Matt Currie

February 11, 2002

Introduction

On September 20, 2001, scientists, philosophers, legal scholars, and other environmental and health professionals from seventeen countries met for two days at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production for the International Summit on Science and the Precautionary Principle ("the Summit").[1]  The Summit attempted to build both "an understanding and support for the role of science in implementing the precautionary principle," through the use of both small groups and plenary discussion.[2]  These groups and discussions addressed a wide range of health and environmental issues and "the role of science in implementing the precautionary principle."[3]  The Summit resulted in seventy-seven scientists and teachers issuing the Lowell Statement on Science and the Precautionary Principle on December 17, 2001.[4]  The Summit played an important role in furthering the discussion of how advocates for a cleaner and safer environmental can implement the precautionary principle in the government decisionmaking process.

The Precautionary Principle

In the field of international environmental protection, a relatively new approach for protecting human health and the environment has emerged: the precautionary principle.[5]  Commonly believed to have been developed in the mid-1970s, the precautionary principle is derived from the German principle Vorsorgeprinzip, or foresight-planning.[6]  The premise behind the precautionary principle is the prevention of risks posed by human actions.[7]  Under a precautionary approach, government is justified in preventing danger by all means, and, in the case of risk, government is justified in ordering appropriate preventative action, after undertaking a risk analysis.[8]

The precautionary principle gained international recognition in a number of international environmental treaties.[9]  Each treaty has interpreted the precautionary principle in a different manner.[10]  In the United States, a broad group of scientists, government officials, lawyers, and environmentalists developed a working definition for the precautionary principle at Wingspread in Racine, Wisconsin: "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."[11]

The precautionary principle is changing how science is used in environmental regulation,[12] as indicated by its five specific components.  First, the precautionary principle advocates "[t]aking precautionary action before scientific certainty of cause and effect."[13]  Second, the precautionary principle allows for well-defined goals to be set, rather than relying on future risk assessments.[14]  Third, the precautionary principle approach will develop and evaluate alternatives based on approaches to reduce or eliminate the harmful action, considering all means to achieve the goal, rather than on "safe levels of contamination."[15]  Fourth, the precautionary principle shifts the burden of proof to the proponents of the action to demonstrate no undue harm to human health or the ecosystem will result from the action.[16]  Finally, using the precautionary principle will create a more democratic and thorough decisionmaking process, allowing for greater public participation through a process of information development and flow.[17]  The precautionary principle represents a new lens for viewing the effects human actions will have on the environment.

As is the case with a number of politically charged issues, a disjunction exists between the political decisionmaker and the scientific community.[18]  Therefore, an important task is to establish procedures that bridge this gap and "integrate the scientific knowledge into Ö political decisionmaking."[19]  The precautionary principle recognizes that decisions made with uncertainty and ignorance of their effects are matters of public policy and political consideration; science can inform but cannot resolve all questions over cause and effect.[20]  Decisionmakers must recognize current environmental and health crises and implement a policy approach, such as the precautionary principle, to stave off further ecological destruction.

The Need For Precaution

Modern man is rapidly destroying the natural world on which he depends for his survival. Everywhere on our planet, the picture is the same. Forests are being cut down, wetlands drained, coral reefs grubbed up, agricultural lands eroded, salinized, desertified, or simply paved over. Pollution is not generalized - our groundwater, streams, rivers, estuaries, seas and oceans, the air we breath, the food we eat, are all affected. Just about every living creature on Earth now contains in it body traces of agricultural and industrial chemicals - many of which are known or suspected carcinogens and mutagens.[21]

The harmful impact of "modern man" can be traced through the rise in many types of health problems.  Chemical pollutants are now found throughout our bodies: blood, bones, breast milk, sperm, fatty tissues, and amniotic fluids.[22]  For example, in 1997 forty percent of all Americans were diagnosed with cancer, up from about twenty five percent in 1950.[23]  In the United States, in 1960, a woman had a one in twenty chance of developing breast cancer, compared to a one in eight chance in 1999.[24]  Meanwhile, men in parts of all industrial countries have seen a fifty-three percent decrease in sperm count over the past fifty years.[25]  During this time, the use of synthetic chemicals has risen dramatically.[26]  Amazingly, carcinogenicity tests have been conducted on less than 1,6000 of the estimated 70,000 synthetic chemicals currently in use.[27]  Equally disturbing is the quantity of toxic chemicals found in our bodies.[28]  While the link between many chemicals and disease has not been conclusively proven by science, growing concern raises significant reason to question both the current use of these chemicals and the process for approving their use.[29]  Furthermore, growing concerns about links between the use of chemical pollutants and a rise in health problems justifies further discussion for a precautionary approach for future uses.[30]

A New Movement In Massachusetts[31]

The Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, in partnership with Clean Water Fund, the Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition, and the Science and Environmental Health Network, instituted the Massachusetts Precautionary Principle Project ("the Project").[32]  The Project is an effort to change the health and environmental decisionmaking process to follow the precautionary approach.[33]  The Project combines public education, policy development, and outreach to build a base of public support for the precautionary approach.[34]

The Project, building on the Wingspread Statement,[35] adapted a working definition of the precautionary principle.  Under the Project's precautionary principle, proponents of potentially harmful activities are responsible for "seek[ing] out and implementing the safest alternative to achieve a specific purpose, including not going ahead with the activity because that harm might be too great."[36]  The Project's precautionary approach is a process for determining the "safest 'way to go'" through the assessment of alternative materials, technologies, and processes: it is not a procedure to "say no" to a potentially harmful activity.[37]  Finally, a precautionary approach allows for a greater public voice in the decisionmaking process for health and ecosystem protection and provides a "check" on agency decisions.[38]

Conclusion

Action from the bottom up is necessary to reverse harmful consequences of the current paradigm.  The Massachusetts Precautionary Principle Project is an important effort to shift the decisionmaking process from an approach that allows an "acceptable level of risk" to an approach of proactive steps in the face of uncertainty, the development of alternatives, and democratic decisionmaking.[39]

______________

[1] Report of the International Summit on Science and the Precautionary Principle, Integrating Foresight and Precaution into the Conduct of Environmental Science (December 10, 2001), available at http://www.uml.edu/centers/lcsp/precaution/summ.summ.html.

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] Peter Montague, Review of 2001, Part 2: Science and Precaution, RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH NEWS #741 (Jan. 3, 2002) available at http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?issue_ID=2129.

[5] See James E. Hickey, Jr. & Vern R. Walker, Refining the Precautionary Principle in International Environmental Law, 14 VA. ENVTL. L.J. 423 (1995).

[6] Julian Morris, Defining the Precautionary Principle, in RETHINKING RISK AND THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE 1 (Julian Morris ed., 2000).

[7] See id.

[8] Id.

[9] See Hickey & Walker, supra note 5, at 432-36.

[10] Id. at 431-32. The Ozone Layer Protocol advocates for protection of the ozone layer "by taking precautionary measures to control equitably total global emissions of substances that deplete it, with the ultimate objective of their elimination on the basis of developments in scientific knowledge, taking into account technical and economic considerations." Id. at 432, quoting Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, Sept. 16, 1987m 26 I.L.M. 1541, 1551. And the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development states "[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 has not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation." Id. at 435, quoting Framework Convention on Climate Change, May 9, 1992, 31 I.L.M. 849, 854.

[11] Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle, quoted in Peter Montague, The Precautionary Principle, RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #586 (Feb. 19, 1998) available at http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?issue_ID=532.

[12] Peter Montague, The Uses of Scientific Uncertainty, RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #657 (July 1, 1999) available at http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?issue_ID=1508.

[13] JOEL TICKNER, ET AL., THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE IN ACTION: A HANDBOOK, Science and Environmental Health Network 4 [hereinafter PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE HANDBOOK].

[14] Id.

[15] Id.

[16] Id. at 4-5.

[17] Id. at 5.

[18] Nicholas A. Robinson, Legal Systems, Decisionmaking, and the Science of Earth's Systems: Procedural Missing Links, 27 ECOLOGY L.Q. 1077, 1078 (2001).

[19] Id.

[20] PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE HANDBOOK, supra note 13, at 4.

[21] EDWARD GOLDSMITH, THE WAY: AN ECOLOGICAL WORLD-VIEW ix (1998).

[22] The Science and Environmental Health Network, Pollution is Personal, available at http://www.sehn.org/ppfactsh.html (last visited Jan. 30, 2002) [hereinafter Pollution is Personal].

[23] See id.

[24] Id.

[25] Id.
[26] Id. (noting a one hundred fold increase in synthetic chemicals from 1920 to the end of the 1980s).

[27] Id.

[28] Id. (noting detectable levels of both DDT and PCBs can be found in everyone in the United States).

[29] See id.

[30] See id.

[31] The precautionary principle has been used in a number of instances. For example, the Methodist Church and the Republican Party of Indian have adopted the principle. In June 2001, the Canadian Supreme Court used the precautionary principle to uphold a Hudson, Quebec ban on the use of chemical herbicides and insecticides on lawns. And the Los Angeles Unified School District used the precautionary principle when it adopted a pesticide reduction plan. Nancy Myers and Carolyn Raffensperger, A Precaution Primer, YES! (Fall 2001).

[32] International Summit on Science and the Precautionary Principle, Summit Report, available at http://222.eml.edu/centers/lcsp/precaution/back.over.html (last visited Jan. 24, 2002).
[33] Id.

[34] See id.
[35] Id.

[36] Id.

[37] Id.

[38] Id.

[39] Pollution is Personal, supra note 22.