RESOURCES

C. Gollier, N. Treich, in Encyclopedia of Energy, Natural Resource, and Environmental Economics, 2013

The Precautionary Principle

The PP has its roots in the early 1970s as the German principle of Vorsorge, or foresight. Beginning in the 1980s, several international treaties endorsed precautionary measures, like the 1987 treaty that bans the dumping of toxic substances in the North Sea. An important and influential statement of the PP is the principle 15 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992. It states “where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”

Although several interpretations of the PP have been proposed, the basic meaning of the PP is clear. The PP rejects the claim that uncertainty justifies inaction, and its ambition is to empower policymakers to take anticipatory action even under scientific uncertainty. Definitions of the PP with a similar meaning have been proposed for instance in the 1992 Convention on Climate Change, the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, the Maastricht Treaty in 1992/93, and the 2000 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. The PP has also been enacted in the national law of several countries, especially in Europe. In France, for instance, the PP was included in the French Constitution in 2005, which implies that it was put at the highest judicial level of this country. The European Commission has committed to the PP as a guiding principle since 2000. Interestingly, the European Commission states that the measures consistent with the PP should be “based on an examination of the potential benefits and costs of action or lack of action (including, where appropriate and feasible, an economic cost/benefit analysis)” and “subject to review, in the light of new scientific data.” This interpretation is consistent with the option value approach that we adopt here.

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Benefits and Limitations of the Precautionary Principle

P.F. Ricci, J. Zhang, in Encyclopedia of Environmental Health, 2011

Precautionary principles bridge the gap between weakly understood causes of potentially either grave or irreversible environmental damages and potentially costly policy interventions. These principles provide a moral justification for acting even though causation is unclear. This condition forces decision-makers inevitably to confront a variety of difficulties. Fundamentally, the dilemma is that the ethical choice, better safe than sorry, can be costly because an action designed to avoid a potential damage can be counterproductive for society: a seemingly precautionary action can do more harm than good. Risk–cost–benefit analysis (RCBA) resolves this dilemma by informing decision-makers about the probable net benefits of each of the actions they may consider to minimize the effects of exposure to a serious environmental hazard. This article discusses the benefits and limitations of the precautionary principle as it appears in a number of legal and nonlegal enunciations. It begins with different legal interpretations of precautionary principles in EU treaties and case laws (an EU Commission decision to ban export of beef from the United Kingdom), as well as discusses several non-EU approaches (e.g., Canada, India, and the United States). Uncertain causal reasoning is then combined, via Bayesian networks, to exemplify how the precautionary principle can be made operational.

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Benefits and Limitations of the Precautionary Principle☆

P.F. Ricci, H. Sheng, in Reference Module in Earth Systems and Environmental Sciences, 2013

Abstract

Precautionary principles are the foundations for policy when it has to deal with weakly understood causes of potential catastrophic or irreversible events, and where protective decisions require certain and costly policy interventions that may not solve the problem that they are designed to correct. These principles provide – when developed by statutes that reflect the intent of the principles – a legal justification for acting, even though scientific causation is either incomplete or perhaps unavailable. The dilemma that the those principles create is that the ethical choice underpinning precautionary principles, better safe than sorry, can be costly because an action designed to avoid potential damage can be counterproductive for society by creating other hazards that are incorrectly analyzed. This article extends the discussion from an often strictly environmental view to the more widely occurring natural and man-made catastrophic events, such as Black Swans and Dragon-kings, and focuses on how correctly to assess, and thus inform, the decision-maker about the potential for these events. It then reviews the implication of using decision theoretic criteria to rank choices, from the most to the least preferred, according to several objective standards, such as the min-max. Ex ante precautionary choices, under either risk or uncertainty, are handled through probability theory (extended to include non-additive probabilities and Coquet integration) thus completing the standard treatment of catastrophic events with large-scale impacts. The article also introduces aspects of the mechanisms generating catastrophic events, such as self-organizing criticality and emergent properties, and suggests that assumptions based on rapid convergence to the Central Limit Theorem can be incorrect when the distribution functions that characterize catastrophic events have infinite mean or variance. The implication of underestimation of the probability of catastrophic events is an important element in any policy discussion aimed at reducing societal exposure to those events; this seems not to have been widely noticed in policy arguments about the impact of precautionary choices and thus public decisions.

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Ethics

J. Hanson, in Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, 2018

Overview of the Precautionary Principle

The precautionary principle is, at its simplest, a modern restatement of the classical Hippocratic oath, “I will keep them from harm and injustice,” which is often summarized as “first, do no harm.” However, the “precautionary principle” is more than a dictum for individual actions; rather, it is intended to guide the behavior of institutions and nations. And, unlike the Hippocratic oath and its modern equivalents, it applies to both human and environmental health.

Many commentators argue that the precautionary principle originally emerged from Germany in the mid-1970s. A few argue that its development started at the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. In any case, the first international treaty using the term precautionary principle came about after international conferences discussing the protection of the North Sea. At those meetings, Germany championed the concept. Initially, the parties did not even use the term “precaution,” but agreed that action should be taken to prevent “damage to the environment can be irreversible or remediable only at considerable expense and over long periods and that, therefore, coastal states and the EEC must not wait for proof of harmful effects before taking action.” Finally in November 1987, at the second conference where the London Declaration was adopted, a “precautionary approach” was adopted (Ministerial Declaration for the Second International Conference on the Protection of the North Sea, Nov. 25, 1987).

The precautionary principle, although not always called exactly by that name, is now integrated into many international conventions (United Nations, 1982, 1992a,b, 2006) and US and European domestic laws and is embedded in many US occupational safety and environmental laws. It is well described in the Wingspread Consensus Statement on the Precautionary Principle (Wingspread Consensus, 1998):

When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof. The process of applying the Precautionary Principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action.

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Emerging contaminants: Approaches for policy and regulatory responses in low-income countries

Oluwademilade Fayemiwo, Kirsty Carden, in Emerging Contaminants in the Terrestrial-Aquatic-Atmosphere Continuum:, 2022

4.1 The precautionary principle

The precautionary principle states “if a product, an action or a policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, protective action should be supported before there is complete scientific proof of a risk” (Olsen and Motarjemi, 2014). Based on this principle, policy-makers have taken precautionary actions to various issues where scientific uncertainty is high, arguing that precautionary stances are legitimate if they prevent or reduce exposure to risk. Despite controversies over its application (Peterson, 2017), it has been considered a favourable decision-making approach for risk management (Wilson et al., 2006). In the European Union, the precautionary principle has been applied to issues of health and environmental protection, new technologies and other sectors where scientific uncertainty remain high without significantly compromising economic growth or stability (EU, 2017).

Considering the uncertainty surrounding the health and potential economic implications of human exposure to ECs, we suggest that governments in LICs apply the precautionary principle, particularly to ECs that have been associated with endocrine disruptions and debilitating metabolic and cardiovascular health conditions. We suggest, from a consequentialist perspective, that the possible good consequences (better population health, increased environmental protection and increased innovation) outweigh the possible negatives (requiring sectors to reinvent processes to reduce their contribution of ECs to the environment). We also suggest that the negative effects identified can ultimately become positives as they are likely to boost innovation in LICs.

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Precaution and Ecological Risk

O. Renn, in Encyclopedia of Ecology (Second Edition), 2008

Political Relevance

The precautionary principle has been adopted in a variety of forms at international, European Union, and national level. It is applied across an increasing number of national jurisdictions, economic sectors, and environmental areas. It has moved from the regulation of industry, technology, and health risk, to the wider governance of science, innovation, and trade. As it has expanded in scope, so it has grown in profile and authority. In particular, as Article 174(2) in the EC Treaty of 2002, precaution now constitutes a key underlying principle in European Community policymaking. The 2000 Communication on Precaution of the European Commission provides evidence for the high significance that the precautionary principle has gained as a guiding policy of the European Union in areas such as environmental, consumer, and health protection. The document states in the first section: “Applying the precautionary principle is a key tenet of its policy, and the choices it makes to this end will continue to affect the views it defends internationally, on how this principle should be applied” (European Commission, 2000: 3). As Elisabeth Fisher (2002) pointed out, the communication specifies also some of the major conditions and requirements for applying the principle. There are two conditions mentioned: “The measures, although provisional, shall be maintained as long as the scientific data remain incomplete, imprecise or inconclusive and as long as the risk is considered too high to be imposed on society” (European Commission, 2000: 21). In addition to the presence of remaining uncertainty, the EU communication lists the condition that the risk must be too high to be imposed on society. This relates to the requirement of proportionality that has been stated as one of the major requirements of applying the principle.

In the aftermath of a series of formative public health controversies, economic calamities, and political conflicts (such as those involving BSE and GM crops), precaution is of great salience or importance in may fields including the regulation of ecosystem interventions. Since the application of the precautionary principle has been associated with stricter and more rigid regulations, environmental groups have usually rallied around the precautionary approach, while most industrial and commercial groups have been fighting for the assessment-based approach Again, the issue is not resolved, and the debate has become even more pronounced with the defeat of the European Community in the WTO settlement of hormones in beef. The European Community failed in providing sufficient evidence that the precautionary approach could justify the restriction of imported beef treated with hormones.

It is interesting to note that the assessment-based approach has been widely adopted by the official US regulatory bodies while the precautionary approach has been widely advocated by the EU regulatory bodies. There are, however, also numerous elements of precautionary approaches interspersed into the actual practices of US regulatory agencies, just as there are judgments about magnitudes of risk in the actual practices of regulators in the EU. A strict dichotomy between ‘precautionary’ in Europe and ‘assessment based’ in the US is therefore too simple to describe actual practice.

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Lead and Public Health

Paul Mushak, in Trace Metals and other Contaminants in the Environment, 2011

25.7 The Precautionary Principle and its Place in Lead Regulation Going Forward

Lead already in the human environment has typically been controlled by legislative and executive means in the United States, Canada, and Europe through regulatory mechanisms focused on lead in various media. An earlier discussion touched on the issue of how regulation is to apply to lead and other substances proposed for market entry, i.e., use of proactive bars to entry of untested substances. A second and related question has to do with the status of scientific and public health uncertainty in guiding or impeding regulatory initiatives. These twin problems in regulation of contaminants such as lead have prompted the development of the Precautionary Principle in various parts of the regulatory world. Percival (2006) has presented a legal analysis of the principle with respect to environmental law and regulation.

The Precautionary Principle was explicitly framed in 1992 via the Rio Declaration by representatives of 178 nations as:

“Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” [Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Principle 15, U.N. Doc. A/CONF. 151/26 (Aug. 12, 1992)].

The principle has been widely well received and has been formally endorsed by the European Union as part of the body of European Commission directives (CEC, 2000).

Of particular interest, lead emissions and their post-release, pervasive adverse effects on the broad biosphere have been argued as confirming the need for a proactive mechanism for primary preventive controls on toxic substance introduction and marketing without adequate certification as to health and safety requirements. Two examples can be used to illustrate consequences of the absence of regulatory actions or rulings on lead releases or related actions (Percival, 2006).

Percival (2006) noted that U.S. legislative initiatives on lead in diverse human exposure media sources in the 1970s and 1980s were enacted within a largely precautionary framework. An element of this precautionary, proactive stance was its pursuit in the face of scientific uncertainty. Notable, and mentioned earlier in this chapter, §§108 and 109 of the CAA anticipated and provided for scientific uncertainties in public health protection.

A second instance of the principle, that of a careful judicial stance in rulings on lead regulation-based lawsuits, arose in connection with EPA rulemaking on reducing air lead levels in 1978 (Ethyl Corp. v. EPA, D.C. Cir., 1978). The Federal DC Circuit Court, the venue for regulatory legal challenges, ruled against the Ethyl Corporation's challenge to TEL curbs by EPA earlier in the 1970s, noting:

“Where a statute is precautionary in nature, the evidence difficult to come by, uncertain, or conflicting because it is on the frontiers of scientific knowledge, the regulations designed to protect the public health, and the decision that of an expert administrator, we will not demand rigorous step-by-step proof of cause and effect. Such proof may be impossible to obtain if the precautionary purpose of the statute is to be served” (Ethyl Corp. v. EPA, 541 f. 2d 1, 6, 11, 55, D.C. Cir, 1976).

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Biotechnology

Robert L. Zimdahl, in Agriculture's Ethical Horizon, 2006

The Precautionary Principle

The essence of the precautionary principle is—if one is not sure what may happen, caution is the proper course of action. In its simplest terms it is—look before you leap (Dundon, 2003). Caution prevents Calvin's (Watterson, 1993) inevitable problem. Dundon (2003) is correct in his assertion that

it is astonishing to see serious players in agriculture maintaining that one does not have to look before leaping unless one has solid demonstration that a cost effective looking is called for. If someone wishes to impose a risk on me for his benefit, it is his task to demonstrate that the risk is minimally likely to happen. And then the choice is still mine. What part of that is hard to understand?

The precautionary principle has only been applied in environmental policy since the 1970s and is explicitly incorporated in the environmental policies of several countries, but not in U.S. policy (Raffensperger & Barrett, 2002). There are three essential parts: If there is reason to believe that harm may result from an action or a technology and if there is scientific uncertainty about the harm, measures to anticipate and prevent harm are necessary and justified. Harm to humans, other creatures, or the environment all count, but not equally. There is no uniform global policy on application of the principle. It is harm that counts most and it counts more than profit or technological innovation. Openness and transparency are required as is adherence to the democratic principle that the consent of the governed is required when great changes are made. The advocates of agricultural biotechnology claim that sufficient caution is being practiced in all phases of biotechnology development. In fact, many regard the process as over-regulated and at risk because of excessive regulation. Others, of course, see the entire process as under-regulated with insufficient precaution. Only economic potential and future profit matter. People's unreasoned fears and potential, but unlikely, effects on small farms, communities, and the environment will be neglected if profit can be made. These contrasting polar views are real, if a bit exaggerated. If dialogue can be conducted to bring the polar opposites closer together it may lead to resolution of many of the moral dilemmas surrounding agricultural biotechnology.

Eating is a biological necessity, a daily ritual, and a cultural experience. It is something all creatures must do. Come let us break bread together. How could people who must eat not be concerned about what and how they eat and what is being done to their food. Agricultural biotechnology has been and will continue to be a scientific success story. It remains to be seen if it will also be cultural success.

Prometheus gave us fire and we have been burned. Pandora opened her box and the only thing left in it was hope, which we strive for. Eve encouraged Adam to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree. As children we often do exactly what we are told not to do. We are risk takers and that is often how we learn about risks and opportunities. We explore, we risk, we fail, we harm, but always we learn and try not to make the same mistakes again.

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Risk Management in Environmental Health Decision

D. Krewski, ... M.G. Tyshenko, in Encyclopedia of Environmental Health, 2011

Risk-Based Decision-Making

In contrast to the precautionary principle, risk-based decision-making requires some degree of evidence of risk before management strategies are implemented. In risk-based decision-making, the level of effort expended in risk management is proportional to the level of risk demonstrated. The successful implementation of risk-based decision-making is dependent on the strength of the scientific database as well as sufficient expertise in order to appropriately analyze and interpret such information. New tools including expert consensus-seeking tools such as the Delphi method and meta-analysis are often used in conjunction with traditional risk management decision-making techniques. Limitations of this approach relate in large part to difficulties in defining the strength of evidence required, as well as potential delays in the management of risks as the scientific evidence needed for risk-based action accumulates.

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On the Relationship between Social Ethics and Environmental Nanotechnology

Janne Nikkinen, in Environanotechnology, 2010

3.4 The Precautionary Principle

One of the key principles of environmental law and its application to nanotechnology is thought to be the precautionary principle. There are many references to this principle and its moral and political significances. Originally, it emerged in Germany in the 1970s. One of its well-known formulations is the Principle 15 Rio Declaration from the year 1992, which stated that “[i]n order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation” [43]. The use of the precautionary principle, however, has been quite limited, mostly on certain types of cost-benefit analyses [44]. There is an application of the precautionary principle in French legislation. The French Barnier law, accepted in 1995 and named for the then – Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, Michel Barnier, lists certain axiomatic principles for environmental jurisprudence in France. It states inter alia that “[t]he absence of certainties, given the current state of scientific and technological knowledge, must not delay the adoption of effective and proportionate preventive measures aimed at forestalling a risk of grave and irreversible damage to the environment at an economically calculable cost” [8].

Philosophically, this application of the precautionary principle to legislation is weakly grounded, especially in relation to the conceptual footing of the notion of “precaution,” as shown by Jean-Pierre Dupuy and Alexei Grinham, who write:

When the precautionary principle states that the ‘absence of certainties, given the current state of scientific and technical knowledge, must not delay etc.,’ it is clear that it places itself from the outset within the framework of epistemic uncertainty. The assumption is that we know that we are in a situation of uncertainty. It is an axiom of epistemic logic that if I do not know P, then I know that I do not know P. Yet, as soon as we depart from this framework, we must entertain the possibility that we do not know that we do not know something. In cases where uncertainty is such that it entails that uncertainty itself is uncertain, it is impossible to know whether or not the conditions for application of the precautionary principle have been met. If we apply the principle to itself, it will invalidate itself before our eyes [8].

It could be argued that, in specific cases, the precautionary principle has a certain practical value. The principle has been studied by Thomas Faunce and his colleagues, who have explored the principle in an Australian context, evaluating how health hazards of engineered nanoparticles in sunscreens containing titanium dioxide (TiO2) and zinc oxide (ZnO) have been addressed. In 2006, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) addressed the risks caused to humans and the environment with regard to different consumer products, such as sunscreens. After this, Faunce and his colleagues in Australia specifically evaluated whether the precautionary principle was utilized by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) regarding the permission to approve marketing of the sunscreens. The specific problem of the precautionary principle is that it is extremely difficult to assess what level of risk is acceptable. The principle is ambiguous, allowing random application and possibly preventing research and development that might be useful in alleviating the environmental harm it causes. Furthermore, Faunce and his coauthors note that “the precautionary principle, on any rational analysis, does not express some incontrovertible, monolithic regulatory truth, but rather sets framework within which precautionary measures practicably may be taken” [45].

In their conclusion, the authors note that assessing the legal framework with the precautionary principle presents challenges. It is practically impossible to evaluate what measures exist for legislators that could be based on the precautionary principle. In the case of introducing sunscreens with engineered nanoparticles to the consumer market, the alternatives are limited. It would be possible to introduce a total ban on the use of engineered nanoparticles or to introduce a requirement that engineered nanoparticles are considered new ingredients when sunscreens are evaluated. A third option would be to introduce labels that inform consumers to notice that engineered nanoparticles were used to develop the sunscreen. Finally, it would be possible to have a sort of panel or other bureaucratic institution to follow the marketing and sales of sunscreens that contain engineered nanoparticles, such as TiO2 and ZnO. However, none of these options could be considered very meaningful, according to Faunce and his coauthors. Thus, the precautionary principle lacks usability and is too vague for the purposes for which it was intended [45].

As to whether TiO2 is dangerous to human health, mixed results have been reported in the literature. In Nanotechnology: Health and Enviromental Risks, Jo Anne Shatkin concludes that “[t]he available data do not appear to be sufficient at present to derive quantitative hazard assessment for nano-TiO2 or for nanomaterials in general” [46]. Similarly, Deb Bennett-Woods notes in Nanotechnology: Ethics and Society that “… sunscreens using nanoparticles of titanium dioxide have been on the market for some time and there is evidence that particles cannot penetrate otherwise healthy skin to a depth that would allow absorption into the body” [25]. Nevertheless, both authors state the need for further research in this area. The problem with sunscreens is that they are not always used in ideal conditions, and taking this factor into account would affect the results of toxicity studies. For example, the users are not limited to healthy individuals, and sunscreens are often used on abnormal skin. In addition, Thomas Faunce and his colleagues note that when there is a lack of data, as well as evidence that is contradictory, there is a danger that the precautionary principle becomes only “a formula for doing nothing” [45]. Thus, from the perspective of environmental hazards and nanotechnology, there is strong need to develop other conceptual tools to assist in risk assessment and ethical evaluation in regulating the research and development of new consumer applications. With a different approach, say Faunce and his colleagues, TGA's decision that those sunscreens including engineered nanoparticles such as TiO2 and ZnO do not require new testing because they are considered the equivalents of their counterparts might have had different results [45].

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