WHY ECOLOGICAL POLICY

MUST INCLUDE

BRIEFING

HUMAN AND ANIMAL WELFARE

David Wheeler
General Manager Environment, Health and Safety, The Body Shop International
INTRODUCTION
There has been considerable recent debate about
ecolabelling and eco-auditing in the context of European
Community policy making. Both raise issues of philosophical
and ethical importance. Both are covered by voluntary
regulations of the EC which many would have preferred to
see mandatory.
The question remains, will either contribute significantly
to improved ecological performance i n European industry?
Or will they simply provide frameworks for yet more green
claims by vested commercial interests?

WHAT IS ECOLOGICAL?
The environmental, human and animal welfare movements
have a number of features in common. They campaign for
conservation - whether of environments, natural resources or
species. They are committed to more caring values in society
and the alleviation of stress and suffering. They reject
over-consumption and the exploitation of living beings or
the environment. However, by tradition, areas covered by
advocacy groups have often been divorced, each group
seeking to establish the importance of their own issue(s).
Indigenous peoples, refugees, the homeless, whales,
elephants, laboratory animals, the atmosphere, land, water
- all have their protectors and defenders.
But in recent years a more holistic agenda has emerged;
an agenda which embraces the multiplicity of caring values
expressed in the single issue campaigns but which places
them within their broader socio-economic and political
framework. This agenda is sometimes called ecological
and sometimes green.
In practical terms ordinary people draw no distinctions
whatsoever between the terms environmental, green or
ecological. This is one of the reasons why many believe that
the days of single-issue campaigning are numbered. It
follows therefore that any policy initiative which seeks to
separate environmental impacts from their broader social,
economic and moral implications risks non-credibility and
may even fail completely.
This proposition has already been well established in the
context of Environmental impact Assessment. The planning
authorities and the general public would be rightly
unimpressed by an impact statement which excluded
socio-economic factors, human health, impacts on flora and
fauna or issues of public perception and acceptability. There
is more to the environmental impact of a new power
generation plant than the weight of concrete and steel
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36

required for construction and the subsequent emissions from

the plant. And yet this is precisely the type of minimalist
analysis proposed by some industrialists for environmental
life cycle assessments of products.2
It is worthwhile noting in the context of consumer
products, that the Green Consumer Guide3 is subtitled high
street shopping for a better environment (emphasis added).
In the introduction to the Guide, the authors list seven Key
issues for the Green Consumer. These include protection of
threatened species and environments, protection of human
health, avoidance of animal cruelty and avoidance of
impacts on Third World countries. There i s no better
demonstration of the overlap of environmental, human and
animal rightdwelfare within a green or ecological agenda
for industry and consumers alike. Interestingly, the book
devotes the entire section on cosmetics and toiletries (6
pages) to a comparison of manufacturers stances on animal
testing and cruelty free product formulations.
As for eco-auditing, this is necessarily a comprehensive
process4. The EC Eco-management and audit regulation
provides a useful framework for addressing relevant
environmental effects for individual manufacturing sites and
relating these to external factors such as legislative,
regulatory and other policy initiatives. The regulation would
benefit from a more explicit statement of the holistic agenda,
but at least it is not artificially restricted to a narrow range of
issues.
The Body Shop International has now produced two
environmental statements in line with the Eco-management
and audit regulation.The Company thus has no difficulty in
endorsing .the regulation and encouraging the industrial
sector to adopt it as a major contribution to effective
environmental stewardship. Indeed The Body Shop has
campaigned publicly for mandatory application of the
regulation at the earliest opportunity.6

THE ECOLOGICAL VIEW OF

HUMAN AND ANIMAL RIGHTS
Human and animal rights (and welfare) have long featured
within the ecological world view.Three broad positions can
be discerned in the green perspective of human and animal
rights. The first and most pragmatic viewpoint i s that
ecological ethics should embrace all sentient beings. Thus
humans, whales, elephants and laboratory animals clearly
are part of the moral community. In contrast, Anopheles
mosquitoes, nematode worms, and the AIDS virus are not.
The second, more fundamental position asserts that all life
has intrinsic value (including , presumably, mosquitoes etc).
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BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

The third, very deep green position would assert the rights
of all natural systems eg streams, the land and the
atmosphere.
We need not explore these positions in greater detail. It
i s simply enough to note that the pragmatic viewpoint is the
one which is advanced most strongly by the principal
advocates of higher ecological standards for industry.
On ecolabelling, international companies like The Body
Shop and Ecover, and a large range of European NGOs are
insisting that issues like animal welfare and social impacts in
developing countries are taken into account in standard
setting. In adopting this stance those organisations are not
taking a fundamentalist position; they are being practical.
Theirs is a rational approach which is consistent with
political and social reality and the views of their customers
and/or memberships. A variety of public opinion polls and
other sources of information may be cited in support of their
view.
As far as European regulations are concerned, the
inclusion of human and animal rightdwelfare in ecological
policy is legitimised by the inclusion of a field of impact in
the ecolabelling regulation which refers to effects on
ecosystems in the matrix of potential life cycle impacts. This
is equivalent to the effects on specific parts of the
environment and ecosystems criterion in the
Eco-management and audit regulation. It would be a strange
ecosystem indeed which excluded humans and animals. And
whether these beings live in houses, homelands, reserves or
cages they certainly have ecosystemic links.

THE SCIENCE OF LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT

An issue of special relevance to both eco-labels and
eco-audits is the question of product stewardship. Looking
at the impacts of product design from cradle to grave is
now a feature of environmental best practice in a wide
variety of organisations. The main vehicle for this activity is
most usually described as product life cycle assessment
(LCA). It has also been described as ecobalancing.
Life cycle assessment i s the subject of considerable
disagreement between those embracing social and ecological
values in a holistic world view versus those who remain
stuck in a more technocentric m i n d - ~ e t .However,
~
the use
of the term eco should drive LCA firmly in the direction of
holism, certainly as far as eco-labels and eco-audits are
concerned.
Thus, it has been argued by a number of groups that
ecolabels which ignore -the wider issues of human and
animal welfare, endangered species, biodiversity, the
precautionary principle etc will be incomplete and flawed.
They may be labels, but they will certainly not be ecolabels.
That i s why comprehensive life cycle assessment procedures
take into account a wide range of social, economic and
environmental impacts. Anything less cannot be considered
ecological.
This point seems to be gaining momentum in academic
circles. A recent text book on Environmental Assessment of
Products lists a range of environmental impacts and
welfare effects which should be considered. These include:
violation of human rights, health effects, working conditions,

gender issues, consumer information, income distribution,

regionalisation effects, social security and violation of
animal and/or nature rights eg by limiting the behavioural
performance of (laboratory and domestic) animals. Welfare
impacts also feature as an integral part of LCA in
forthcoming publications from the US Environmental
Protection Agency.
As far as life cycle inventories are concerned, the
conventional environmental fields used to list impacts
should not be interpreted simplistically. The EC ecolabelling
scheme refers to a number of fields of impact: waste
relevance, natural resource consumption, energy
consumption, pollution of air, land and water, noise and (as
noted above) effects on ecosystems. But it has been noted
that these fields are in themselves affected by societal values
and thus should have three dimensions: nature, society and
economy.

CONCLUSION
This paper has sought to place ecological policy-making in
its proper philosophical and social context. It is submitted
that the holistic and interdependent viewpoint advanced
here is consistent with public opinion and thus with effective
public policy. This perspective is not confined to green
activists or deep green philosophers. It has, for example,
been advanced by the Vice President of the United StatesI2
and it is at the core of many international agreements,
including the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. The
5th Environmental Action Programme of the European
Community also takes a relatively holistic approach. For
example, one of the targets of the Programme i s a 50%
reduction in animal testing by the year 2000.
In the context of ecological policies for industry, it would
be more than unfortunate if the technocentrism of the trade
associations and certain commentators was to be allowed to
cut across the beliefs and desires of ordinary people. And i t
would be absurd to exclude human and animal
rightslwelfare issues from ecological policy instruments such
as ecolabelling and eco-auditing. It is, after all, for ordinary
people, their well being and their planet that public policy
is devised.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
An earlier version of this paper was originally presented to
the Club de Bruxelles Conference on Eco-auditing and
Eco-labelling in Europe at the Palais de Congres, Brussels on
November 4/5 1993. The author wishes to thank Sally
Power of The Body Shop International Environment, Health
and Safety Department for the preparation of this
manuscript.

REFERENCES
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Integrated Environmental Managemenr, No.20, pp. 15-1 9.
3. Elkington, 1. and Hailes, J., (1988) The Green Consumer Guide,
London: Victor Collancz.

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

37

Callenbach, E., Capra, F. and Marburg, S,, (1991) The Elmwood

Guide (0 Ecc-Auditing and Ecologically Conscious Management,
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.
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BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT