1-2 The Precautionary Approach to Risk Appraisal

Though subject to a variety of different definitions and interpretations, the essence of the ‘precautionary approach’ to the governance of risk lies in the granting of greater benefit of the doubt to the environment and to public health than to the activities which may be held to threaten these things. [...] Under the statement of precaution cited above, for instance, what threshold of likelihood is embodied in the notion of a ‘threat’? What are to be the criteria of ‘seriousness’ or ‘irreversibility’? By what means and under what authority can the degree of ‘scientific certainty’ be judged? What is the most appropriate metric of ‘cost’, and to whom? What is to be the yardstick of ‘effectiveness’? The. [...] Beyond the case of energy impacts shown in Box 1, further examples of ambiguity lie in the institutional assumptions around food safety regulation, the selection of hazard categories and vectors in chemical risk assessment and in defining the notion of ‘environmental harm’ in the regulation of genetically modified crops. [...] Scrutinize the burden of persuasion and the thresholds of argument This shift away from an exclusive preoccupation with the quantitative modeling of risk, and towards a greater degree of attention to the qualitative nature of the hazards themselves is just one aspect of a more deliberate and sophisticated approach to the treatment of scientific evidence in precautionary appraisal. [...] Then there is the question of the adaptability of options in the face of particular possible developments, involving the degree to which they might be reconfigured in the face of a range of scenarios.