I can see why, and I agree that the 'tiny' cap is probably disproportionate though a kind of David vs Goliath springs to mind in terms of abilities to pay...I'd say a proportion based on the consequences would be fair, not the full cost, since ability to pay is not fully related to the importance of the outcome (to either side or to society)....which is partly why Aarhus is there, isn't it.
The 'duty' may be 'new' but the 'fight' for its inclusion was decades in the making (for all of the fudginess of the language - I know because I've been part of that process since 1990, and I know others who have been there for much longer)....there is a significant and critical difference between 'protection' and 'seeking to further the purposes of' (ie enhancement not just protection, and more importantly repairing the damage done since the national landscapes were established since1947) and maybe the world would be a better and healthier place if developments sought to be 'enhancing' not just 'being' - a free-market approach, a development-is-king approach generally tends to externalise the costs (which then get borne by society as a whole....witness river pollution as an example) - it's this change of mindset which is the critical bit about enhancement for the environmental groups (that, and that it has taken years to get government to understand and agree to the need for that change of mindset - we don't want to be going through that argument all over again, not least because continuation of developments intrinsically detrimental to the purposes of these national landscapes will be so much harder/costlier to repair in the future....does 'Big Yellow Taxi' mean anything to you?).
It would be fair if a party who brings a an ultimately unsuccessful environmental case against any new development were then sheeted home with the full economic cost of their claim. As it is I think the maximum damages are capped at a tiny amount.
As one of the future generations you are probably referring to, the opportunity cost of blocking development far exceeds the damages to natural capital in most cases
I'd say that 'far' is too strong an adjective here....it all depends, doesn't it, on how you measure and weight costs and benefits (including how far and widely you go forwards in time and outwards in terms of social, economic and environmental footprints and the relative weights that you give to the different measures)....and we all probably have different acceptable/desirable frameworks and parameters here.
In any case, the original point about seeking to further (or at least being benign) is as much about the accumulated costs of lots of small developments (as about the small number of 'big' developments), whence a threshold may occur where the opportunity cost of one (say a house) should be weighed in some way against the accumulated cost of it plus the others if that threshold of impact has been crossed or is near to being in terms of carrying capacity - the example here being nutrient neutrality....national landscapes are designated because of their importance as landscapes of 'natural beauty' and there comes a point where that natural beauty will be too eroded to be of 'national importance'.
I can see why, and I agree that the 'tiny' cap is probably disproportionate though a kind of David vs Goliath springs to mind in terms of abilities to pay...I'd say a proportion based on the consequences would be fair, not the full cost, since ability to pay is not fully related to the importance of the outcome (to either side or to society)....which is partly why Aarhus is there, isn't it.
sorry, that was meant to be a response to Braised Pilchard!
The 'duty' may be 'new' but the 'fight' for its inclusion was decades in the making (for all of the fudginess of the language - I know because I've been part of that process since 1990, and I know others who have been there for much longer)....there is a significant and critical difference between 'protection' and 'seeking to further the purposes of' (ie enhancement not just protection, and more importantly repairing the damage done since the national landscapes were established since1947) and maybe the world would be a better and healthier place if developments sought to be 'enhancing' not just 'being' - a free-market approach, a development-is-king approach generally tends to externalise the costs (which then get borne by society as a whole....witness river pollution as an example) - it's this change of mindset which is the critical bit about enhancement for the environmental groups (that, and that it has taken years to get government to understand and agree to the need for that change of mindset - we don't want to be going through that argument all over again, not least because continuation of developments intrinsically detrimental to the purposes of these national landscapes will be so much harder/costlier to repair in the future....does 'Big Yellow Taxi' mean anything to you?).
It would be fair if a party who brings a an ultimately unsuccessful environmental case against any new development were then sheeted home with the full economic cost of their claim. As it is I think the maximum damages are capped at a tiny amount.
As one of the future generations you are probably referring to, the opportunity cost of blocking development far exceeds the damages to natural capital in most cases
I'd say that 'far' is too strong an adjective here....it all depends, doesn't it, on how you measure and weight costs and benefits (including how far and widely you go forwards in time and outwards in terms of social, economic and environmental footprints and the relative weights that you give to the different measures)....and we all probably have different acceptable/desirable frameworks and parameters here.
In any case, the original point about seeking to further (or at least being benign) is as much about the accumulated costs of lots of small developments (as about the small number of 'big' developments), whence a threshold may occur where the opportunity cost of one (say a house) should be weighed in some way against the accumulated cost of it plus the others if that threshold of impact has been crossed or is near to being in terms of carrying capacity - the example here being nutrient neutrality....national landscapes are designated because of their importance as landscapes of 'natural beauty' and there comes a point where that natural beauty will be too eroded to be of 'national importance'.
meant to add:- costs are often externalised and to be borne by future generations