Diritto e tutela dell'ambiente (1/2)

Complessità, incertezza, prudenza

Vengono ora riportate alcune prese di posizione e sentenze pronunciate negli Stati Uniti d'America che, avendo per oggetto episodi di tutela ambientale, rivelano aspetti del delicato rapporto tra il diritto e la salvaguardia della natura.

Prudenza ecologica come limitazione dei diritti (economici) umani

"Il valore del patrimonio genetico è incalcolabile. È nell'interesse dell'umanità limitare le perdite dovute a variazioni genetiche. La ragione è semplice: si tratta delle chiavi di un enigma che siamo incapaci di risolvere, e possono fornire risposte a domande che noi non abbiamo ancora imparato a formulare. Il più semplice egocentrismo ci impone di essere prudenti".

Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, 98 SC 22799 (1978)

Riconoscere diritti alla natura

"The Mineral King Valley is an area of great natural beauty nestled in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Tulare County, California, adjacent to Sequoia National Park. It has been part of the Sequoia National Forest since 1926, and is designated as a national game refuge by special Act of Congress. The final Disney plan, approved by the Forest Service in January 1969, outlines a $35 million complex of motels, restaurants, swimming pools, parking lots, and other structures designed to accommodate 14,000 visitors daily. The critical question of "standing" would be simplified and also put neatly in focus if we fashioned a federal rule that allowed environmental issues to be litigated before federal agencies or federal courts in the name of the inanimate object (...) Inanimate objects are sometimes parties in litigation. A ship has a legal personality, a fiction found useful for maritime purposes. So it should be as respects valleys, alpine meadows, rivers, lakes, estuaries, beaches, ridges, groves of trees, swampland, or even air that feels the destructive pressures of modern technology and modern life".

SIERRA CLUB v. MORTON, 405 U.S. 727 (1972) Decided April 19, 1972

Alcune linee di indirizzo nella tutela ambientale da parte del diritto:

• The thing can institute legal actions at its behest

• In determining the granting of legal relief, the court must take the injury to nature into account

• That relief must run to the benefit of nature.

C.D. STONE, Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects, Tioga Publishing Co., Palo Alto 1988 (Los Altos 1974)

Limitare i diritti presenti attraverso i diritti delle generazioni future

Regional Trial Court: "The plaintiffs have no cause of action against (the Department of Environment and Natural Resources) and the issues raised by the plaintiffs is a political questions which properly pertains to the legislative or executive branches of Government".

Supreme Court: "Petitioners minors assert that they represent their generation as well as generations yet unborn. We find no difficulty in ruling that they can, for themselves, for others of their generation and for the succeeding generations, file a class suit. Their personality to sue in behalf of the succeeding generations can only be based on the concept of intergenerational responsibility insofar as the right to a balanced and healthful ecology is concerned. (..) Put a little differently, the minors' assertion of their right to a sound environment constitutes, at the same time, the performance of their obligation to ensure the protection of that right for the generations to come".

The Philippines Supreme Court Decision in Minors Oposa v. Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, 30.7.1993