From: gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au (Gil Hardwick)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: The Criterion for Ecocentrism
Distribution: world
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 07:07:37 GMT
Organization: STAFF STRATEGIES - Anthropologists & Training Agents


In article <1992Nov17.153842.18622@pmafire.inel.gov> cdm@pmafire.inel.gov writes:

 > Actually, it's true here in the US as well.  I think it's just a matter of
 > degree.  The governement here can condem land for the public good and take
 > it for its use through due process and eminent domain.  Building roads is
 > a classic example.  In practice, Gil, how often does the Crown in Australia
 > take people's land from them?  Is there a court process that is followed?
 > Is there compensation to the occupants of land "owned" by people whose
 > land is taken for the public good?

The only extant examples of actual land resumption as such, have in
fact only arisen where road widening or intersection development is
considered appropriate for safety reasons (ie, to repair a traffic
"hot-spot"). Of course the people most affected will campaign actively
against having several metres of their front garden resumed to roadworks,
and then having to live with trucks rumbling constantly by their living
rooms.

There is a dispute in place here right now, actually, concerned with
the widening of a short section of our Albany Highway as it passes
through Armadale only two kilometres from where I live. There are so
many different parties already involved in the decision making process,
including the community action group, the City Council, Main Roads
Department, EPA, Social Impact Unit, the Federal funding agency, and
goodness knows who else might declare an interest in the issue including
the neighbourhood Day Care centre, or the Canary Breeder's Association
for that matter if one of their members has aviaries nearby.

Further, there is just not one single plan the Main Roads people are
pushing, but up to six or eight options where finally after five full
years or more of negotiation on what local solution might best fit the
particular problem, that section of the highway may well be converted
instead to a local street, much narrowed with the extra land at its
verges given back to the local ammenity (for the albeit "unowned" but
nevertheless free use into perpetuity of those same local residents),
and a highway bypass built through other land some kilometres west
of the site, without the issue ever having gone to court anyway.

It is just that the courts are there as a last resort if the project
cannot finally be settled, and even then only small sections of the
final proposal may need a judgement handed down on them. Again, it
is simply democracy at work, nothing more and nothing less. Exactly
the same process is involved with any issue, including the siting of
manufacturing processes and managing their emissions, or the special
allocation of land for niche farming of emus or alpaccas, or angora
rabbits, or anything at all. Whatever.

 > If it's not done often, and there is a court process, then your system is
 > very similar to ours.  I wonder, then, if that makes us communistic?

Heaven only knows . . .

--
Gil Hardwick                                      gil@Gilsys.DIALix.oz.au
Independent Consulting Ethnologist                            3:690/660.6
PERTH, Western Australia                                 (+61 9) 399 2401
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