Page 175 - Supplemento 2-2016 (ENG)

Tackling Environmental Crime throUgh standardized Methodologies

The environmental dimension is no more than one of the productive fac-
tors, which, thanks to technological efficiency, can be exchanged with other fac-
tors, according to its own shortages. The idea of justice is connected to equal
opportunities. The social system must guarantee the appraisal and fulfilment of
basic needs, in short, equal opportunity for everyone. Whether the system is
capable of achieving this, is for another debate. The vision is that the market,
allowed to operate freely, must aim for maximum economic growth. The envi-
ronment can be replaced, as a productive factor, with other factors and the
associated idea of justices is giving equal opportunity to all.

In the meantime the strongest opponents of this vision draw attention to
historical circumstances: in the last decades inequalities have not decreased at
all, but rather increased. In recent years the Catholic Church, not just in the last
encyclical by Pope Francis, but from Paul VI onward, has been particularly
attentive to the relationship between the environment and the economic and
social dimension. In the words of Pope Benedict XVI: we need to eliminate the
structural causes of the system governing the world economy in order to have
an impact on a large scale. It is necessary to convert the model for global deve-
lopment, as it has been demanded for a long time by the condition of hunger,
but also by the environmental and energetic emergency. From these words
emerges a substantive criticism of the traditional vision of the system of rela-
tionships between the environmental and the economic dimension. Such criti-
cism assumes a strong ethical connotation also with reference to the system of
values that should guide a less unfair society.

The point of departure in the search for a more modern relationship
regarding the ethical issue is questioning ourselves on fairness: is our economic
and social system fair and just? Which moral principles guide our behaviour?

My belief is that what is needed is a new vision of the relationship among
these three systems: the economic environmental and social system, the idea of
freedom, and the idea of justice and fairness, in the light of this new ethical
dimension that puts at its core humankind and its achievements.

So traditional economy maintains that economic growth is always possi-
ble; science tells us that this is not true. For certain environmental dimensions
like the bio-chemical cycles of phosphorous and nitrogen dioxide, as well as

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