ABSTRACT
The policy domain of global environmental and risk governance has seen the most intense debates over precaution, given persisting scientific uncertainties about cause, impact, and distribution of harm and risk (Pellizzoni and Ylönen 2008). The historical antecedents of the precautionary principle go back to the German notion of vorzorgeprinzip, first articulated in a domestic context in the 1970s, and implying the need for preventive and forward-looking (rather than reactive) action on environmental problems (O’Riordan and Jordan 1995). Much scholarly attention has focused since then on the challenges of defining and operationalizing the precautionary principle, particularly in an international context (Löfstedt et al. 2001).
