Cohen, Miriam Alfie; de Garay Sánchez, Adrián --- "Risk Society and the Precautionary Principle" [2011] ELECD 645; in Benidickson, Jamie; Boer, Ben; Benjamin, Herman Antonio; Morrow, Karen (eds), "Environmental Law and Sustainability after Rio" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Environmental Law and Sustainability after Rio

Editor(s): Benidickson, Jamie; Boer, Ben; Benjamin, Herman Antonio; Morrow, Karen

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857932242

Section: Chapter 6

Section Title: Risk Society and the Precautionary Principle

Author(s): Cohen, Miriam Alfie; de Garay Sánchez, Adrián

Number of pages: 17

Extract:

6. Risk society and the precautionary
principle
Miriam Alfie Cohen and Adrián de Garay
Sánchez

1. INTRODUCTION

Environmental risk evaluation has become a key category of analysis that is
capable of assisting in the examination of the vulnerability of economies in
the face of ecological deterioration. It also reveals the way in which decisions
taken in the industrial era have resulted in serious collateral damage. Against
this backdrop, this chapter seeks to demonstrate the need for a new form of
environmental management that adopts the recognition of environmental risk
as its point of departure, and subsequently, the precautionary principle. Both
of these concepts have become elements of change in decisions taken within
the sphere of environmental policy and the present context of sustainability.
The industrial era was preceded by several profound transformations: the
shift from closed to open economies, the broadening of political channels and
structures and the processes of secularisation, among others. All these
contributed to an increasingly more modern world (Giddens, 1990; Ritzer,
1993; Berian, 2004). 1 Despite scientific and technical advances, the growing
gap between the model of economic development adopted and the natural
environment within which it operated was unforeseen. Instead, we witnessed
an unbridled and indiscriminate process of industrialisation which, until the
end of the 1970s, seemed to be without limitation in its growth and
expansion. Nonetheless, exponential population growth, combined with the
depredation of non-renewable resources, the profligate use of non-renewable
energy resources and the deterioration of renewable resources marked ...