The Precautionary Principle Defined

The Hon. Justice Paul L Stein AM, Judge, NSW Court of Appeal, Supreme Court of New South Wales, Sydney in his paper "Are Decision-makers Too Cautious With The Precautionary Principle?" gave this definition

The Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment (the IGAE) endorses the precautionary principle in the following terms:


Where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation. In the application of the precautionary principle, public and private decisions should be guided by:
(i) careful evaluation to avoid, wherever practicable, serious or irreversible damage to the environment; and
(ii) an assessment of the risk-weighted consequences of various options