HUMAN RIGHTS PRINCIPLES

Economic valuation and cost-benefit analysis would seem to allow any treatment of the environment or individual human beings so long as the aggregate benefits outweigh the estimated costs incurred; that is 'any cost is allowable, provided the benefits are greater'.

Human rights conventions are the ultimate arbiters of what are unac­ceptable burdens and of how people should be treated. Avoidable activ­ities that result in human deaths or degrade the environment to the extent that people in a neighbourhood cannot enjoy an adequate stan­dard of health and wellbeing infringe human rights and cannot be justi­fied, no matter what the benefits. Thus CBA is an inappropriate decision-making tool whenever such consequences are likely to result. Human rights must take precedence over the satisfaction of individual preferences and tastes as measured by willingness-to-pay surveys and market values. 'The market cannot tell us the worth of, or the rights of, other people' (Ackerman amp; Heinzerling 2004: 229).

Human rights are inalienable, which means they cannot be taken away, sold, or given away. Yet that is just what a CBA does - it trades away people's rights in return for benefits that may even go to others. Similarly, individuals have the right 'not be sacrificed on the altar of somewhat higher living standards for the rest of us' (Kelman 1994: 141).

If clean air and water and a healthy environment are human rights there is no point trying to put a price on them with a view to trading them off for other benefits. In this respect, some environmental benefits are priceless: 'Wherever economists encounter losses that are incon­solable by money - serious injury and death are common examples - their methods cannot work' (Adams 1996: 3).

Economists may argue that such losses can be accorded infinite value in a CBA, but this is effectively the same as putting a veto on the cost-benefit calculation, for infinite value trumps all else. This is why, in practice, economists put a finite value on human life. One US study in the early 1990s found that the value of human life varied from $70 000 to $132 million per person (Lohmann 1997). In 2000 the US EPA valued American lives at $6.1 million each for a CBA aimed at justifying the removal of arsenic from drinking water (Ackerman amp; Heinzerling 2004: 61). Such exercises, even though they are sometimes used to justify envi­ronmental measures, are contrary to human rights principles because they imply that lives can be sacrificed so long as the economic gains are high enough.