Redistributing the Burden of Scientific Uncertainty: Implications of the Precautionary Principle for State and Nonstate Actors

Abstract

In this article, we use a case study of 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) to examine role of precautionary principle in international environmental law and policy. Our findings indicate that a major function of principle is to redistribute burden of scientific uncertainty. By lowering threshold of evidence of threats to human health or environment required to trigger deliberations about taking action, precautionary principle speeds up process by which underlying ecological interdependence and scientific uncertainty are translated into policy interdependence and uncertainty. This prompts states to coordinate their policymaking, which reinforces multilateral processes and underlines importance of convening, coordinating, and facilitating roles of international institutions such as United Nations Environment Programme. KEY-WORDS: precautionary principle, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), scientific uncertainty, management of interdependence. ********** The precautionary principle has emerged as an important yet contentious issue in multilateral environmental agreements. Even as it progressively becomes consolidated into international law and widely acknowledged as an appropriate response to scientific uncertainty, application of precautionary principle internationally has, as some state and nonstate actors claim, generated even more uncertainty. The principle's contentious nature was obvious during negotiations leading to 2001 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, (1) which provides an excellent opportunity to examine role of principle not only in that particular regime but also in international environmental law more generally. We thus draw on these negotiations to anchor an analysis of implications of precautionary principle and to explore paradox of uncertainty associated with it. Our findings indicate that a major function of precautionary principle is redistribution of burden of scientific uncertainty. Whereas actors could formerly act as if they were ecologically independent by ignoring weak signals of transboundary damage, such behavior is no longer acceptable. By lowering threshold of scientific evidence of threats of serious or irreversible damage to human health or environment required to trigger deliberations, precautionary principle is speeding up process by which underlying ecological interdependence is recognized and translated into policy interdependence. By triggering deliberations on appropriate response to transboundary threats about which there is scientific uncertainty, precautionary principle translates scientific uncertainty borne by exposed populations into policy uncertainty borne by state and nonstate actors, which then prompts these actors to take a much more coordinated approach to policymaking to manage their ecological and economic interdependence. Thus, institutionalization of precautionary norms and ideas means that segments of what would once have been considered domestic policymaking may, increasingly, be carried out at international level, which reinforces multilateral processes and underlines importance of convening, coordinating, and facilitating roles of international institutions such as United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The Precautionary Principle Response to, or Generator of, Uncertainty? The German Vorsorgeprinzip is typically credited as containing conceptual origins of precautionary principle. (2) By 1991, precautionary principle was heralded as the most important new policy approach in international environmental cooperation. (3) Enshrined in 1992 Rio Conference on Environment and Development, principle has also been incorporated into a number of international environmental instruments. …