Precautionary Principle

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Precautionary principle

The precautionary principle (or precautionary approach) is a broad epistemological, philosophical and legal approach to innovations with potential for causing harm when extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking. It emphasizes caution, pausing and review before leaping into new innovations that may prove disastrous. Critics argue that it is vague, self-cancelling, unscientific and an obstacle to progress. In an engineering context, the precautionary principle manifests itself as the factor of safety. It was apparently suggested, in civil engineering, by Belidor in 1729. Interrelation between safety factor and reliability is extensively studied by engineers and philosophers. The principle is often used by policy makers in situations where there is the possibility of harm from making a certain decision (e.g. taking a particular course of action) and conclusive evidence is not yet available. For example, a government may decide to limit or restrict the widespread release of a medicine or new technology until it has been thoroughly tested. The principle acknowledges that while the progress of science and technology has often brought great benefit to humanity, it has also contributed to the creation of new threats and risks. It implies that there is a social responsibility to protect the public from exposure to such harm, when scientific investigation has found a plausible risk. These protections should be relaxed only if further scientific findings emerge that provide sound evidence that no harm will result. The principle has become an underlying rationale for a large and increasing number of international treaties and declarations in the fields of sustainable development, environmental protection, health, trade, and food safety, although at times it has attracted debate over how to accurately define it and apply it to complex scenarios with multiple risks. In some legal systems, as in law of the European Union, the application of the precautionary principle has been made a statutory requirement in some areas of law.

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• Precautionary principle - Wikipedia

  An expression of a need by decision-makers to anticipate harm before it occurs. Within this element lies an implicit reversal of the onus of proof: under the precautionary principle it is the responsibility of an activity-proponent to establish that the proposed activity will not (or is very unlikely to) result in significant harm. The concept of proportionality of the risk and the cost and feasibility of a proposed action. One of the primary foundations of the precautionary principle, and globally accepted definitions, results from the work of the Rio Conference, or "Earth Summit" in 1992. Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration notes: [...] > The weak versions of the Precautionary Principle state a truism—uncontroversial in principle and necessary in practice only to combat public confusion or the self-interested claims of private groups demanding unambiguous evidence of harm, which no rational society requires.: 24 If all that the (weak) principle states is that it is permissible to act in a precautionary manner where there is a possible risk of harm, then it constitutes a trivial truism and thus fails to be useful. [...] Appearance From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Risk management strategy The precautionary principle (or precautionary approach) is a broad epistemological, philosophical and legal approach to innovations with potential for causing harm when extensive scientific knowledge on the matter is lacking. It emphasizes caution, pausing and review before leaping into new innovations that may prove disastrous. Critics argue that it is vague, self-cancelling, unscientific and an obstacle to progress. In an engineering context, the precautionary principle manifests itself as the factor of safety. It was apparently suggested, in civil engineering, by Belidor in 1729. Interrelation between safety factor and reliability is extensively studied by engineers and philosophers.

• [PDF] Local Governments and the Precautionary Principle

  Precautionary Principle 1 Introduction The precautionary principle is a framework for governments to develop and evaluate health and environmental laws. Instead of the traditional question of, “How much harm is allowable?” the precautionary principle asks, “How little harm is possible?”1 The principle allows lawmakers to take precautionary measures when science cannot yet fully establish a cause-and-effect relationship, but can provide reasonable evidence of harm. In 2003, San Francisco became the first local government in the nation to adopt an ordinance outlining the precautionary principle. The San Francisco ordinance requires officers, boards, commissions, and departments to implement the precautionary principle, which has five elements: anticipatory action, right to know, [...] Management Tool, 32 B.C. ENVTL. AFF. L. REV. 679, 681 (2005). 8 JOEL TICKNER, CAROLYN RAFFENSPERGER, AND NANCY MYERS, THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE IN ACTION: A HANDBOOK (1st ed.), 2. Available at . 9 Id. 10 Id. 11 Id. 12 Seattle, supra note 1, at 7, citing The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety of 2003, available at . 13 Seattle, supra note 1, at 7, citing The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants of 2001, available at . 14 TICKNER et al., supra note 8, at 2. 15Id. 16 Id. at 3. 17 Nancy J. Myers and Carolyn Raffensperger, eds., Precautionary Tools for Reshaping Environmental Policy 9 (2006). Precautionary Principle 4 Although not specifically mentioned in U.S. laws, the precautionary principle is evident in numerous federal laws that incorporate “foresight, prevention, and [...] Commission on Ocean Policy recommended the adoption of a precautionary approach to managing the ocean environment. (USCOP, 2004). Although many entities have implemented some form of the principle, many of the regulations and policies share some of the same characteristics. Elements As evidenced in the Wingspread Statement above, the precautionary principle means that indication of potential harm, rather than proof of harm can trigger government action. Even when full scientific certainty about cause and effect is not available, governments may take action. According to one local government group, “[t]he precautionary principle is intended to apply to a range of situations that involve both a threat of harm and scientific uncertainty. This means that the precautionary principle should be

• The Precautionary Principle

  The components of the precautionary principle are still evolving. Some countries avoid using the term “principle,” preferring to call it a “precautionary approach,” since it carries less legal weight. In simple terms, the precautionary principle is an attempt to give the notion of precaution—understood as a form of addressing risk—legal status. Its core elements are the need for environmental protection; the presence of threat or risk of serious damage; and the fact that a lack of scientific certainty should not be used to avoid taking action to prevent that damage (Sands and Peel, 2012). Before the precautionary principle was widely recognized in the 1990s, the traditional approach to preventing environmental damage usually required taking into account the available scientific knowledge [...] There are many pieces of legislation and treaties that include the precautionary principle. Most appear after the 1972 Stockholm Conference, which was the starting point for the introduction of concepts into international law that previously were only used in national legislation. The precautionary principle originated in Sweden, as Beyerlin and Marauhn (2011) explain, where a domestic statute (the Environmental Protection Act of 1969) introduced the concept of environmentally hazardous activities for which the burden of proof was reversed. Consequently, the mere risk of an environmental hazard was sufficient basis for Swedish authorities to take preventive measures or to even ban the activity in question. Other countries followed the Swedish example and “precautionary action”—a term [...] If you decided to leave your home or office, you would be taking precautionary action, which is one of the expressions of the precautionary principle. To make this example less theoretical, this precautionary action also applied in early 2020 to decision-makers who were considering the possible effects of COVID-19. When news reached authorities about the emergence of this new strain of coronavirus, there was not enough information about its impact. It would be fair to say it was difficult in January 2020 to imagine the global effects the virus would have. However, there was enough data available on similar viruses to inform the decisions that governments would have to take.

• Precautionary Principle - New England Complex Systems Institute

  The precautionary principle (PP) states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing severe harm to the public domain (affecting general health or the environment globally), the action should not be taken in the absence of scientific near-certainty about its safety. Under these conditions, the burden of proof about absence of harm falls on those proposing an action, not those opposing it. PP is intended to deal with uncertainty and risk in cases where the absence of evidence and the incompleteness of scientific knowledge carries profound implications and in the presence of risks of "black swans", unforeseen and unforeseable events of extreme consequence. [...] This non-naive version of the PP allows us to avoid paranoia and paralysis by confining precaution to specific domains and problems. Here we formalize PP, placing it within the statistical and probabilistic structure of "ruin" problems, in which a system is at risk of total failure, and in place of risk we use a formal "fragility" based approach. In these problems, what appear to be small and reasonable risks accumulate inevitably to certain irreversible harm. Traditional cost-benefit analyses, which seek to quantitatively weigh outcomes to determine the best policy option, do not apply, as outcomes may have infinite costs. Even high-benefit, high-probability outcomes do not outweigh the existence of low probability, infinite cost options—i.e. ruin.

• [PDF] The Precautionary Principle in Action

  employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical injury." The Precautionary Principle in Action – Page 4 Setting goals. The precautionary principle encourages planning based on well-defined goals rather than on future scenarios and risk calculations that may be plagued by error and bias (see risk assessment discussion below). For example, Sweden has set the goal of phasing out persistent and bioaccumulative substances in products by the year 2007. The government is now involving a variety of stakeholders in determining how to reach that goal. Sometimes called "backcasting" in contrast to the more usual "forecasting" of an uncertain future, this type of planning creates fewer miscalculations and [...] action to prevent harm even before considerable evidence of cause and effect was gathered. More recently, The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 set prevention as the highest priority in environmental programs in the country. In addition, the President's Council on Sustainable Development expressed support for the precautionary principle in the form of a core belief that "even in the face of scientific uncertainty, society should take reasonable actions to avert risks where the potential harm to human health or the environment is thought to be serious or irreparable." In 1996, the American Public Health Association passed a resolution (number 9606), "The Precautionary Principle and Chemical Exposure Standards for the Workplace," which recognized the need for implementing the precautionary [...] R.M., et. al. 1994. Taking Uncertainty Seriously: From Permissive Regulation to Preventive Design in Environmental Decision making. Osgoode Hall Law Journal 32:99-169. O’Riordan, T. and J. Cameron. 1996. Interpreting the Precautionary Principle. London: Earthscan Publishers. Raffensperger, C. and J. Tickner, eds. 1999. Protecting Public Health and the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle. Washington, DC: Island Press. Van Dommelen, A, ed. 1996. Coping with Deliberate Release: the Limits of Risk Assessment. Tilburg: International Centre for Human and Public Affairs. Wynne, B. 1993. Uncertainty and environmental learning. In Jackson, T., ed., Clean Production Strategies. Boca Raton: Lewis Publishers. The Precautionary Principle in Action – Page 21 XII. APPENDIX Wingspread