Dominique Bourg

The Speaker

The philosopher Dominique Bourg is a professor at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) where he has been directing the Institute of Territorial Politics and the Human Environment (IPTEH) at the College of Geosciences and the Environment since September 1, 2006.

He was a professor at the University of Technology in Troyes (France) from 1997 to 2006.  Until August 2006, he was also the director of the Sustainable Development section of the university, where he established and directed the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Sustainable Development from 2000 to 2006. He was head of the “Environmental Management and Sustainable Development” masters program and of the “Sustainable Development” concentration in the PhD program. From 1998 through 2002, he directed the department of Technology and Human Sciences.

Dominique Bourg was also a lecturer at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris from 1997 to August 2006 and co-director of the “Environment, Sciences, Society” seminar for the masters in “Public Policies”, as well as Chair of “Sustainable Development.”

Dominique Bourg is a member of the editorial committees for the journals Esprit [Mind], Risques [Risks] and Ecologie et politique [Ecology and Politics]. He is co-director of the “Sustainable Development and Institutional Innovations” collection at the publisher Presses Universitaires de France. He is also a member of several official commissions in France: the National Council for Sustainable Development, the Coppens Commission, which is responsible for preparing the Charter for the Environment, now an annex to the French Constitution. He was also the vice-chairman of the commission and for the study group on the economy of functionality for the “Grenelle de l’environnement” discussions.

His research interests are the ethics of the environment and sustainable development, the assessment of technological choices and risks (the precaution principle) and participative democracy. 

Dominique Bourg is the author of Parer aux risques de demain. Le principe de précaution [Prepare for Tomorrow’s Risks. The Precaution Principle], Paris, Seuil, 2001,  Le Développement durable. Maintenant ou jamais [Sustainable Development. Now or Never], Paris, Gallimard, 2006,; Risques technologiques et débat démocratique, [Technological Risks and Democratic Debate] Paris, La Documentation française, 2007 and numerous research articles featured in Energy Policy, Modern and Contemporary France and other periodicals.. 

Lectures

Weak Version versus Strong Version of Sustainable Development

Sustainable development refers to the desire to respond to two important imbalances which we have created for ourselves in the second half of the 20th century.  These are the increasingly unequal division of wealth on a global scale and climate change, the accelerated erosion of biodiversity and the depletion of some resources.
The weak version of sustainable development consists of depending entirely on technology to overcome difficulties with which we are faced. The natural capital destroyed by our actions is thus thought to be replaceable. The strong version, which has more proponents in Europe than in the U.S., sees sustainable development as a global change, nothing short of the passage of one civilization to another. 

What are the origins of sustainable development and how can we understand these two conflicting ideas: the strong and weak versions of sustainable development? We will see that in Europe, at least, the conflicts in interpretation surrounding – or even against – sustainable development are increasing and reaching the mainstream press. 

 Technology and Spirituality

Faced with the ecological difficulties that confront us, even more so in the United States than in Europe, technology is considered the path to salvation. It is false to say, though, that the fight against climate change basically comes down to the question of clean technologies. New technologies will certainly be necessary but will not at all be sufficient.

The crisis results in certain spirituality, in the sense of an logical perception that is peculiar to western civilization. Thanks to science and technology, western civilization considers nature as a manageable and indefinitely exploitable stock of resources, within in a market framework designed to be the medium of satisfaction of all sorts of needs. The power of science and technology is supposed to, on the one hand, allow us to push back the limits of nature indefinitely and, on the other hand, invent, just as indefinitely, materials and commercial expressions beyond our wildest dreams.

So long as we conceive of the economy as a way to satisfy our needs, our technologies will be of no help to us, particularly because of the rebound effect. What leverage do we have at our disposal to transcend the spirituality which we have inherited and to respond in a more appropriate way to the crisis into which we are sinking?

The Precaution Principle 

Even in Europe, where it is a principle of substantive law, the precaution principle is generally misunderstood. In a recurring fashion, we require its suppression (see, for example, the Attali Commission on growth in France). After having explained the mechanics of this principle and shown its limits, we should examine the origin and the legitimacy of the idea of precaution. We will then see two conditions emerge for the implementation of precaution: scientific uncertainty and the quality of dreaded damages, their gravity and their irreversibility. How is the precaution principle implemented? What kind of expertise does it require? The precaution principle cannot respond to all of the new technological risks.

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