Precautionary Principle: Current Status and Implementation.

• Author: Tickner, Joel
• Position: Environmental policy

Discussion of the role of the precautionary principle in environmental health policy has intensified in recent months, especially in the European Union and in the international arena but also in the United States and Canada.

Much of this debate has been fueled by trade controversies over beef and milk containing growth hormones and over genetically modified foods. The precautionary principle dominated discussions at the recent Biosafety Protocol meeting in Montreal and was at the core of the final protocol. At last fall's World Trade Organization Ministerial meeting in Seattle, controversy swirled around the precautionary principle. The principle has been a central element in recent discussions of international food safety standards (Codex Alimentarius).

The Maastricht Treaty forming the European Union stated that Community environmental policy should be based on the precautionary principle and that environmental damage should be prevented at source. The European Commission has been debating the principle for several years and produced a Communication in February 2000 that solidifies the principle in European environmental policy and seeks to define its use.

Each EU member state accepts precaution as a general principle of environmental policy. The Danish Environmental Protection Agency held a national conference in 1998 to examine how the principle should be implemented. The British, Scottish, and Swedish governments have been undergoing similar exercises. The European Environment Agency will soon release a report examining several case studies of where precaution was and was not taken and offer recommendations for its implementation. Several other countries including Hungary and Brazil have adopted precaution as a guiding principle.

The United States has not adopted precaution as an explicit basis for environmental policy, even though this country has ratified the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, which obliges nations to exercise the precautionary principle. Nonetheless, precaution has been articulated in some US environmental laws and early court interpretations, as well as by the US President's Council on Sustainable Development, in a 1996 statement of guiding principles for sustainable development. As the principle comes to the fore on the international arena and as environmental activists and academics embrace the principle with growing enthusiasm, US officials are forced to come to terms with the principle and its meaning.

So far, US official responses have been mostly negative. They come not from agencies with direct responsibility for environmental and health matters but from the US Department of State, the US Trade Representative, and the US Department of Commerce, the latter two representing mainly economic and industrial interests. The bodies most competent to speak on matters of health and the environment--the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Department of Health and Human Services--have been mostly silent.

That is partly because the World Trade Organization and other international economic institutions, such as...