Necessity of Implementing Precautionary Principles in Environmental Protection

Subject Areas : environmental low

Shirin Shirazian ¹ , Flora Heidari ² , Mehdi Heidari ³

1 - Assistant Professor of Department of Environmental Law, Faculty of Natural Resourses and Environment, Islamic Azad University, Tehran Science and Research Branch, Iran.
2 - PhD Student of Environmental Law, Islamic Azad University, Tehran Science and Research Branch, Iran. *(Corresponding Author).
3 - PhD Student of Civil Engineering, Department of Building, Civil and Environment, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada.

Received: 2017-05-10 Accepted : 2018-02-11 Published : 2019-07-23

Keywords: Soft law, Precautionary principle, Hard law, Protection of the environment, Scientific uncertainty,

Abstract :

Abstract Undertaking precautionary means to avoid adverse impact of environmental activities about whose probability of occurrence lacks scientific certainty have found a profound position within international environmental law, this is generally referred to as precautionary principle. Since international community is always seeking solutions to protect environment, the precautionary principle has been emphasized as one of the fundamental principles of international law in numerous documents including hard law and soft law. According to the light of the precautionary principle, even in cases where any definitive scientific reason indicating harmfulness of environmental activities is yet to be found, it is still necessary to undertake precautionary practices by the best technology to reduce potential risks affecting the environment and activities that have potentially adverse effects should be reduced. Results of the present research indicate that the precautionary principle is engaged with numerous legal issues as it suffers from non-uniform implementation and lack of agreement on the concept of scientific uncertainty. To cope with this challenge, it is necessary to start with presenting a comprehensive definition of precautionary principle based on consultation in a document called convention-framework where generalities of the topic are discussed, followed by coming to an agreement on details and expressing possible disagreements such as implantation of the precautionary principle and formulating future agreements based on the principles and objectives defined in the convention to form future documents, generally referred to as protocols along with taking advantages of technical consultation with environmental experts to assess local environment

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