The Precautionary Principle: At the 1990 Bergen Conference, a Northern follow up to the publication of Our Common Future (popularly known as the Bruntland Report on Sustainable Development), Gro Harlem Bruntland (the Norwegian Prime Minister) stirred up a storm in her opening address by calling for action to protect the environment and future generations in advance of certainty about the environmental effects of particular scientific and technological innovations and directional shifts (see O’Riordan and Cameron, 1994: 314). She was clearly calling for the adoption of "the precautionary principle" when she declared: “If we err in our decisions affecting the future of our children and our planet, let us err on the side of caution” (see O'Riordan and Cameron, 1994: 314).
As a concept, precaution has several synonyms and broad similes, such as: foresight, prudence, prevention, pro-activity, risk avoidance/minimization, protection, “hedge against uncertainty”, a holistic/integrated approach to the functioning of natural systems, sensitivity to future needs (O'Riordan and Cameron, 1994: 305-7); others are: defence, safeguard, security, shield, vigil, watch, surveillance, lookout and anticipation.
In any of its various names, precaution:
“implies committing human activity to investments where the benefits of action cannot, at the time of expenditure, be justified by conclusive scientific evidence. Other grounds for legitimation need to be present – political, ethical, legal and moral – in the sense of playing by the same rules as others in protecting the environment. Accordingly, the rationale has to be accounted for in forms that are more overtly judgmental” (O’Riordan and Cameron, 1994: 299).The precautionary principle has strong environmental protection and legal roots in Germany. These are now underpinned by six basic concepts (which continue to be the subject of once-robust debate worldwide), namely:
1. Preventive anticipation: That is, prevent before any damage is caused. Or, when in doubt, prevent -- or disallow.
2. Safeguarding of the environment: That is, ensuring that no potential polluter gets near the "margins of [nature's capacity for] tolerance".
3. Proportionality of response: That is, the "cost-effectiveness of margins of error" implicated/imprinted in the producer's, manufacturer's or any other potential polluter's preferred "degree of restraint" must be carefully determined.
4. Duty of care: Meaning that the burden of proof -- of zero or neutral effect -- rests with those who propose changes that may affect the ecological balance.
5. Promoting "intrinsic natural rights": That is, a determination to maintain nature's (or the environment's) known "order of things" on planet earth.
6. Paying for past ecological debt: That is, acknowledging and settling historical debt incurred as a result of years-long or decades-long ravages of large-scale industrial and agricultural production as well as related consumption.
READ:
1.Timothy O'Riordan and James Cameron (1994) Interpreting the Precautionary Principle. Oxon: Earthscan. [Note: the link avails only a few preview pages. So you have to find the whole book, if interested]
