Protecting Europe's water resources: policy issues

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer E. Enderlein
Keyword(s):  
Water Resources ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle ◽  
Water Issues

Main policy issues for the protection and use of water resources cover the application of the precautionary principle, prevention of pollution at source, the polluter-pays principle, the sustainability principle, and the cooperation among States to prevent disputes on water issues. The paper describes recent developments and progress made by European countries in cooperating on these issues.

Part I Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-30
Author(s):  
Nicolas de Sadeleer
Keyword(s):  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Environment Policy ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle ◽  
Preventive Policy

Part I aims to clarify when and how the polluter-pays, preventive, and precautionary principles co-exist: complementing, enriching, and in some cases contradicting each other. It stresses that these principles could be best described using three distinct models representing three paradigms of regulation: a curative model, a preventive model, and an anticipatory model. A curative model of nature characterized the early stages of environment policy and shaped the polluter-pays principle. This model was practicable only if accompanied by a preventive policy intended to limit environmental damage. The emergence of increasingly unpredictable risks is at present causing the authorities to base their policy on a third, anticipatory model that gave rise to the precautionary principle. The three principles examined in the first part of this book correspond to the three models described in this introduction.

Part I Conclusions

2020 ◽  
pp. 363-364
Author(s):  
Nicolas de Sadeleer
Keyword(s):  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Polluter Pays Principle ◽  
Preventive Policy

The conclusion highlights that the polluter-pays, preventive, and precautionary principles must be considered in terms of interaction rather than opposition, particularly since they are operationally interdependent. Indeed, the precautionary principle calls for the presence of prevention, which in turn implies support for the polluter-pays principle. A preventive policy that would no longer be financed by the polluter-pays principle would be destined to fail. In addition, the conclusions of Part I highlight that the polluter-pays, preventative, and precautionary principles are well represented in positive law; they are helping to shape new legal instruments and adapt mechanisms, not necessarily specific to environmental law, intended to achieve protective ends.

The Controllability Precautionary Principle: Justification of a Climate Policy Goal Under Uncertainty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugen Pissarskoi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Precautionary Principle ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Goal ◽  
The Precautionary Principle ◽  
Climate Change Policies

How can we reasonably justify a climate policy goal if we accept that only possible consequences from climate change are known? Precautionary principles seem to offer promising guidelines for reasoning in such epistemic situations. This chapter presents two versions of the precautionary principle (PP) and defends one of them as morally justifiable. However, it argues that current versions of the PP do not allow discrimination between relevant climate change policies. Therefore, the chapter develops a further version of the PP, the Controllability Precautionary Principle (CPP), and defends its moral plausibility. The CPP incorporates the following idea: in a situation when the possible outcomes of the available actions cannot be ranked with regard to their value, the choice between available options for action should rest on the comparison of how well decision makers can control the processes of the implementation of the available strategies.

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