826257

Book preview

1-‘Introduction’

Pollution is not, as we are often told, the product of moral depravity. It is the inevitable consequence of life at work.

James Lovelock

The ‘environmental’ topic has existed since ancient times; since men naturally began its interaction with nature, that is, from the beginning of mankind’s existence on Earth. Humans have started this relationship because of their survival needs satisfied by mostly scarce natural resources, in addition to recognizing the eloquence of nature, which has always been weighted with sacred and even deified elements.

Perhaps with the outburst of interjurisdictional trade, industrial agriculture and the fact of industrialism as a culture on a large scale, with the industrial revolution as a clear historical starting point; added to scientism, Cartesianism, utilitarianism and technicality; a new challenge has been originated and even men’s first approach to nature has been broken forever. I mean that approach of respect, closeness, but also mythical and even ignorant of the natural kingdom. And this assertion does not imply undervaluing a historical time and its people, but rather to mark a widely recognized milestone, such as the industrial revolution and the subsequent explosion of economic activity and trade, reaching the four corners of the Globe today.

Nowadays, environmental movements and the many events of over-exploitation and pollution around the globe have begun to question the simple utilitarianism and the precarious and incomplete valuation of the services provided by nature. In our times, the concept of traditional property rights cries out for a new and challenging interpretation that recognizes the principle of connectivity of nature and all its biotic and abiotic components, and particularly to the very special relationship between members of the human species.

The classic concept of property rights; perhaps rather western, from a purely legislative point of view; it can lead to division, to forgetting the common origin and common end of mankind itself. A tangible and illustrative case how property rights are traditionally defined is the example of water and land use rights on a riverside property on water related rights in many jurisdictions; they poorly recognize the undeniable connectivity of water resources in a typical River Basin. This dichotomy clearly and visibly creates mismanagement in most of the water resources on our planet.

It is perhaps today, the right time to revaluate how we relate with the Natural Environment with innovation, agreement and scientific-technical based knowledge; it is time to improve the many aspects of the natural resources’ proprietary rights concept and its implications with the common good and the natural realm; and, with the undeniable and necessary understanding that we all live on the same planet, with increasingly finite resources.

It is necessary to clarify those environmental activists, although they promote reaction and awareness, rarely provide practical solutions to environmental challenges appearing every day. In addition, these social movements are too often coloured by interests alien to ecosystems, as well as alien to men’s own nature.

This environmental noise or false activism has left unheard, almost due to a negative reaction; to the large number of women and men who promote a possible Environmental Risk Management or ERM. Countless academic institutions, technology companies and natural resources companies such as mining, energy and manufacturing industries, have implemented tangible solutions that really provide remedies to the various types of environmental risks, typically and undeniably originated from human activity. These actions are what we must imitate and continue to improve. Determinations full of practicality and bathed in continuous improvement as the main engine.

It is time for markets, for governments and particularly consumers; to begin meddling more and more with possible solutions; that together will minimize environmental risks, in addition to silencing those nonsensical, paralysing and negative cries coming from many environmental activists.

2.- ‘Men and the Environment’

‘The economy is a subsidiary company of the Environment. All economic activity depends on that Environment with its underlying resource base’.

US Senator, G. Nelson during his first ‘Earth Day’, in 1970

We cannot deny that in past, present and future times the existence of an irreplaceable, organic, marital relationship between Men and the Environment. This relationship has several aspects to consider. Perhaps this affinity could have the following facets, which I am sure complement each other when it comes to understanding the men-nature correlation:

Dependency: This characteristic of the relationship indicates that man cannot really exist without the environment and its benefits. Men depend on these benefits. Although there is a movement, for example, towards the ‘dematerialization’ of the economy; men, even in our technologically advanced century, depends almost entirely on the Environment. It certainly depends on its resources, on the productivity of ecosystems; and particularly of primary systems such as water, air, and the carbon cycle, among others.

This ‘dependency’ has and has always had an ‘economic’ content in an undeniable way; since men naturally has a propensity to transport, exchange and exchange one thing for another; as the great British lead economist Adam Smith noted. Such economic tendency manages two inseparable human problems: the scarcity of natural resources and the efficient supply of these to as many individuals as possible. If this economic characteristic does not exist; the devastation towards the environment would be a most terrible. This phenomenon can be clearly seen in the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, which I will explain later when I deal with the subject of EPs in a later chapter (VIII).

The tangible and necessary economic aspect is not necessarily negative towards the environment as many negative environmental activists proclaim; but rather the opposite; it can define the degree of efficiency of how the men relate to Nature. Economic efficiency, well understood, must also tend to be an ecological efficiency.

Figure 1

NATURE

Interdependency: Given the advancement of civilization in our day, the increase in population and consumption of natural resources; and above all, the globalization of markets for goods and services; that have given the ability for many humans to become consumers of a wide range of goods and services; an ‘extra and significant’ pressure, but at the same time inevitable, has been generated on the local, regional and even global ecosystems.

Today, nature depends on how men relate to it; like never in human history; civilization has the power to destroy entire ecosystems, and with it their productivity, and consequently the goods and services associated with them become clearly affected.

One characteristic that should be unarguable of nature by our civilization is the increasingly constant and savage irreversibility of environmental damage. While nature can be recovered; the timeframe for this is almost endless. That is why civilization must seriously consider the concept of ‘irreversibility’. The good news is that our technological and economic advances are pushing us towards a much more efficient consumption of resources; and to an increasingly prevailing ‘culture of reuse’ of those resources. As a clear example, the word waste and/or garbage begins and is directed via local council educational campaigns to become an increasingly obsolete concept.

Responsible stewardship: I consider almost logical and undeniable that all nature has a predominant species: Man. The only inhabitant of the universe capable of destroying, maintaining or relatively improving the environment that surrounds it. The technical and scientific capacities of human civilization; plus, his artistic, cultural and historical capacity; are unique of a character clearly that aims to transcend, to overextend in time and even yearn for eternity, as seen in innumerable artistic and literary works of mankind.

Men are the most exquisite and predominant species in the known universe, and this does not underestimate other species; it rather describes a reality.

In this sense, it sometimes attracts my attention; as many activists ponder and invest time in activities, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes very necessary; granting the same value to other species as to its own; or even portraying human progress as always negative; which is a way of thinking and acting logically and strikingly ‘unnatural’ and contrary to basic ecological principles; because species clearly tend to promote and protect their own species before others.

The Saint Thomas Aquinas, the great philosopher and thinker, resolves the man-nature relationship in his great work, with a outstanding quote in his Summa Theologiae, question 96, saying: As man was created in the image of God, he is above all other animals. , that they are subject to him ; it is clear that this Aquina’s statement, requires of Faith; but this is not contrary to the rational, since his statement abounds in logic and reality.

Now, this ‘submission’ of Nature towards Men is clearly and absolutely a ‘responsible’ one. Perhaps complementing what was stated by Thomas of Aquinas; Pope Saint John Paul II stated