The precautionary principle in environmental science.

By D. Kriebel, J. Tickner, P. Epstein, J. Lemons, R. Levins, E. Loechler, M. Quinn, R. Rudel, Ted H. Schettler, M. Stoto. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2001

723 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Environmental scientists play a key role in society's responses to environmental problems, and many of the studies they perform are intended ultimately to affect policy. The precautionary principle, proposed as a new guideline in environmental decision making, has four central components: taking preventive action in the face of uncertainty; shifting the burden of proof to the proponents of an activity; exploring a wide range of alternatives to possibly harmful actions; and increasing public participation in decision making. In this paper we examine the implications of the precautionary principle for environmental scientists, whose work often involves studying highly complex, poorly understood systems, while at the same time facing conflicting pressures from those who seek to balance economic growth and environmental protection. In this complicated and contested terrain, it is useful to examine the methodologies of science and to consider ways that, without compromising integrity and objectivity, research can be more or less helpful to those who would act with precaution. We argue that a shift to more precautionary policies creates opportunities and challenges for scientists to think differently about the ways they conduct studies and communicate results. There is a complicated feedback relation between the discoveries of science and the setting of policy. While maintaining their objectivity and focus on understanding the world, environmental scientists should be aware of the policy uses of their work and of their social responsibility to do science that protects human health and the environment. The precautionary principle highlights this tight, challenging linkage between science and policy.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/85671981560a17bf09cd13d3afcae6766076aeaf

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Citations in the corpus

• A hypothesis‐driven approach to optimize field campaigns (2012, background): “This calls for sufficient evidence (i.e., statistically significant data) before accepting H1 over H0, and coincides well with the precautionary principle in policy, environmental sciences, and the public health sector [e.g., Kriebel et al., 2001].”
• Applying IUCN criteria to invertebrates: How red is the Red List of European butterflies? (2011, neutral): “, 2000) and applying the precautionary principle (Kriebel et al., 2001), we classified about 19% of all European butterflies as threatened (i.”
• Trade in live reptiles, its impact on wild populations, and the role of the European market (2016, methodology): “It is opportune to develop methods for a precautionary approach (“precaution is one of the guiding principles of environmental laws in the EU”; Kriebel et al., 2001) to preserve biodiversity rather than to support national economies or at a minimum to balance the protection of biodiversity and econo”
• When Risks Cannot Be Seen: Regulating Uncertainty in Emerging Technologies (2017, neutral): “These regulators are incentivized to reduce risks by adopting defensive postures following the “precautionary principle” (Kriebel et al., 2001; Sunstein, 2005), which states that, if an activity poses a potential public risk, in the absence of scientific consensus, the proponent of such activity mus”
• Food Animals and Antimicrobials: Impacts on Human Health (2011, background): “This principle states that “when evidence points toward the potential of an activity to cause significant widespread or irreparable harm to public health or the environment, options for avoiding that harm should be examined and pursued even if the harm is not yet fully understood or proven” (103).”