The Precautionary Principle in Practice: Environmental Decision-making and Scientific Uncertainty

Front Cover
Federation Press, 2005 - 244 pages
The precautionary principle puts forward the 'commonsense' notion that decision-makers should be cautious when assessing potential health or environmental harms in the absence of the full scientific facts. It is now a well-established tenet of environmental law. The debate has turned to its legal implementation, especially its application 'in practice'. The Precautionary Principle in Practice - Environmental decision-making and scientific uncertainty focuses on these issues. It considers how decision-makers can assess threats to health or the environment when the available scientific evidence is sparse and discusses the types of 'uncertainties' that bring the precautionary principle into play.Peel uses detailed case studies which examine the implementation of the precautionary principle in actual decision-making scenarios: fisheries management; risk assessment for genetically modified organisms; and environmental impact assessment for development applications. She demonstrates an approach that takes account of variable uncertainty issues and can be adapted to different circumstances to ensure a comprehensive assessment of the potential threats to health or the environment. Jackie Peel has a background in both science and law. She took a BSC/LLB with 1st class honours at the University of Queensland and holds an LLM from New York University where she studied in 1999-2000 as a Fulbright Scholar. She is now is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne.

From inside the book

Contents

Precaution in the decisionmaking process
3
Precautionary Decisionmaking in Context
15
Declining faith in science
21
Conclusion
28
Understanding Scientific Uncertainty
34
Uncertainty at the limits of science
42
Conclusion
54
Assessing Threats of Damage in Conditions of Uncertainty
63
Precautionary Decisionmaking Processes
137
Precaution in decisionmaking frameworks
149
Conclusion
158
Implementing Precaution in GMO Risk Assessment
166
A precautionary evaluation of the GTA
173
Conclusion
181
Caution and Precaution in EIA for Development
189
Implementation approaches for EIA
203

Evaluating the seriousness of threats
70
Taking a Precautionary Approach in Fisheries Management
79
Challenges to AFMAs precautionary measures
85
Exercising precaution in fisheries management
95
Planning disputes over mobile phone towers
112
Precaution in siting mobile phone towers
121
Conclusion
210
An Approach for Practice Precaution as Process
218
Putting precautionary processes into practice
227
Index
240
Copyright

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