The Precautionary Principle and chemicals regulation

Environmental regulation and policy faces a basic problem of how to characterise environmental problems. The hitherto dominant approach is and has been based on the principle of scientific burden of proof of damage, embedded in the conceptual language of risk assessments. Especially in the field of chemicals, this has become a prerequisite for political action and regulation. An emerging and rival principle is the precautionary principle, which probably is on of the later concepts of environmental regulation. In the policy context, the principle of precaution argues that policy makers will sometimes have to decide on action even if there is no scientific evidence of causation. The project aims at investigating the dynamics and history of this new alternative approach to the management of technological risks, drawing on partly institutional and discourse analytical approaches, partly on the social construction of technology literature. (Søren Løkke)