A PRECAUTIONARY-PRINCIPLED APPROACH TOWARDS UNCERTAIN RISKS: REVIEW AND DECISION-THEORETIC ELABORATION
Charles Vlek
Precautionary judgment,
decision, and action are needed in situations involving serious uncertain risk.
Examples are mountain climbing, nanotechnology, global warming, and
international terrorism. The history of the Precautionary Principle (PP) shows
that its proponents and opponents have different appraisals of probabilistic
risk analysis. However, modern ‘risk governance’ and precautionary safety
management seem to be converging into a balance of useful substance and
feasible procedure. In this paper, the PP is unfolded as a three-way principle
for risk assessment, decision-making, and risk control. For an integrative
circumscription of the PP, ten key issues are identified. These are discussed
one by one, whereby ‘rational’ precautionary decision-making is particularly
illustrated via the concrete example of a railway bomb alarm. It is argued that
a substantive-analytical framework is indispensable, that a decision-theoretic
perspective may offer useful guidance, that the PP is a rational (survival)
rather than a normative (ideological) principle, that the need to avoid false
negatives versus false positives may well differ among distinct policy domains,
and that precautionary ‘pessimism’ should stimulate towards improved,
multi-sided control of uncertain risks. Concluding questions are answered and
research suggestions are formulated.
