ABSTRACT
In the introduction to this study we stated: ‘We write to … offer options for a broader, less restrictive concept of precaution that honours the paradox and defeats the irony’. In November 2004, World Conservation Union (IUCN) member organizations put forward a draft motion entitled ‘The Precautionary Principle in Environmental Governance’ to IUCN’s World Conservation Congress in Bangkok. We suggest that four components of this text (which was not approved in this form) offer a less restrictive and more responsive precautionary context for effective ESA legal, regulatory and implementation strategies:
1 Precaution should be part of an adaptive management strategy. 2 Precaution should emphasize collaboration in decision-making. 3 Precaution should include careful assessment of likely benefits and risks of
alternative courses of action and inaction. 4 Precaution should include socio-economic understanding as well as
environmental science.
