Social and Economic Rights: Beyond
the Rhetoric A paper from the de Borda
Institute and the New Ireland Group
16th May 2002
"God gives blessings to all; if man
had to distribute them, many would go without."
Hausa proverb, Nigeria.
Environmental Rights
"By what right do we place such a heavy
footprint upon God’s earth?"1
Introduction
Two months ago, the Larsen B ice shelf in the Antartic collapsed
into thousands of pieces and a 3,250 sq. km. iceberg cracked
off a glacier.2 This was caused in part by
ourselves in Northern Ireland, where for example the average
car emits 3 tonnes of co2 into the atmosphere every year.3
The fact that others in this world also place
"a heavy footprint on this Earth" does not detract
from the fact that we too directly and adversely affect the
lives and wellbeing of millions of others. We do not have
the right so to do.
Firstly, we do not have the right to consume
more than our fair share of the world’s finite resources.
Secondly, we do not have the right to pollute this planet
in a way which threatens the lives of others. And thirdly,
in consuming and polluting our fair share, we do not have
the right to manufacture unethical products. Let us now consider
these three fields in a little more detail, before thinking
of what action should be taken to redress the situation.
Consumption
As many people do know, in the 1840s, wheat was exported from
Ireland during the terrible years of the famine. As everyone
may know, in the 1990s, Northern Ireland was importing food
from Africa during the terrible years of the famine. There
was starvation in the Sudan and Ethiopia. And we in Ireland,
the home of the potato, were importing new potatoes from Egypt.
We have, it seems, learnt nothing. Indeed,
when we examine some of the statistics on poverty and ecology,
all of which have been publicised time and time again, the
fact that there is a huge (and growing!) disparity in wealth
and consumption is a very sad reflection on us all. Let me
quote just a few facts, if but to emphasise the point.
11 million children die every year from poverty
related illnesses.4 The citizens of the UK
are among the richest 20% in the world; together we earn 85%
of the world’s income and consume more than 80% of the
world’s resources. Thus, with just 1% of the world’s
population, the UK consumes 3% of the world’s current
consumption of wood, 3% of the world’s cement production,
3.5% of the world’s steel and 5% of its aluminium.5
This is neither right nor sustainable. If
everybody in the world consumed as much as we do, there would
have to be eight planets to supply all the aluminium, five
to supply enough steel, three to give everyone enough water,
and one and a half to provide us all with enough land.6
Pollution
It is, of course, impossible to live without pollution. A
certain degree of pollution, however, is sustainable; it all
depends on the substance concerned, on the concentrations
in which it is disposed, and the chosen method of disposal.
Firstly, let us mention an artificial substance
which it would be wiser not to produce at all: plutonium.
According to a Professor Bolton on bbc radio 4 To-day programme
recently, there is still "no proven technology for the
disposal of plutonium." We produce this stuff to arm
the UK’s nuclear deterrent and, despite official propaganda
to the contrary, "electricity must be seen as a by-product
of the plutonium industry".7 This toxic,
radioactive and fissile poison has a half-life of 24,000 years;
some of it is stored in ponds in Sellafield, some has already
been dumped into the ecosphere via the Irish Sea. At the very
least, therefore, this waste will threaten the next 600 generations.
There are those who argue that the production
of electricity from nuclear power stations helps to reduce
our co2 emissions, and this is partly true. Sadly, the government
has not yet had the courage to advocate a reduction in our
overall levels of consumption, for reasons which we will mention
later on.
Meanwhile, let us move on to talk of substances
which the eco-system can deal with… or could if the
quantities were not so huge. There are lots of oxides emitted
from the exhaust pipes of our motor cars and power stations,
but suffice for this paper to mention just one: co2. The largest
per capita emitters are Australia (27.6 tonnes), Luxembourg
(24.2), Canada (21.9), the USA (21.1), Ireland (15.4), Germany
(11.9) and UK (11.4).8 As has been noted
in the 1992 UN conference on the environment and many other
venues, these levels are quite unsustainable.
With other products such as aluminium, Northern
Ireland along with the rest of the UK imports its entire supply.
For every tonne of aluminium produced, there are 50 tonnes
of waste products deposited at the mine head. And while Sweden
re-cycles over 90% of its aluminium cans, the UK manages only
about 30%.
No wonder Northern Ireland places such an
excessive reliance on land-fill sites whereby, of course,
we waste yet another precious resource: land. And because
of our intensive meat farming and the almost immoral food
practices already referred to - the importation of potatoes
and other foodstuffs from the developing world - we should
also note that the UK imports 4.3 million tonnes of animal
feeds, the equivalent of 17,500 km2 of land.9
I have no doubt we have the money to pay for this stuff, but
do we have the right?
Arms Exports
As the most obvious example of our abuse of the world’s
resources, I wish to concentrate on the arms trade. The UK
is the world’s fourth largest manufacturer of arms,
producing US $ 7bn worth of the stuff out of a world total
of US $ 100 bn.10 We in Northern Ireland
are a part of this sordid business. Indeed, during the course
of the last forty years, Shorts Missiles Systems, now re-named
Thales and ranked number 83 in Northern Ireland’s top
100 companies,11 have supplied more than
60,000 weapons to over 50 armed forces around the world.12
Thales is part of Thomson –CSF, a French
firm with an annual turnover of US $ 4 bn and 58% of that
production devoted to armaments. It is the seventh largest
manufacturer of arms in the world.13 It
launched its Starstreak missile in September 1998 and immediately
won a £200m order from the mod.
Another local company is Raytheon. This is
part of the world’s fourth largest company, with 56%
of an annual US $ 11 bn turnover spent on military hardware.14
Admittedly, the NI factory is a relatively small unit developing
software, but this is still part of its weapon systems. When
Raytheon decided to set up this factory, the "two local
Nobel Peace Prize winners… David Trimble and John Hume,
welcomed this as a benefit to our peace process."15
An Answer
In a word, we must learn to limit our consumption, control
our pollution, and confine our industrial production within
certain ethical standards. It is in fact relatively easy to
work out just what might be Northern Ireland’s fair
share of the world’s finite resources.
Based on world and UK populations in the year
2050 of 10 billion and 60 million respectively, Friends of
the Earth have calculated that we should reduce our co2 emissions
by 90%, our steel consumption by 80%, our timber consumption
by up to 70%, our total land use by 25%, and so on.16
A reduction in arms production would help. The UK currently
spends 2.5% of its gdp on arms, Ireland spends 0.8% while
Iceland spends 0.0%.17
All of these targets are achievable. There
need be no nuclear weapons in the world. There need be no
nuclear power stations. There need be no more plutonium. And
we in Northern Ireland should not be supporting the nuclear
industry by consuming electricity from Sellafield. At the
same time, there need be no limit to the amount of renewable
energy we consume, and Northern Ireland has some of the best
wind and tide resources in all Europe. Similarly, there is
almost no limit to the number of times we may use aluminium
cans, as long as we re-cycle them.
Conclusion
The main purpose of this paper is to suggest that the obligation
to achieve the above targets is a moral one. Certain aspects
of our way of life have a detrimental affect, either on our
fellow human beings abroad, and/or on future generations everywhere;
ergo, it is a matter of human rights.
We have the right to consume, but only up
to a certain limit. We have the right to pollute, again, only
to a limited extent. And there must be an ethical criterion
as to what we produce and export, a criterion that would exclude
all offensive weaponry.
It must further be said that if we do not
achieve a sustainable way of life, our species will not survive.
The argument is also both ecological and holistic.
We do not wish at this stage to propose direct
forms of wording for any new Human Rights charter on these
three fields of activity, although we are willing to help
and participate in this task in any way we can. Suffice only
to add a final word of warning.
The current modus operandi of most democratic
systems is adversarial and competitive. Furthermore, governments
in power are often tempted to use that power to perpetuate
themselves; ‘twas ever thus. In some adversarial democracies
including our own, this leads to such sweeteners as "pre-election
budgets", the purpose of which is to suggest to the voter
(a) that he/she will be better off under the existing administration,
and (b) that he/she should vote from a selfish motivation.
In consequence, the future is sacrificed on the altar of short-term
expediency. In its worst instances, the basic instincts of
the voter are exploited by the unscrupulous politician in
not budgetry but khaki elections.
Democracy was meant to be an altruistic ideal,
a form of rule "of… by… and for [all] the
people".18 Alas, by the use of simplistic
voting systems, we have turned it into a contest of factions,
a rule "of… by… and for" only some of
the people, the winners, (with admittedly a few minority rights
which may protect the present generation of losers).
The conclusion is stark: our current adversarial
democratic structures are a threat to the survival of the
planet. The most obvious proof of this is in the USA: during
the Cold War, it was the democratic process itself which exacerbated
the arms race (Kennedy’s missile gap and Reagan’s
‘empire of evil’); and as we all know, George
W Bush ‘won’ his presidential elections via slush
funds from the likes of Enron – and that was the end
of Kyoto. So until our democratic structures are more inclusive
and consensual, until decision-making is determined by all
and not just some, we cannot rely on the democratic process
to do all that is required to safeguard the human rights of
the world’s present and future poor.
It would seem, therefore, that the best and
more immediate hope is to seek to change human rights legislation.
I rest my case.
Notes
1. Professor Paul Kennedy
quoting an environmentalist in the Guardian Weekly, 14th March,
2002.
2. Guardian Weekly
3. , Mar 28th 2002. To-morrow’s World
4. by Friends of the Earth, Earthscan, 1998,
p 23 Ibid
5. , p 27. Ibid
6. , p 221. Ibid
7. , p 240. Towards the Nuclear Holocaust
8. by Sir Martin Ryle, The Menard Press, 1981.
These figures are taken from a short report entitled Comprehensive
Emissions per capita for Industrialised Countries by Clive
Hamilton, The Australia Institute.
9. Tomorrow’s World
10. , p 143. Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute
11. (SIPRI) Yearbook 2001, OUP, p 283. Belfast
Telegraph’s ‘special analysis’ on Northern
Ireland’s top 100 companies, March 2001.
12. What Price Peace – The Irish Peace
Process and the International Arms Trade
13. by Sean O Cuillinn, AFRI. SIPRI, p 303.
14. Ibid.
15. AFRI, p 3.
16. To-morrow’s World
17. , p 241. SIPRI, p 287.
18. From Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg
address of 19.11.1863.
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