The irruption of Global warming in the field of environmentalism international exponentially increased assessments of the historical collision between the protection of nature and the production of goods and services. The long definitions that were revealed to us in the 1970s gained new strength. Thus, what we denounced as the plunder or exploitation of the natural resources non-renewable, fell into disuse.
we meant altri tempi to the activities of extraction and processing of the raw material available in nature, with the purpose of obtaining energy and manufacturing of industrial inputs or manufactured consumer products. Today there are different times in the use of language to define the emergency.
There is a worrying accumulation of concepts that seek, from now on, to try to alarm about the unusual severity to which we have reached by attacking the atmosphere. It is that we have exceeded the limit of subsistence and daily there are countless living species that are dying or have already disappeared. Without a doubt, it is a very worrying diagnosis and the word “ecocide” sums up the whole idea. Can we remedy it?
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Just go through the internet and the long panegyrics that are spread, but not before blaming the enemies on duty. The extraordinary thing is that none of the left or right is safe from the fact that, having come to political power, they seize the natural resources that they were supposed to protect before. This is how we can identify a subliminal hypocrisy that discredits the struggle of the millions of inhabitants of this planet to defend the pachamama.
Let me just say that, on the face of it, there is an overdiagnosis. They do not contradict each other in their essence. They grow in escalation fruit of inexhaustible scientific investigations. And the Law is not far behind. But the problem with this Social Science is that, as a general rule, it always arrives behind the crises caused by our technological leaps. Just read the desperate calls for regulation by those who invested in cryptocurrency, a volatile substance that justly boasted of existing beyond any legal regulation. If we refer to Gaea, needless to say.
What is serious are the consequences of going behind the productive phenomena that accelerate the destruction and Environmental crisis. There are extensive works on Environmental law, profuse in measures suggested to the States. But they are not effective. The law proves to be unskillful since the main drawback is the lack of application. The well-proven impunity in the extraction of resources guarantees the income of foreign currency and generates the attraction of multinational companies.
Surely, for them, slavery –that of the 19th century or the exploitation of people for labor purposes of this century– is not profitable: it is. to pollute. The administrative controls from the Executive Powers of the State are not only rudimentary, they are servile. That is why there is no reference to the possible environmental crimes. You can pay a fine or face a long-term Civil Action for Amparo, but not be accused of criminals. Much less, to propose to the next international congresses such as the COP the inclusion in the agenda of the typification of ecocide and its derivations in other crimes.
The remedies for such a diagnosis, where the cyclone investments-corruption-impunity has fatal consequences for a large part of the population, they seem not to be enough. The call of the Pope Francisco in the encyclical Laudato Si’ it is so remote that not even the parish priests from the ambo mention it. For this reason, our dear Pastor upped the ante and calls to incorporate the ecocide as “a fifth category of crimes against Peace, that is, establishing at the international level those conducts that imply the loss, damage or destruction of flora or fauna”.
From the Academy, in the scientific research spaces, there are proposals that would allow the impacts to be corrected. The crux is in the application. That is where they collide with the will of the States. And, without a doubt, the space of legal sciences is the link of execution. Verbi gratiathe protection of native forest in Argentina it originates, according to different diagnoses, as a consequence of the first onslaught deforester from 1853 to 1930.
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There were many proposals and the most concrete is the Native Forest Law. The immediate assertion would be that it is more than enough. Well no. It is constantly violated with the complicity of their own Provincial States (because their application in the specific case rests on them). The rule provides fines and administrative sanctions that are rarely applied and the provincial justice administration systems guarantee impunity. It would be really effective if it contained a chapter with criminal classifications, a criminal title with the declaration that it is applied by the federal courts.
What then prevents the application of “remedies” to this situation? In the first place, the non-existence of penal norms in these laws, such as the General Environmental Law wave Glacier Law, if we seek special rules of protection. Secondly, there is no concern on the part of the administrative authorities, be they national, provincial or municipal, even in the face of the claim of citizens who, on a daily basis, see their rights violated. They don’t even respond to requests under the Law of Free Access to Public Environmental Information and the answer is the same: it is not a crime to fail to comply with it. Lastly and finally, the most substantial impediment is in the Administration System of Justice to which the citizen does not have access if he does not have the sponsorship of a lawyer. It is argued that there is insufficient training for magistrates and that courts should be created with this specific competence.
In short, and to return to the title that originates these lines, we have thousands of diagnoses about “why we are where we are”. We have some “remedies” that were “prescribed” for the aggravation of an ongoing ecocide. We need to “take the medicine”.
This implies empowering ourselves with the few instruments we have. How to do it? We can, but it will be the reason for another note.
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