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Article contents
The Application of the Precautionary Principle in Practice: Comparative Dimensions, by Joakim Zander. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, 408 pp., £60.00, Hardcover.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Extract
A vast body of scholarly articles and books has been devoted to the precautionary principle, making it one of the most studied principles of our time. This wealth of attention can be explained by the fact that the question of how to manage man-made risks remains an extremely divisive issue for contemporary societies and the precautionary principle is the only principle idiosyncratic to the field of risk law. The book by Zander contributes to this scholarship by presenting a rich comparative legal analysis that gives a clear illustration of how the principle is applied at the international and European level as well as the national level, where the Swedish, UK, and US legal frameworks are discussed. The central parts of the book (chapter 3 to 7) are devoted to these comparisons. For this comparison, Zander chooses two case studies: pesticide regulation and the regulation of base stations.
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References
1 The example is taken from the US Environmental Protection Agency, Guidelines for Preparing Economic Analyses, September 2000, at p. 36.
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7 Later in the book, Zander seems not to see this tension. On p. 229, when discussing the UK experience, he contends that “public opinion is taken into account in a sophisticated manner through the use of WTP, WTA and QUALYs.” It is doubtful that this is the case. If it is true that these techniques build on the behavior of individuals in the market, they are most often used to construct the value of goods that are not traded in the market. They rely on a set of assumptions made by economists and subject of controversy.
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