The Precautionary Principle

"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 degredation."

At first glance, using this principle as the basis for our environmental policy seems to make great sense. Scientific research takes a very long time. Proof of cause-and-effect is rarely found quickly and in the meantime much damage is done to the environment and people's health.


Precautionary thinking is something that people use in their everyday lives. Basically when the probability of harm is high enough people tend not to do it. But a lot of the time people seem to ignore the facts even when the probability of risk is very high. An example of this is people who smoke knowing full well about all the health risks. Conversely, sometimes people over-react when the risk is actually quite small; for example, plane rides (with an average accident rate of practically zero) vs. automobile rides (with an enormous accident rate in comparison, hundreds of people dying every single day). These examples illustrate that "threats of serious or irreversible damage" may not always be fully recognized in the way the people who wrote it hoped it would be. This could be due to misunderstanding or just being uninformed about how probabilities really work, being uninformed in general, just not caring about the situation or not being willing to do anything about it, or wanting to do something about it but not knowing what.

I think another problem is that the whole statement is really quite vague. "Threat of serious damage," "cost-effective measures," and "environmental degredation," are all very unspecific and seem open to interpretation. One person or company's idea of a threat could be very different from another as I've illustrated previously. The phrase "cost-effective measure" definitely sounds like something a business that focuses on profits (as most do) would exploit. Consequently I think that this statement might have negative consequences if widely applied in environmental regulation. I feel that it is a good starting point but needs some more specifics, because without them it is open to interpretation, ultimately leading to exploitation.