Letter: Letters: Bottom up is best

From BRIAN W. WALKER

Josef Vavrousek’s Talking Point (6 July) concentrates on the need to
create new pan-European institutions, charged with correcting past mistakes
by co-ordinating new environmental policies and institutions for our continent.
He leaves to the final two paragraphs his advocacy for fostering those new
human values which encourage sustainable development.

I think he has got the balance wrong.

International environmental law and cooperation across sovereign boundaries
clearly are important. But surely we ought to know by now that a bottom-up
approach is more likely to produce genuine and successful changes than an
institutional one imposed from the top.

The majority of people in Western, as well as Eastern, Europe, live
their lives as the beneficiaries of the best of science, but remain largely
ignorant of the scientific method and the potential capacity of science
to produce benefits of scale to society. This is especially true of field
science challenged by a rapidly degrading natural resource base.

I find it strange that in Earthwatch we are one of the very few environmental
agencies which combine rigorous field science with competent lay participation.
Our European programme, including major research into soil, air, water and
forest degradation in northeast Czechoslovakia, offers field scientists
and enthusiastic lay volunteers the chance of combining their skills and
talents in rigorous field work. This, in turn, provides decision makers
with reliable data and information essential to the evolution of policies
which ensure sustainable development.

The model we have evolved over two decades engages people in the life
of an archetypal non-governmental organisation, in which science, pluralism
and democracy are powerfully at work.

Brian W. Walker Earthwatch Europe Oxford