Whole Earth Discipline by Brand Stewart

Author:Brand, Stewart [Brand, Stewart]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group, Inc.
Published: 2010-09-27T20:00:00+00:00

• I think the main element that distinguishes Europe from America and other parts of the world in regard to GE crops is the seriousness with which Europeans take what is called the precautionary principle. It was invoked in the Davos debate; it was invoked in the Zambia debacle; and it has had regulatory force in the European Union since 1992 and in the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, governing international movement of GE organisms, since 2000. As Robert Paarlberg points out, “Europe’s precautionary principle had honorable origins. It first emerged in the context of a serious and well-documented environmental harm in Germany known as forest death. The German government responded with a 1974 clean air act that allowed action to be taken against potentially damaging chemicals even in the absence of scientific certainty regarding their contribution to the harm. In 1984 this same principle was then embraced for managing ocean pollution in the North Sea, another documented harm.” But as time went by, evidence of harm disappeared as a precautionary principle trigger, and science was explicitly devalued.

There are a number of versions of the precautionary principle. The clearest and most often cited came out of a meeting of environmentalists in Wisconsin in 1998. Called the Wingspread Statement, it goes:

When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof.

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