We do not inherit the earth from our parents, we keep it in trust for our children. Environmental ethics requires a new approach to ownership and civil society as well as to nature. These lessons are being learned painfully and all too slowly in Ireland as it modernises and develops. The ecological downside of development is highlighted in the degradation of the Shannon waters described in a feature article in this newspaper today.
It is the young people especially along its banks who have become most aware of the damage being done to the water quality, and therefore to angling, recreation and tourism, by the use of phosphate fertilisers, and the flow of raw sewage, slurry, industrial waste and detergents into the Shannon. Warnings in several well known bathing places on Lough Derg that the water is unfit for bathing dramatise the matter. It is chronicled too by the collapse of trout numbers on that lake and Lough Ree and in many of their tributaries. Experts blame eutrophication of the water, the process by which its oxygen is used up by the excessive phosphorous and other nutrients released by these activities.
This is not a marginal matter or one of only minority interest. Ireland has a real opportunity as well as a real interest in ensuring that it lives up to the green image that has attracted so many people to our shores. As the beef crisis shows so dramatically, it is profoundly important, too, that high environmental standards can be shown to apply in Ireland's food industry. The last few weeks have not been auspicious in that regard, as Ireland was fined for maladministration and mismanagement of EU resources.
Awareness of the need to avoid repeating mistakes made elsewhere in the course of economic growth and development should be much more to the fore in Irish planning. It is heartening to learn that environmental activists along the Shannon have taken many initiatives to reverse the damage already done. European Union funding has played an important role in providing sewage treatment facilities in many towns along the Shannon. Thirty thousand farmers are receiving grants to make their farming more environmentally friendly, particularly combating the over use of fertilisers. Anglers and those who service them in the tourist industry are another significant lobby group with a clear interest in a cleaner environment.
Green peace Ireland is to be congratulated for its efforts to raise consciousness and co ordinate action about environmental hazards along the Shannon. The organisation has caught the imagination of younger people, often in striking contrast to the ignorance and complacency of their parents. It is barely a generation since this damage was done, ironically often as a result of the flow of EU funds which are now being applied to repair it. Many Irish people have a family memory of a more environmentally sustainable livelihood in rural Ireland. It may take the next generation to reestablish continuity and solidarity with those values in a more prosperous and knowledgeable age.