Predicting the future – who takes responsibility?

The headline refers to an article in The Economist`s June 11th edition regarding the Three Gorges dam project in China. The dam has always been controversial as it has a destructive impact on the environment with draughts and resettlement of 1.4 million people. But who is responsible in the long run? According to Mr. Mao, an economist, nobody is taking real responsibility if there are any problems in the future.

That rises the question on how short term perspectives can reach long-term goals. Decisions on carrying out big projects like the Three Gorges in China or, for example, the nuclear phase-out in Germany are made by the present government, hopefully with the help of experts in the field. In industrial countries these decisions are often based on a strong domestic opinion before elections, like the debate on the nuclear phase-out that came up shortly after the tsunami in Japan. Usually a government period lasts for four years whereas its decisions sometimes affect an entire generation or even the regional climate.

The question is how decision-making can involve greater responsibility than just fulfilling short-term goals (winning the election). Today more long-term words like sustainability and green technology have already become buzzwords so in the future it will be more important, I think, to concentrate on the process in becoming sustainable or green or renewable. This allows a more sophistic, process-oriented approach and gives tangible results.

Let me give an example. Wind energy is supposed to be clean. The process of building new wind energy stations includes the change and recycling of wings. But one might have forgotten that still today it is unknown how to recycle these huge steel wings. So wind energy is clean but maybe not sustainable in the long run.
By the way, energy from the damming up of floods and rivers is clean, too. Can Three Gorges be considered as a sustainable project anyway? No, because the process included resettlement and climate change – only two of many consequences that, according to Mr. Mao, no one will be responsible for in the long term. Future technologies and decisions do require responsibility and risk management during the entire process.