Natur og Kultur som Folkehelse - NaKuHel

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
LOCAL COMMONS IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL STATE
Ken Takeshita, Professor, Law School of Kansai University, Osaka, Japan
The increasing refinement of technology enhances
the accumulation of scientific operating processes,
and the increasing density of processes correspondingly
raises their repercussive influence,
while also increasing the rate of unpredictability.
Through the conjunction of risks which are actualized
as pollution incidents and risks which have
yet to be realized, the dangers which people are exposed
to in contemporary society involve a heightened
degree of risk which constitutes a qualitative
change from the situation previously. This risk is a
continuum stretching from situations where danger
is definite to those where danger exists as a probability
but is not actualized or realized, and on to
situations of apprehension which are not perceived
as dangerous. The overall term for these dangers
and apprehensions is risk, and in this sense contemporary
society is indeed a risk society.
The qualitative change in repercussive effect in the
risk society has also taken place in fields where
scientific prediction should be possible. Nowadays,
when the manipulation of nature through technology,
is no longer restricted to matter outside the
human body but has invaded its interior, scientific
predictability can be seen as still more difficult.
Originally, the domination of nature by science
meant the control of nature outside the human
body. Humans made use of science and technology
to protect against threats from nature such as
natural disasters and animal attacks and to modify
nature so as to derive useful resources from it.
Inventions such as the automobile and airplane
cause accidents, but however great the damage
to humans may be, it is nevertheless the result of
external invasion.
However, as illustrated in the examples of drug
damage and food contamination, the risk from
pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs involves nature
within the human body. Here,nature, which supposedly
exists outside the human body, has extended
into its interior via human life support
systems, in parallel with which risk is also internalized.
The fact that risk has thus become interior
for humans is a major distinctive feature of contemporary
risk. The same situation applies also
in environmental risk, in the case of which what
exposes us to risk is not foodstuffs but the ecosystem
which supports human life. The modification
of the human life support system through science
and technology causes an invasion of the interior
of the human body through the medium of the
ecosystem.
Given this situation, the governing orientation
of the environmental state must emphasize the
preservation of the natural environment. From
this standpoint, stewardship to preserve the ecosystem
in the form of the natural environment is
important. Moreover, given the current situation
in which nature is being invaded, this stewardship
must not only be in affinity with the ecosystem, but
must also be regenerative. In this connection, the
utilization and preservation of traditional commons
has adopted sustainable forms promoting symbiosis
with nature, and has been in agreement with
the orientation described here.
By living in the locality, the community which
is the managing agent of the commons is, as it
were, integrated as part of the ecosystem, so that
the continuation of its livelihood requires the
preservation of the ecosystem. However, historic
development suggests that it will not be possible
to remove
29