Liability and Precaution (original) (raw)
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The Precautionary Principle Under Fire
Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 2017
The precautionary principle carries great significance for 'sustainability science'. It provides a powerful framework for improving the quality, decency and reliability of decisions over technology, science, ecological and human health, and improved regulation of riskburdened human affairs. It asks us to pause and to review before leaping headlong into innovations that might prove disastrous. Such a call does not sit well with a 'deregulatory' (i.e. environmentally-non-protecting) policy setting, nor with the expectation by corporates of maintaining profit in an economic climate where competition is yelping and recession is barking at the door. Because of this, the precautionary principle is now under fire. Looking across the world, we find a paradox. The precautionary principle is entrenched in government and legal systems in various places, but most strikingly in the European Union (EU). It has a presence in the patterns and processes of environmental management right across the EU. It is therefore especially alarming that the precautionary principle is under considerable threat in the EU. Specifically, it may be at risk in trade treaties currently being negotiated ( ); it is being challenged by the rival so-called Innovation Principle ( ); and it may be at severe risk in the U.K. as part of the Brexit process (see e.g.
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Directors need to ensure that boards do not overlook certain areas of risk, including those that relate to their own activities and practices, such as thought and relationship risk; risks relating to purpose, priorities and values; board practice and understanding risk; business model, structure and process risk; compliance, accounting and reporting risk; decision, opportunity and political risk; and shared and changing risks. These risks may not appear among the ‘usual suspects’ on risk registers and yet they can be essential for effective and responsible decision making and for resilience, ethical conduct and sustainability. Within traditional categories of risk there are also new threats. Responsible and ethical leadership has never been more important. Directors should think before acting and think through the implications of board decisions and the consequences of corporate activities. Directors and boards need to be aware of the relationship between risk and resilience, inter-relationships between risks and ensure that risk governance and risk management encourage rather than inhibit the flexibility, openness and innovation required to ensure that an enterprise is resilient and responsible in the face of evolving challenges and potential opportunities. Published as: Coulson-Thomas, Colin (2019), Rethinking Responsible and Ethical Governance and Risk Management, Director Today, Vol. V Issue XI, pp 16-19
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International Journal of Green Economics, 2018
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Theoria, 2013
IN THE FACE of potentially severe hazard, we should act with precaution. This idea forms the base of what is commonly called the Precautionary Principle (PP), one of the most popular norms in the risk policy debate. Many scholars see PP as deeply problematic, however. There are many alternative formulations of the principle in the debate, and critics claim that it is either too unclear to give us any action-guidance, or lacks proper justification. In The Price of Precaution and the Ethics of Risk, Christian Munthe responds to this criticism by putting forward an ambitious defence of an ideal of precaution, which he aims to show is justified, sufficiently clear and practically useful. Munthe argues that such an ideal, which he calls the requirement of precaution, must tell us how much we should be prepared to sacrifice in terms of increased cost, present harms and new threats. Several alternative suggestions for how to justify such a price of precaution are discussed-and rejected-in favour of Munthe's explicitly moral theory about precaution. Our moral responsibility in relation to risk impositions, he ultimately argues, prescribes that we put a greater moral weight on potential harms than on benefits. Furthermore, those extra negative weights to harms should be proportional to their magnitudes as well as contextual in the sense that they should be relative to what other harms and benefits are at stake. Munthe argues that even if his requirement remains somewhat vague, it is still practically useful. Indeed, he ends the book with a chapter demonstrating the (often far-reaching) practical consequences of the theory, applying it to a number of actual cases-climate change, pollution, energy production and biotechnology-as well as addressing policy questions in a national context. Munthe's argumentation covers decision theory, ethics and practical applications. This ambitious strategy is motivated by Munthe's methodological commitment, which starts out from the presumption that much of the current criticism of the precautionary principle is the result of too much conceptual analysis and too little normative analysis. What is at stake in the debate "is not primarily what PP or the word 'precaution' means, but what requirements environmental and technological policy making should meet" (p. 20). The conceptual and justificatory work, Munthe concludes, must be done in tandem. Munthe takes this justificatory task seriously throughout, investigating several potential sources of justification before settling on his own alternative.