The case for giving Mother Nature legal rights

Today, many people, businesses and other institutions in Hong Kong and elsewhere will turn off their non-essential lights at 8.30pm for Earth Hour.

From a humble beginning in Sydney in 2007, the Earth Hour movement has spread rapidly. Last year, some 7,000 cities and towns in 152 countries took part, a significant achievement in making communities aware of the importance of preserving the environment and mitigating climate change.

But is it enough? Most people will agree more needs to be done by the majority, urgently and continuously, to save the planet.

Environmental concerns are nothing new; they have merely become more pressing. The idea of sustainable development - "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" - has been around since the 1980s. But it has failed to tame the impact of developmental activities on the environment.

There are several major problems with the notion of sustainable development. The first relates to the conceptualisation of "needs" itself. Human needs, beyond the basic, are relative and contextual. Under the current model of development, people often see needs in terms of an infinitely upward cycle of consumerism.

Second, the notion does not really tell us how to strike a balance between development goals and the environment. So, all development projects end up being regarded as sustainable. In Hong Kong, environmental impact assessments are seemingly used to justify projects rather than roll them back when needed. For example, between April 1998 and February this year, only four out of 226 direct applications for an environmental permit were rejected, and only two of 446 requests for an environmental permit subsequent to the impact assessment were denied.