NationStates Jolt Archive

Dear Delegates,
I made a new proposal for saving nature, I hope it fits into everybody's beliefs this time ;)

"
Category: Environmental
Resolution name: Ensure nature's sustainability

A resolution to ensure nature's sustainability and avoid irreparable damage by establishing a global operating supervising scientist team.

Dear Delegates, Dear UN Members,
most people are affected by nature in various ways. Once existed within nature, now the time has come for human beings to give something back to her.

The resolution would consist out of the following points:

§1 All potentially ecologically harmful utilisations of tropical rainforest resources are assessed by a team of expert and impartial scientists (Commission to ensure sustainability [from now on: C.E.S]) to ensure that they are ecologically sustainable before proceeding. If simple replanting of trees(#resolution 24) doesn't ensure sustainability, the C.E.S. may prohibit utilisations.

§2 The C.E.S. will also do random checks on different companies and private people from time to time to control whether they stick to the passed resolutions #24 and #49.

§3 Every UN member state will have to pay a fixed amount of money, depending on the nation’s state of population and industry. This is the way the C.E.S. will be financed.

Please note that this resolution is a supporting one. It refers to passed resolutions #24 and #49, which say that rainforest destruction should be stopped and that people have to replant trees they are cutting down. This proposal is about establishing a commission to ENSURE that people stick to these resolutions, because until today, nobody controls that.
"
thx for your time, please tell me your opinion

§1 All potentially ecologically harmful utilisations of tropical rainforest resources are assessed by a team of expert and impartial scientists (Commission to ensure sustainability [from now on: C.E.S]) to ensure that they are ecologically sustainable before proceeding. If simple replanting of trees(#resolution 24) doesn't ensure sustainability, the C.E.S. may prohibit utilisations.

I like this iea, but who will be on the team, how big will the team be? Can you define what it means to be ecologically sustainable? The er are many definitions about what sustainability is, and there is a lot of debate on this issue.

§2 The C.E.S. will also do random checks on different companies and private people from time to time to control whether they stick to the passed resolutions #24 and #49.

Good idea, but how will this agency make this companies comply? What powers doe this agency have it seems rather vague.

Overall I like the idea, and I believe in what you are saying. I think it needs to be more detailed though. I hope you find this helpful, and I wish you the best of luck.

By the way if you need ideas I am an environmental science major. :)

I like this iea, but who will be on the team, how big will the team be? Can you define what it means to be ecologically sustainable? The er are many definitions about what sustainability is, and there is a lot of debate on this issue.



Good idea, but how will this agency make this companies comply? What powers doe this agency have it seems rather vague.

Overall I like the idea, and I believe in what you are saying. I think it needs to be more detailed though. I hope you find this helpful, and I wish you the best of luck.

By the way if you need ideas I am an environmental science major. :)
thx, it seems to be a generally positive feedback :)
I think it isn't that important to know how big the team will be or who exactly will be in it, I've checked some resolutions today and they are not detailed at all...
But anyways, depends on how much work there will be for this team.
And there could be sanctions like paying money or maybe even closing the company's areal (I don't know if this is a good idea, anyways)
Maybe you could do some proposals concerning details in this topic, I would be really thankful :)

How about having the amount of funding from each nation be at least partially based on how much ecological damage that nation causes? Avenging Angels, as an environmental science major do you know of a good way of quantifying environmental damage? (I know it's very difficult to do, but I feel it should be more detailed than just tonnage of carbon emissions or something like that).

Since the UN is so large, I think we'll need more than one panel of experts. How about saying that the CES will assign a team of experts to assess each proposed project?

The only powers you have given the CES are the ability to give the go-ahead to a project (with the proviso that replating is done) or prohibit it. They need to be able to work with developers to improve unsustainable plans until they are sustainable.

There really is no good way to quantify environmental damage. There are many methods athat have been devised to help with this matter. You would have to put some sort of economic valuation on these goods. This can be done by surveying people, hedonic pricing method, cost effectiveness approach, look at thge replacement or resotration cost. Like I said there are many methods, and none of them are perfect.

Cost Effectiveness: This is basically a cost-benefit analysis. You analyze the whole scenario. How much money, and resources would it take to cut down rainforest, and then how much money could you get from this. The money could come from using the land for housing, farming, or selling the lumber. If you can prove it would be to costly, and there would be little profit, there is no incetive to clear cut the forest.

Replacement or Restoration Cost: Looks at how much money has to be spent to restore the environment to irs previous undamaged state. Though do we really know what each environment was like before we impacted it?

There is a lot of debate on this issue as well. Lets says a country destroyed 500 acres of rain forest and let us say there was a $1,000 value placed on an acre of rainforest. Then that country would have to pay $50,000.

As I stated before there is no perfect way to put an economic value on the environment, and some people would even debate that this act is wrong in itself. Some people would argue that we should pect the environment because it is there and deserves protection. This comes from more of an intrinsic value rather than an extrinsic value.

I wasn't really thinking necessarily of an economic value. Just some way of rating a nation on the basis of their environmental damage.

Well, there are methods for valuing nature without bringing in economics.

I don't remember the methids name but one method takes a certain ecosystem, and breaks it down into categories, those being recreation, ecology, and landscape. Each of these categories have various parts to them. Each our rated by experts. Taking this into account they assign an attribute importance weight. This is ona scake of 1(least important) to 5(most important).

Basically any ecological valuation technique tries to examine an ecocsystem breaking it down into categories or what services it provides, and attempts to rate them or assign some value to them in the hopes of determining how valuable an ecosystem is.

Hmmm. I just wanted some way to give nations a score on how bad they were at harming the environment (based on things like CO2 emissions, CFCs, habitat destruction etc.) and to say that nations with poorer scores have to pay more.

That seems plausible. :)