The Perfect Spill: Averting the Next Deep ater Horizon

Greetings all:

Here’s an interesting article about the oil spill in the US. It’s a multi-authored paper with the well-known environmental economist, Robert Constanza as lead author.

The Perfect Spill: Averting the Next Deepwater Horizon looks at the real cost of the oil spill and the current risks we are allowing private companies to take all over the world with public environmental assets. The authors say that at least 20 categories of valuable ecosystem services in and around the Gulf of Mexico have either been directly or indirectly affected by the spill. They identify the real problem as they see it: “Our current approach to dealing with the risk of private interests damaging public environmental assets is to assign liability to the private interests, but with the burden of proof on the public. The public must demonstrate damages after the fact, claim compensation, endure a lengthy judicial process, and finally hope to recover just reparations. In addition, the total liability is often limited.” The net result? With such an arduous process, private companies are encouraged to take significant risks with our public assets – as the authors suggest BP has done. The solutions – new financial instruments to force private companies to face the real risks they are taking with our environment . .  read more here http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/629.

With best wishes, Sandra Hails, Ramsar Secretariat
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Sandra HAILS
CEPA Programme Officer
Ramsar Convention Secretariat
Rue Mauverney 28, 1196 Gland, Switzerland
hails@ramsar.org
Tel: +41 22 9990176
Fax: +41 22 9990169
www.ramsar.org (go to Activities  >  CEPA Programme)