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EARTH OF THE BALANCE
Foreword by President Milan Kucan to the book by USA Vice-president Al Gore
Ljubljana, 18 November 1994
Authority is not simply power. It is also responsibility - for life today and in the future. It is also, and more importantly, responsibility for the legacy we leave for those who come after us; and for managing what has been passed on to us as the inheritance of all generations who lived on Earth before us. Such is the message in "The Balance of the Earth", which has now been published in a Slovene translation. At the right time, too. For this is a time marked by challenges to the independent life of the Slovene state. A time when with the first successes and experiences of this great change we can already sense our future and recognise it in the wide variety of our world, and in the turbulence of its development and in its divisions. We must be able to recognise the future, and learn how to manage it. For this reason it is of fundamental importance that we define and structure a system of values and principles which will bring balance to our everyday lives and actions; and that this should be applied both in our relations with our fellow humans and in our never finished dialogue with nature. This applies also to decisions by which the state is administered, and on which are dependent the quality of life of future generations in Slovenia.
Back yard: urbanisation has eaten away at our countryside and farm land, without every truly urban area being properly used and managed. In the last 25 years, farm land has diminished by 78,723 ha, while in Slovenia we already have a third less fields and gardens per inhabitant than in Western Europe; forests cover 50.6% of Slovenia, although as much as 43% of the forests are threatened Civil movements, international conferences and conventions, projects, global models of growth, special research projects and individuals who are engaged in the problems and dangers of the collapse of Earth's ecosystem,are systematically gathering ever new information which provide convincing evidence of the extraordinary importance of ecological awareness, knowledge and understanding of the world. Evidence moreover of the urgent need to incorporate ecological principles into our system of values for the third millennium, both on an individual and national level. This book by Vice-President Al Gore is a rich source of information on the irresponsible and harmful encroachment by man on the environment and on the long-term consequences of unbalanced development; it provides an explanation for the world's environmental crisis; it offers a reflection on the relation between man and his development, the world and nature; and it represents a new stimulus and incentive towards enlightenment, understanding and work for the benefit of a natural balance in Earth's ecosystem. This book is also an expression of the active and committed relationship of political people towards one of the fundamental problems of humankind at the turn of the millennium. Al Gore is such a person, and has made this expression real and convincing as a senator and as Vice-President of the USA in his proposal of a strategic ecological plan for re-establishing this balance. Al Gore calls it the Global Marshal Plan, which indicates the certainty that the ideological divisions that were so typical of the 20th century will be overcome, for they will be replaced by the entirely realistic but extremely challenging problems of humankind's existence and development. These are the problems of how to insure the life of all living beings on Earth and how to prevent the negative consequences of human development on life on Earth and in space. Man is not simply responsible for the quality of his own and human life in general, but also for the life of every single being on Earth, for it is only man who encroaches on the natural order of things and threatens this life. The felling of tropical rain forests is in truth far from Slovenia; the disappearance of the Everglades wetlands in Florida, the Aral Sea and the ancient forests of the Pacific north-west of the United States is not directly a Slovene problem; neither are the soil erosion of the Midwest and the loss of vegetation and soil in the Himalayas; Lake Baikal and the drought in the Sahel are also distant problems from a Slovene point of view. But Al Gore quite justifiably warns of the "back yard syndrome" and of the critical link and interdependence of the world and life on our small planet. What is happening to the primordial forests in the Amazon basin is happening to all of us. The thinning of the ozone layer in the stratosphere and disturbances to the climatic balance already prove this. No-one on this world can live or survive alone, separated from others. No-one in their relationship with nature can do anything that does not have consequences for all of us. There are things, however, taking place in our own, Slovene, by erosion, flash floods and landslides; the decline of forests as a result of air pollution is a special problem; 8% of our flora are threatened; with the transition to a new social and economic system, individual areas of forest have been cut unprofessionally and excessively; research of the underground aquifers in the Kranjsko-Sorıko Polje, the largest water source in Slovenia, has shown that 90% of samples were not fit for consumption; two fifths of Slovenia's territory is karstic, where water supply remains the primary concern, while many sources are no longer at all clean; we have 2,200 industrial and agricultural and 650 small business water polluters registered; barely one seventh of our waste water is purified; in agricultural and water catchment areas there are too many nitrates; our surface waters contain many dangerous elements and compounds; 11 rivers or parts of them are in the final category of most polluted water; we still have not resolved the problem of radioactive waste; we have not completed the rehabilitation of our thermal power stations, and in the fuel burning seasons there is still too much emission of poisonous substances from countless stoves. I could go on. All this is more than a convincing reason to ask ourselves whether we have really managed our Slovene land in such a way that our grandchildren will thank us for it. The indications are that we should pursue the already started clean-up of our Slovene back yard much more quickly, more prudently and with more responsibility. We have built the value of ecology into the legal foundations of the state. In the Constitution, ecology is defined as a constituent of economic and social conditions; the right to a healthy environment is also defined; we have a Law on Protection of the Environment, and the Penal Code of the Republic of Slovenia defines actions counter to the protection of nature and the environment as criminal. We have started to bring into practice the "polluter pays" principle; the Ecological Fund of the Republic of Slovenia has been founded; an Integral Concept of Waste Management in Slovenia has been drawn up; individual projects are being implemented within the Slovene ecological project, and they are obtaining funds from international financial institutions; Slovenia is retaining foreign consultants as part of the numerous consultations and conferences on the theme of the environment, and by the end of 1994 it should ratify the Convention on Climatic Changes and participate as a full member in the international conference of signatory states of the Convention, which will take place in spring 1995 in Berlin. This is no small achievement. But we have still not taken any major strides ahead. The importance of our relationship towards the environment and its consequences for the quality of our life, on the life of future generations and on the spread of danger such that the ecological crisis may become uncontrollable, has still not been imprinted on our consciousness and on our thinking, nor on the system of values of the individual and on Slovene society as a whole. More rapid economic growth and development, supported by rapid technological advances are not ends in themselves. The solving of ecological problems and the ecological principle must indeed for this reason become a constituent part of our decisions on the future of Slovenia and of our selection of alternatives. It is in this that I see the challenging and responsible task of Slovenia's political leaders. It is also the task of civil initiatives, which must persuade, warn, monitor, protest at and oppose unreasonable actions and decisions. Ecology does not mean halting development. It means a search for balance between the unstoppable desire of man for advancement and responsible relations towards nature in the eternal process of change between it and man. Or, as Al Gore puts it in his book: "Politics, broadly defined, is the means by which we make collective decisions and choices. We now confront a set of choices as difficult as any in human history. The art of politics must be brought to bear in defining these choices, raising public awareness of the imminent danger facing us, and catalyzing decisions in favor of a collective course of action that has a reasonable chance of success. There is no doubt that with sufficient agreement on our goals, we can achieve the victory we are seeking." I doubt if there is any educated Slovene who does not know the famous verse by Minatti, that "you have to love someone. Even a rock or a piece of grass." Let us consider, then, that through our negligence there might no longer be a blade of grass, a river or tree that we could love.
Milan Kucan
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