Precautionary Principle - Origins and Theory

Origins and Theory

The formal concept evolved out of the German socio-legal tradition in the 1930s, centering on the concept of good household management. In German the concept is Vorsorgeprinzip, which translates into English as precaution principle.

Many of the concepts underpinning the precautionary principle pre-date the term's inception. For example, the essence of the principle is captured in a number of cautionary aphorisms such as "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", "better safe than sorry", and "look before you leap". The precautionary principle may also be interpreted as the evolution of the ancient medical principle of "first, do no harm" to apply to institutions and institutional decision-making processes rather than individuals.

The precautionary principle is in some ways an expansion of the English common law concept of ‘duty of care’ originating in the decisions of the judge Lord Esher in the late 19th century. According to Lord Esher: “Whenever one person is by circumstances placed in such a position with regard to another that everyone of ordinary sense who did think, would at once recognise that if he did not use ordinary care and skill in his own conduct with regard to those circumstances, he would cause danger or injury to the person, or property of the other, a duty arises to use ordinary care and skill to avoid such danger”. This statement clearly contains elements of foresight and responsibility, but does not refer to a lack of certainty, as the word “would” is used rather than “might”, or “could”. The other important difference is that the duty of care applies only to people and property, not to the environment.

In economics, the precautionary principle has been analysed in terms of the effect on rational decision-making of the interaction of irreversibility and uncertainty. Authors such as Epstein (1980) and Arrow and Fischer (1974) show that irreversibility of possible future consequences creates a quasi-option effect which should induce a "risk-neutral" society to favor current decisions that allow for more flexibility in the future. Gollier et al. (2000) conclude that "more scientific uncertainty as to the distribution of a future risk– that is, a larger variability of beliefs– should induce Society to take stronger prevention measures today."