The Precautionary Principle

A social perspective

Topics and summary
Finn Arler
Question time
Peder Agger
Question time
Peter Nedergaard
Question time
Jakob Jessen
Question time

Sustainability and the precautionary principle – can it be operationalised?

Finn Arler
Research lecturer, Department of Philosophy, University of Aarhus

How great is the need for applying the precautionary principle with regard to environmental protection?

Peder Agger
Professor at RUC; Chairman of The Nature Conservation Council

What are consumers’ demands regarding the application of the precautionary principle?

Peter Nedergaard
Department Manager, The Consumer Council

The precautionary principle – What is important?

Jakob Jessen
Manager, The Association of Danish Chemical Industries

SUMMARY

Finn Arler from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Aarhus began by including the requirement for proportionality in the precautionary principle based on the assumption that without this requirement, the precautionary principle would become simply a mantra. He moved on to make a link to the concept of sustainability, which can be seen as precaution for the future.

In this connection he pointed out that precaution exercised on a long-term basis means that it is impossible to ask those who might be entitled to some sort of compensation due to the damage done to their ‘environmental inheritance’ by any given activity whether or not the compensation offered is fair.

Based on a demand for equality between the generations, Finn Arler then presented a number of principles of sustainability and discussed possible interpretations. He pointed out that every generation decides for itself what to leave for its descendants, and that a central issue with regard to this decision is how it is to be made.

Finn Arler then presented a series of virtues and problems in connection with establishing a rational and methodically neutral way of making the precautionary principle operational in environmental administration that would yield uniform and unambiguous results. He reviewed a number of actual attempts at making such a balancing, and referred to the concept of ‘the environmental space’ used in the government’s Environmental Policy Report.

According to Finn Arler, the consequence of this concept is that each generation should pass on their environmental heritage to the next generation fully intact. He found this interpretation severely constrictive, as it does not allow for replacement values or even temporary transgressions. As an alternative he pointed to the neo-classic welfare theory, which talks of ecological sustainability, provided that a common ecological goal can be established and optimised in some sort of welfare function. He criticised this method, partly for its requirements for homogenous price setting and partly for its liberalist view of society as a collection of hermits with only one common goal; continuous and increasing economic growth.

His conclusion was that there is a limit to the opportunities for making sustainability operational; a fact which can be viewed negatively or positively. He stressed that the very lack of objective methods ought in itself to lead to increased democratisation of ecological development, which will increase the demand for diversity.


PEDER AGGER took as his starting point the increasing complexity and rate of development of our society; facts which have increased the demand for us to concern ourselves with our long-term bases for life. He found that, given the situation, there is great need to include the precautionary principle in environmental protection to serve as instruction for implementation of environmental policies.

He then moved on to present different opinions on and requirements of preventive actions with regard to environmental damage; and to discuss various views on the concept of damage and which situations particularly invite the application of the precautionary principle. In this connection he stressed that the precautionary principle is not in itself a complete, scientific solution to be applied by administrators of environmental policies; rather it is a norm, like any other norm in society.

He subsequently discussed the problems that science has in handling the precautionary principle as a result of uncertainty, ignorance, and incomprehensibility. In this regard he pointed out that part of the problem was caused by the demands what scientific analysis is supposed to measure, and caused by the time elapsed before any given effect can be measured. He used the issue of bio-diversity as an example.

Finn Arler did not believe that it was possible for the natural sciences to objectively set limits for the risks that society is willing to take, partly because such objectivity is an illusion, partly because we, not science, have to make a decision. The vital question here will be whether the authorities that administer the environmental policies are generally trusted, and he reached the conclusion that it is impossible to carry through environmental policies that have not been accepted by the population, as it is impossible to separate the layman’s perception of risk from factors such as beliefs and values.

He finally examined the prerequisites and need for the authorities to communicate all risks. In this connection he issued a warning about the widening gulf between experts and the layman; a gulf caused by experts becoming more specialised and the average person having relatively less knowledge. He reached the conclusion that communicating risks requires openness, integrity, and civic participation.

PETER NEDERGAARD addressed the question of how and when to apply the precautionary principle and took as his starting point the loss of consumer confidence in food products and health. On the one hand there are murmurs that consumers’ reactions are completely out of proportion to the actual extent of the problem, and that the whole thing is an ‘industry of worry’. On the other hand, consumers’ reactions to mad-cow disease and salmonella are caused by actual conditions in the food industry. So on the one hand the media do help blow cases out of proportion, but on the other hand they also provide real information.

Peter Nedergaard pointed out that there has been a rapid change in the average perception of risk and as a result there is also an increasing demand for society to take the precautionary principle as its starting point. One of the reasons for this is a general movement from acknowledging authority to questioning it; from consensus and unity to individualism. The citizen of today is also more likely to be the victim of social misfortune, and all in all we are more isolated when it comes to making vital decisions. The result is more insecurity and less stability.

Given this situation, attempts have been made to re-establish confidence in those authorities responsible for assessing the nature and extent of the risks by setting out acceptable criteria for decisions; but Peter Nedergaard was seriously doubtful that the population as such will continue to be controlled by the rationalist tradition.

The issue of a new model for assessing risks has been a top priority with the consumer organisations, which have clamoured for new models using a wider assessment of risks than the purely rationalistic; which put science in a wider social perspective and which provide people with democratic access to air their views in connection with specific and general issues.

According to Peter Nedergaard a gulf exists between the official assessments and the views of the population. He demonstrated how experts are no longer considered wiser than the layman, and how a broader perspective must also include concepts such as social justice and consequences, effects on the environment, and an overall assessment of the balance between the pros and cons.

He moved on to address the position of the natural sciences in this process and demanded that the public be given increased participation in risk assessment; this includes access to communication. He also wanted a paradigm shift – a move from risk assessment and precaution based on the rationality of the natural sciences to one based on the rationality of all the sciences. This would also entail an increased dialogue between those who assess the risks and the public – the consumers of those risks.

JACOB JESSEN took as his starting point the fact that the chemical industry has little credibility in the public eye, despite the efforts made during the last 20 years to limit the hazards in connection with the use of chemical substances.

He pointed out that a system of rules regarding new substances has been compiled; a system which provides exhaustive knowledge of the effects on people and the environment. He found that these new substances were no cause for concern.

He did, however, recognise that our knowledge about a series of older substances may seem inadequate in the light of our current knowledge. In this connection it would be relevant to apply the precautionary principle in those situations where science and technology must admit defeat. However, he also stressed that the application of the precautionary principle must be coupled with scientific efforts. A certain amount of knowledge of the harmful properties of a substance is required before choosing between different precautions as a result of the application of the precautionary principle.

Jacob Jessen once again stressed that the industry must take scientific methods and studies as their basis, even if this can be construed by outsiders as delaying the process. A demand for 100per cent full evidence of the connection between cause and effect is as unrealistic as a demand for zero risk. But he also admitted that the industry will have to live with the fact that it is easier to cast a suspicion than it is to prove it wrong.

He continued by presenting a number of examples of the specific application of the precautionary principle in industry, including actual practice when developing new medicines, the phase-out of CFC gases, the reduction of emissions from volatile solvents, the replacement of lead by MTBE, and the reduction of CO2 emissions. These examples illustrate how the desire for a higher level of protection will limit the amount of knowledge needed about causality.

He finally touched upon the issue of The Danish EPA’s ‘List of undesirable substances’, which he considered an invitation to a determined co-operation between authorities, the sciences, and enterprises. He issued a warning against using the list to confront enterprises with threats of bans. Rather, he envisions a co-operative effort with regard to new European policies within the field of chemical substances; policies which aim to effectively limit risks through substitution and reduced use combined with banning of specific substances as the final option. There are many examples of good results being achieved in a collaboration based on mutual trust.

Sustainability and the precautionary principle – can it be operationalised?

Finn Arler
Research lecturer, The Department of Philosophy, University of Aarhus

In legal terms the precautionary principle is a question of the burden of proof. Where the precautionary principle is in operation it is up to the potential polluter to prove – or, where impossible, to render highly probable – that no significant damage will result from an intended action. Or that those affected by any damage caused will receive fair compensation.

As a consequence, I am inclined to say that what is known as the principle of proportionality can be put under the heading of the precautionary principle. In this way we are able to avoid making the precautionary principle an absolute or Utopian mantra. Should you try using the precautionary principle as such a mantra, you will find that every time it appears, other principles will be there as well. So we might as well insert the principle of proportionality under the precautionary principle.

Where the person or persons affected by the damage can be identified and asked, any compensation offered will usually have to be accepted by the affected party in advance. Where the affected party is more difficult to identify the potential polluter is required to render probable the insignificant nature of the damage. Or that the affected parties will have other advantages which can be reasonably assumed to be considered fair compensation.

The precautionary principle is closely related to the principle of sustainability (see fig 15). The principle of sustainability is in a manner of speaking the precautionary principle laid down, stretched forward in time. The principle of sustainability really only means that precautions should be carried out on a long-term basis, i.e. beyond the horizon of current generations. It means that you need to take care to avoid significant long-term losses, damage, or drawbacks. Or – if losses, damage, and drawbacks are unavoidable – that the compensation offered should be considered fair.

In contrast to what is true of a series of here-and-now applications of the precautionary principle, the affected parties cannot be asked if they consider the damage done considerable or if the compensation offered seems fair or out of proportion in the long-term application of the principles, i.e. where the precautionary principle is transformed into a long-term principle of sustainability. As a consequence, it is up to present generations to decide whether any specific damage is potentially significant and whether or not the compensation offered can be considered fair.

As there seems to be no reason to privilege any generation over others we must take as our starting point some sort of principle of equality across the generations, which brings us to the following definition of sustainability:

1. As far as at all possible, each generation must leave following generations with resources and conditions that can be predicted to be as good as those presented to them.
2. Where natural, environmental, or resource conditions have deteriorated, this must be made up for by other improvements, as touched upon by Peter Andersen. This can be in terms of cultural heritage, knowledge, technology, etc.; things which must be present to such an extent as to render it probable that future generations will consider them reasonable compensation. My point here is the fact that the precautionary principle requires assessments regarding compensation, even when stretched over time.
3. No generation can be sacrificed to improve living conditions for past or future generations, and no generation can gain priority over future generations.

These very general principles can hardly be called controversial, although a number of objections have been made to them. This includes the famous opinion that future individuals should be happy with whatever they get; had any other decisions been made, other individuals would have been born, and you should be content to simply exist. Such arguments, however, affect only few people. To most people only the interpretation of the above-mentioned principles will cause any controversy.

What is meant by an expression such as ‘as good’ with regard to conditions – as good as what? As good in relation to what sort of life?

And what precisely are ‘other improvements’? Improvements in which direction? To what end?

For instance: Will improvements regarding the building of dams, coupled with a number of perks in the form of more cars and television sets, make up for the rising of the ocean levels or an hastened ice age due to an increase in CO2-emission? Is the compensation in proportion to the threat? Are we sufficiently far-sighted?

Or will the halving of prices on food and a general decrease of product prices due to needing less people in agriculture compensate sufficiently for having the sea around Denmark, our mother sea, increasingly contaminated by sulphur bacteria as a result of recurring oxygen depletion, or for having our population of skylarks and lapwings reduced to an absolute minimum?

As it has been pointed out already, we cannot ask future generations what they will consider ‘as good’, or what they will view as improvements. We have to make this decision ourselves. We are the ones who must weigh the balance in order to ensure reasonable proportions between venture and gain.

The crucial question then becomes how we are to determine exactly what constitutes long-term improvements that are valid compensation for any damage or losses. A problem which is often dragged out when trying to answer this question is that questions about ‘the good life’ would seem impossible to address rationally.

I do not share this point of view myself, but most arguments go something like this: if someone want this, and someone else wants that – as people often do – how can we even begin to talk about what constitutes improvements; about what can be called fair compensation?

As a consequence, it has been the wish of many – especially of the environmental administration, which is eager to seem as neutral as possible – to find some neutral form of operationalising which can address the question of long-term precaution, i.e. sustainability, in a rational and methodical manner that does not entail political discussions about the good life. The methodology would be ideal if it were possible to find a form which does not require any special virtues or skills of those in charge of the operationalisation: then it could be carried out by anybody and would lead to consistent results.

I will now present the next overhead, which shows some of the advantages of an operationalisation. If you can have:

1. Uniformity and repeat performances,
2. The utilisation of tried and tested scientific methodology;
3. Figures that can become part of other calculations such as the environmental gross national product;
4. Independence from specific skill requirements of those involved – so that someone newly appointed could carry out the assessment as well as someone more experienced - and;
5. Independence from the moral and political views of those involved – then you have an ideal operationalisation.

However, there are problems involved:

1. Do you get relevant results when using the special method?
2. Is the issue actually reinterpreted to fit the method?
3. Do we even agree about this method, or are there several different methods, forcing us to enter into a discussion of which one to apply?
4. Does using this method produce a false impression of accuracy?
5. Specialists may have good and sensible observations that may not be as precise as the method requires: does this block the inclusion of specialist skills and observations?
6. Is the impression of ethical/political neutrality false?

Let us take a look at some of the attempts made at operationalising to determine whether the advantages are bigger than the drawbacks. In the government’s Environmental Policy Report you will find two of the most common suggestions for neutral operationalisation. Even though they are different, they both appear under the designation ‘the environmental space’.

The common fundamental ambition is phrased as follows: ‘The environmental space is one possible way to operationalise environmental requirements for sustainable development. This way of thinking requires knowledge to describe and operationalise the environmental space.’ (Environmental Report, 1995, p. 57).

The first interpretation of the environmental space is: ‘The environmental space is defined – from a global point of view – as the amount of natural resources – air, water, earth, minerals, sources of energy, land, plants, and animals – that can be consumed per year without preventing future generations from having access to the same amount and quality of resources.’ (p.27)

However, the second interpretation, which I shall return to shortly, is found in the next few sentences: ‘Every person has the right to his or her share of the environmental space. Everyone must have the option to achieve the material standards allowed by the environmental space and technological capacity.’

So in actual fact the object is not to ensure that everybody gets exactly the same things in identical amounts and quality, but to make it possible for future generations to maintain the same material standards we have today. Peter Andersen’s points were along the same lines. If we take it literally, the maintenance of the environmental space means that absolutely nothing can change. Future generations must always have the exact same amount and quality of everything, ranging from coal and oil through ponds and forests to deer and clover. Nothing can be substituted, everything must be preserved. The demand for precaution ensures the status quo.

A slightly less radical interpretation calls for a series of principles to be carefully observed. For instance, the importance of a series of rules like the following is often stressed:
1. Renewable resources must never be consumed faster than they can be replenished.
2. Non-renewable resources must never be consumed faster than renewable substitutes can be provided.
3. The discharge of substances with an effect on the environment must never exceed the resilience of the recipient or its ability to absorb and neutralise such substances.

In this way it would seem possible to operationalise the requirements for precaution and sustainability through scientific methodology. The natural sciences can methodically determine the limits within which we have to operate.

Many, including economists such as Peder Andersen, have drawn attention to the fact that this definition of sustainability is more static than is necessary. It allows no substitution in any form, nor even temporary transgressions of the space, although they might yield future advantages. But in real life we are quite happy to use substitution when we find it advantageous, and we often carry out actions – such as buying a house – that are beyond our present means/space because we expect to be able to pay back later. And as has already been mentioned, excessive caution in one respect may be bought for the price of great carelessness in another respect. For instance, if you try to be very careful with regard to an issue such as global warming, you may end up in an insecure position as regards e.g. social or economic crises.

Rather than defining an environmental space by using methods from the natural sciences, the so-called neo-classic welfare economists recommend a pricing of all environmental assets – present and future – based on their utility value, option value, and other values; a pricing followed by allowing some sort of welfare organ (utilitarian or based on the criteria of Paretko or Kaldor/Hick) be in charge of making the decisions.

However, economic operationalisation is based on a number of assumptions; time permits me to mention only a couple of the most controversial. Firstly, it is assumed that everything can be substituted by something else, thus making it possible to put a price on everything – on real or imaginary markets. Everything can be assessed using the same equation; nothing is so sacred or irreplaceable that it would not be possible to find substitutes if the price were right. For instance, if birds and fish were to disappear, compensation would allow ornithologists and fishermen to collect expensive stamps with pictures of the extinct species, and there would be no loss. Just as priests could be clipping coupons or selling lottery tickets if they could get a decent price for churches and their contents.

In other words, the assumption is that there is nothing we will not part with if the price is right. Everything can be replaced if only the compensation offered is sufficiently large. Even a human life can be part of the equation. DKK 13.7 mill is the latest bid I have heard for the price of an average Danish life. Of course, the price is considerably lower in Africa. Unfortunately I do not know the going rate for selling your soul.

Secondly, it is assumed that political decisions on what to leave for future generations can be reduced to aggregations of private decisions. The political community is merely an administrative office which acts on a series of individual priorities made by a random group of Robinson Crusoes. The members of the community must each be seen as a supreme consumer – this is one of the cornerstones – and the community can be compared to a large supermarket where the customers’ wishes must be catered for in relation to actual purchasing power or potential willingness to spend.

It may happen that certain individuals consider something so integral to their identities that they refuse to part with it at any price. In the political community this will under no circumstances occur. The community has no independent identity; its task is to increase the total number of individual preferences catered to, as measured in terms of purchasing power and willingness. In short: The only purpose of politics is to ensure continuous economic growth.

In this way we have two types of sustainability, both of which would seem capable of being operationalised. In one case, ‘the actual environmental space’, this is done using methods from the natural sciences; in the other case economic methods are utilised. However, each of these cases are based on certain assumptions about what we are dealing with. (see fig 15).

Those in favour of talking about environmental spaces assume that very often decisions will be made where the affected phenomena cannot be substituted by anything else, and where the long-term cost will be very high if a certain limit is exceeded. On the figure, this is in the top right hand corner: high costs and great difficulty in finding substitutes.

Seen from the opposite end, those supporting the idea of environmental sustainability assume that substitutes can be found for almost all phenomena, and that the long-term costs will be comparably low due to the fact that we keep getting richer and more technologically advanced, allowing us to mortgage the future.

If we move on to the next figure (see fig. 16), I believe that the advocates of the two types of sustainability have some separate assumptions about nature. This figure is taken from Divided We Stand by Michael Schwartz and Michael Thompson and addresses different perceptions of nature. In the top left hand corner we find the ecologists. I could not find any Danish devotees, but this is the idea that everything is so fragile that we can hardly do anything without causing a disaster.

Opposite this we find the very resilient nature, which actually becomes the economists’ view of nature: no matter what we do, we will roll back to congenial conditions. This is ensured by market forces, especially when introducing imaginary markets and pricing.

Then there is the view of nature as tolerant, a view shared by many advocates of the precautionary principle: we have some leeway, but we can only go so far, or disaster strikes.

Finally there is the position which views nature as belonging to Mr A.N. Other; the ‘who cares?’ approach. I was reminded of the character ‘Onslow’ from the British sitcom Keeping Up Appearances; I believe we would find him in the bottom right hand corner.

My conclusions regarding the issue of operationalising sustainability are firstly, that there are limits to how far it can be taken. There is no one method – rather a series of methods – and any operationalisation will require a discussion of which method is the most useful. Secondly, none of the methods are in any way neutral; they are based on a series of assumptions. Thirdly, the issue is moved in a specific direction when using a specific way of operationalisation.

Depending on your starting point, my findings can be interpreted as negative or positive. If you dream about a clear and unambiguous method of operationalising the issues of precaution and sustainability, then the answer is negative: as has already been pointed out today, no such failsafe method exists. The suggested methods are all based on assumptions of limited validity. They are useful within their separate areas of validity, and may be sources of inspiration outside them. However, there is no direct way to non-ambiguity and no guarantee that mistakes will not be made or that you might not be faced with objections that are outside the method used.

This seemingly negative conclusion can be turned into a positive one. Indeed one of the central virtues of modern democratic society is that a complex system of institutions and organisations has formed, offering plenty of fora for discussion. This includes not only the formal political fora, but also boards, commissions, voluntary organisations, professional grass-root movements, business organisations, scientists, journalists, interested people, etc.; all positioned in different places within society.

This ensures that if not all, then at least most of the important arguments and opinions can be brought in at some level of the decision-making process. So instead of just the method we have the more open democratic procedures, ensuring that all arguments can be put forward.

In some way – and here I am going to venture a somewhat daring analogy – the development will be ecological in nature. Each one of the many different interpretations strives to find a spot in the limelight with good arguments as the only weapon available. Economists and ecologists, peasants and pen-pushers, physicists and philosophers; we all seek to increase the influence of our particular argument because we find that very argument especially pertinent.

What we have here is not a destructive power struggle where the winner takes it all; instead it is an ecological process, where the separate parts – locked in struggle and symbiosis – can unite to make the decision-making process fruitful. To this end we need towering giants with rigid strategies as well as swaying tendrils that adapt easily to new situations, strategists who execute everything with painstaking care and opportunistic strategists who spread their opinions widely; indeed we cannot even do without the epiphytes, parasites, and predators. Not everybody has a place in every niche, but there is a niche for everybody. So let us not try to reduce diversity by allowing space for only one method and frame of mind.

Figure 15

Figure 16

Question time with Finn Arler

Sidsel Dyekjær, ‘Økovandspejlet’ and the Ecological Council
I would like to address a question to Peter Gjørtler, who talked about the environmental guarantee. In this connection I was reminded of the report by the Danish Board of Technology a couple of years ago, which mentions all these thousands of unassessed chemical substances which are marketed in European society. Many of these substances have not been assessed in terms of risk even though suspicion still clings to many of them. That is to say that there are signs of, or even knowledge of, the harmful effects these substances have on general health and on the environment. Is there not something odd about this environmental guarantee stating that we need new knowledge before we can ban a substance, when we are currently in a situation where we have a lot of incomplete knowledge? One could claim that we will be unable to ban all these unassessed substances because we may have a little information about them, but we have not yet completed a complete assessment of them. The environmental guarantee also states that this should be ‘specific to each individual country.’ Is this not just a lot of nonsense?

Peter Gjørtler:
With the environmental guarantee it is important to distinguish between three levels: on the first level there are no EU regulations. In these situations individual countries are free to decide for themselves. They can carry out their own regulation with the provision that there must be a constant awareness of the balance between the interests of free trade and the special considerations of each country, including environmental considerations. As you will see, this is not a blank cheque, but the right to protect the environment balanced against free trade. This was also required in the ruling about environmental regulations concerning the reuse of bottles.

On the second level it has been decided to act in terms of environmental law, and the idea here is that this is a democratic legislative process in which countries participate, and where they have the option of making their opinions heard. If the special standpoints of any one country are not accommodated, this is part of the democratic process.

At the third level there are two forms of respect. One dictates that you will not disrupt what exists. It would be possible for a country to say: despite the negotiation process, despite the fact that our demands were not met we want something better for ourselves. This is when you outline these requirements, which seem very restrictive at first glance, but my earlier point was precisely that these requirements must also be reflected in relation to the precautionary principle.

This is why I think that the expanded environmental guarantee, which can now be found in Article 95 (5), may have very restrictive phrasing in reference to new and scientifically well-grounded conditions specific to individual countries, but these requirements should also be assessed in relation to the precautionary principle and as a consequence should not be seen as quite as rigid as their phrasing.

Ib Knudsen:
Finn Arler offered a very pluralistic model for anyone wanting to come forward with their opinions. How does he envision that process? How can an agreement ever be reached? Will it be a Tower of Babel, where some will build and others will tear down?

Finn Arler:
There is probably no clear answer to that, but there will probably be many fora with restricted access. If we take the political fora you have to be elected to be able to enter the decision-making process. Scientific gatherings also require a PhD or something similar before you can gain entry.

I think this is good, but the discussion is also found in places where there are no such restrictions, and where you may also find good arguments, which could enter the more closed fora. In this way it is fruitful to have many different fora, but it is also fruitful that not everyone has equal access to all fora.

In specific cases you will need to consider what would be the best way to handle the problem and whether or not some new institutions might need to be established.

Finn Bro-Rasmussen, the Danish Technical University:
I would like to ask the philosopher to consider my question. You said that we need to somehow link the precautionary principle to the principle of sustainability. It seems to me that ‘sustainability’ as it was originally introduced was considered a global problem with social aspects which included the Third World.

I would like to know if the Third World is included in your discussion of the precautionary principle. I fail to see that this is the case from this morning’s presentation. Can you help us here?

Finn Arler:
I can mention an example where I worked in that area. In Odense I worked for two years on global warming and the issue of global justice. In this area it is impossible to do a straightforward cost-benefit analysis as there is also a problem of distribution. Who has the right to emit substances? Who has emission quotas? Who should pay? Do you tie in decisions about distributing rights with some sort of support to the Third World countries?

To me this is a very complex issue, which I have touched upon in an article. It contains a vast number of difficult issues based on different assumptions. It is impossible to use some sort of operationalisation to find the best principles. You cannot even pretend to be simply a citizen of the world and do what you think is right. Take for instance the problem of refugees. We build borders around our country and say that a certain number of people may enter. We do not act as citizens of the world, but as citizens of more limited units. This makes it all very complicated.

Preben Kristensen, Danish Environmental Protection Agency:
You connect sustainability and the precautionary principle in such a way as to make sustainability an aspect of the precautionary principle, and I agree with this. However, I also think that there is another way of approaching the precautionary principle, and that is to view sustainability as a goal on a par with other excellent goals within environmental policies. It would then be possible to apply the precautionary principle in this connection to ensure that these goals are reached, so that the precautionary principle is connected to the set goal, as well as to the path we must choose in order to reach that goal. So the precautionary principle will be considered increasingly important and applied more according to the importance of the policy goal. Isn’t this so?

Finn Arler:
There are two typical ways of dealing with the question of sustainability. One is to say that we need to do something for the sake of future generations. We must contain ourselves because future generations must also have opportunities. In my opinion this is a very negative approach.

The positive approach is to say that we consider some things so important that they need to exist on a long-term basis – that is to say that you define those things you actually wish to preserve for the future. This includes not only nature, but might also include cultural phenomena that we find sufficiently valuable to warrant preservation.

This is not the same as saying that we must contain ourselves to give future generations opportunity for consumption. I prefer the more positive way of defining sustainability, where we try to identify what we think is important. As a consequence, some sort of precautionary principle is involved. Some things are so vital to our interpretation of ourselves, to our identity, that we wish to pass them on to future generations. I should very much like to further the positive view of sustainability rather than the negative one, where limits are set to facilitate future consumption.

How great is the need for using the precautionary principle with regard to environmental protection?

Peder Agger
Professor at RUC; Chairman of The Nature Conservation Council

I have chosen to consider it an advantage to speak at this late time of the day. This provides an opportunity to stress all those areas where you agree with the other speakers, and to gently pass by all those things you were none too crazy about. Much of what I want to say has already been touched upon in some way or another: in terms of veterinary science, technological science, economics, and philosophy. I myself am a biologist and will put forward some reflections, which are, however, highly influenced by sociological issues.

Our times are characterised by two things: the increasing complexity and rate of development of society. Taken together, these two things increase the need for an awareness of any possible damage to our surroundings and, in the long term, our very basis for existence. As Gorz would have put it in the 70s, blind capitalism is driving us ever closer to the brink of ecological collapse.

Since then we have began to seriously tamper with processes of vital importance to the welfare of the Earth. However, capitalism is, albeit myopic, no longer quite blind, and it has a dog in science, which is, however, not quite as clear-sighted as we once thought. Growth has its limits, and science is far from able to provide the answers to all those questions we have an increasing need to answer.

This is why we are here. We have developed a need for to discuss the necessity for principles of sustainability and precaution. Both principles require that decisions be considered in a wider and more long-term perspective. But both concepts are multiform and must be thoroughly discussed.

My job is to account for the need for the precautionary principle with regard to environmental protection. As will be clear, I find that the precautionary principle is particularly necessary within this area. This can also be seen from the fact that the Danish EPA has called this conference, and from the fact that the concept arose within the field of environmental protection.

As you know, the basis of the precautionary principle is that we need not be wading in dead bodies before we deal with a problem. However, criticism could be levelled at the ambiguous applications of the concept. There are two sides to the precautionary principle. Partly, it is a legal principle, and partly it functions as regulation for the implementation of environmental policies.

I am going to concern myself with the precautionary principle in the latter sense. In 1996, Bratt presented three categories in this connection, where he distinguishes between on the one hand conventional environmental protection and preventive measures against known causes of damage, and on the other hand the stricter concept which he calls the precautionary principle, which stands for preventing even the risk of damage.

I will refer to Sanderson and Staufeldt’s thesis from TEK-SAM at Roskilde University Centre, which explains how it is one thing to initiate preventive measures to counter scientifically established risks, but quite another thing to prevent risks as yet unknown.

I will not, however, be able to distinguish quite so clearly between the finer points during my entire presentation; even though I may conclude that the elimination of the wild boars at Lindet forest district last year must be an example of the application of the precautionary principle in its narrow Brattian sense.

So, at its core the precautionary principle says that the decision-makers must be able to act before there is any scientific evidence that any given act might harm the environment. But being able to act says very little about when they actually have to act.

The Norwegian Committee for Ethics in Science (NENT, 1997) indicate three prerequisites for application of the precautionary principle:

1. There must be reasonable, scientifically grounded concern that lack of interference will cause great damage to the environment and general health.
2. The potential damage must be considerable; e.g. the loss of unique ecosystems. The assessment must be based on natural conditions and not just on the current economic value of the resource at risk.
3. Postponing action will render effective measures difficult at a later date, and it is unlikely that the uncertainty will end before the potential damage begins to show.

In other words what is suggested is some form of cost-benefit assessment.

This poses the question of when something is to be considered ‘damaging’ or not. This includes issues of time scale.

O’Riordan and Cameron are slightly more specific in their descriptions of four partly overlapping situations where they find that applying the precautionary principle is particularly relevant:

1. Situations where it is suggested to introduce new technology in areas that are already well-regulated, but where the public – through insight or instinct – is opposed to taking chances, e.g. with regard to Genetically Modified Organisms or the introduction of nuclear power.
2. Situations where it is impossible to determine what can be tolerated in society.
3. Situations where there is a tradition of showing special consideration to exposed groups, e.g. indigenous peoples.
4. Situations where you may have open enumeration of pros and cons during the political phrasing of the problem and the decision-making process itself.

I will return to this final point.

As is evident, the precautionary principle is not an exact recipe for how the administration, backed by science, should act in any given situation. This kind of decision is often taken due to political pressure rather than on the basis of strictly scientific analyses. In contrast, the precautionary principle is a norm like any other norm in society and must ultimately be treated as such, i.e. in political terms.

But first, let us have a look at the current perception of science and certainty. Certainty, or to be precise uncertainty, is the very reason for precaution. The popular perception of society is that science has the answers to everything – or could have them, given enough time and other resources.

But science cannot quite deal with the precautionary principle. The normal confidence in the experiments, the falsification and verification of theories, consistency, and powers of prediction of the natural sciences are of limited value in this connection. This is due to an element of uncertainty, to variability in the object, and the fact that not everything can be measured. According to O’Riordan and Jordan uncertainty can assume three guises, which I will call uncertainty, ignorance, and incomprehension, and which Harremoës also addressed:

1. Uncertainty due to a lack of information, a situation which is very common within the environment field for a variety of reasons: very often no reference data (e.g. information gathered over a long period of time) is available, and large parts of the world have as yet not been described.
2. Ignorance because nature is multiform, ecosystems are complex, and many factors fluctuate. It is often impossible to draw conclusions in laboratories that apply in nature. Unforeseen hurdles and interactions may occur.
3. Incomprehension is not a question of missing data or inadequate models, it is a question of the absence of data, parameters, and models. In other words we cannot grasp what is happening.

This latter category is especially problematic, partly because decision-makers often forget its existence. For instance, the Commissioner for the Environment has said (in the newspaper Information, 2 October 1997) that with regard to the Commission’s assessments within the GMO area, the precautionary principle must be implemented by enhancing the scientific basis for this issue. It is to be hoped that this is not the only action taken in this respect. There is, for instance, also a need for more openness and democracy.

But incomprehension flourishes, for instance where systems of natural and human origin interact. As an example the authors quote the creation of deserts as a result of the interaction between precipitation and man-made changes to vegetation. Other examples can be found in the health sector, for instance ‘the enigma of cancer’.

All in all, the history of medical science is teeming with examples where the need for precaution was obvious in hindsight.

Thalidomide was used with the best of intentions to relieve nausea with pregnant women, but turned out to cause malformed babies.

LSD was used to help psychotic patients but turned out to be far more harmful than helpful in the long term.

Within the field of environmental hygiene, antibiotics are causing problems with regard to resistance and side-effects. And there are problems in relation to oestrogen-like substances, bioaccumulation, and persistence.

Part of the problem is also literally in the nature of things. It is quite simply difficult to scientifically determine the answers to a whole series of environmental questions, especially in cases where detection is problematic; for instance when trying to determine whether or not a specific species of insect has disappeared completely from a given biotope, or when trying to establish that a given substance is not carcinogenic.

Outside scientific circles, a socalled ‘false negative result’ will often be taken for scientific proof. This we have seen recently in the media treatment of the herbicide ‘Round-up’, where a new failure to prove the mutagenic properties of the substance is taken as scientific proof that it is harmless in this respect. It serves to cloud the image even further that a long period of time may pass before we see any positive or negative environmental effects caused by previous actions.

The issue of biodiversity in terms of the number of species is an example of an area where we experience a lack of data as well as uncertainty and ignorance. We know only a fraction of the world’s animal and plant species. Most have never been described by science. The number of species which will become extinct without our knowledge is likely to be considerable. This is due to the fact that the circumstances causing a species not to be described are partly the same that makes it particularly likely to become extinct, i.e. a limited habitat. This is especially true of the species of the tropical rainforest, where ever increasing deforestation is causing concern that a great number of species will become extinct during the next century. (Reid, 1992; Simberloff, 1992).

This image is somewhat opposite to the traditional idea of the vast scope of the natural sciences. However, in recent years the inadequacy of the natural sciences when it comes to solving environmental problems has become increasingly evident.

The traditional method of reduction – experimenting one at a time with single factors in order to find mono-causal explanations for things like the effect of chemical substances – is inadequate on the simple basis that our chemical day and age has more than 100,000 chemical substances appearing in countless combinations. And these are, by the way, poured out into the environment too fast for any authorities to keep up.

For instance, a number of substances have turned up in places you would not expect: DDT in the eggs of birds of prey; PCB in the Arctic, pesticides in the groundwater. And the environmental migrations and effects of many substances are extremely difficult – and costly – to prove in advance. Surveys based on exposure are expensive and inconclusive, partly because the effect differs from one individual to the next. The effect is often sub-clinical, i.e. not immediately visible, and may only show up at population level after a period, for instance in the next generation. The troubles of the natural sciences are obvious where different branches are in disagreement, as is often the case when ecologists and geneticists are assessing the risks involved in introducing Genetically Modified Organisms in nature.

In such a situation, how do you find objective limits to the risks that society is willing to take? The answer is that such objectivity does not exist, neither outside nor inside the natural sciences - which certainly cannot make the decisions for us. In these cases we must not only exercise caution; we need a decision-making process that includes more than science. But you can never be entirely sure. This experience tells us, and the story is a frightening one. David Gee (1997) takes the history of asbestos in Britain as an example.

Nearly a hundred years had to go by, and the body count was up to 3,000 a year before enterprises had to yield and the substance was banned. We had a similar case record in Denmark, where asbestos was finally banned in 1980. A similar story is true for organic solvents used by painting contractors and the oil industry. Examples such as these are persuasive arguments for the need for much greater precaution that has hitherto been exercised.

Experiences such as these also serve to install a lack of faith in the authorities. This is not just a question of a simple calculation of how may deaths one might expect per 100,000 citizens per year, but also a question of how notification of risk is received. However, the authorities often – erroneously – reduce this to a question of information about ‘actual’ danger, while all other motives are considered irrational.

The Norwegian Committee for Ethics in Research cautions against environmental policies that cannot win public acceptance, i.e. they cannot be implemented without risking social unrest. This revision of the old ‘life before law’ principle serves to underline the fact that environmental politics are close to the public. They need to sense that the issues addressed are the relevant ones and they have to have confidence that those issues are properly dealt with.

It would seem that perceptions of risk cannot be understood without connecting them to beliefs and value systems. People perceive risk in a wider perspective which is integrated into their personal identity and social conditions. They perceive risk on many levels, and the layman and experts do not always agree on what actually constitutes a risk in society. An example would be the ‘irrational’ preference that many consumers have for ecological milk over other milk (Heinberg, 1995).

The Norwegian psychologist Wibecke Brun has worked within the area of layman risk perception. She found the following to be the main issues determining their perception:

1. The potential for disaster, i.e. how much damage might happen.
2. The ‘news’ dimension, which make new threats seem worse than familiar ones.
3. The dimension of exposure: who is put at risk? Is it me or someone on the other side of the world?
4. It is also vital whether people have put themselves at risk or whether they are blameless, e.g. smokers vs. those breathing polluted air.
5. The final dimension is that the perception of risk is tainted by an ungrounded subjective optimism. She does, however, find that in certain situations the layman’s concept of risk may be more rational than that of the experts, who are of course unable to keep track of the situation of each single individual.

The two British sociologists Turner and Wynne (1992) have taken a look at the concept of risk within different institutions with interesting, if predictable results. Whereas environmental pressure groups tend to emphasise the danger of disaster and long-term effects, business people tend to stress threats against energy supplies, consumption, and economic growth. And employees in Environmental Protection Agencies show a tendency to emphasise those risks that can be quantified and made subject to administration and control.

Turner and Wynne say that administration is eager to seem in control. Even where there is considerable shortage of knowledge – such as regards the interaction between the many toxic chemical substances in the environment –administration produce scientific models and classifications that appear to be the products of an orderly process of reducing risk. How much ignorance can one admit to? – This is a central question in all communication of risk.

It must, however, be emphasised that not only a lack of caution may cause mistrust. Too much caution can also put strains on confidence between the public and the authorities.

We often see that rulers – far from using the precautionary principle – follow what David Gee calls the profligacy principle. Far too often we find a reliance on purely economic cost-benefit analyses and the ability of the market place to sort out the problems, possibly aided by environmental taxes. This is problematic because cost-benefit analyses are very shaky when you look more than a decade or two ahead, and because many environmental resources are not or cannot be marketed. As a consequence, assessments must comprise more than just economic calculations. Communicating risk is as important.

Turner and Wynne sum up on this discussion by emphasising three things:

Firstly, communicating risk is also about other things. This must be explicit in the communication process.

Secondly, authorities need to be aware that risk will always be communicated regardless of initiatives such as information campaigns.

Thirdly, conscious communication never begins in a vacuum. You will always find previous experiences, beliefs, worries, and knowledge which may be more or less at odds with the message.

Predictions then become an issue to be negotiated by balancing the best guesses against social issues assessed using criteria made by representative interest groups aiming for consensus.

Modern society is full of risk as a result of its increased vulnerability towards socio-technical changes and increased dependence. This brings about a greater need for confidence in other agents in society. The irony is that this takes place in an age where individualism is encouraged.

How can decisions be made when science is both so necessary and inadequate? Turner and Wynne end up by calling for an exchange between the public and experts with the view of reaching consensus. The Canadian ‘round-tables’ and the consensus conferences of the Danish Board of Technology are mentioned as examples of possible solutions to this problem.

This should form part of the discussion about the widening gulf between experts and the layman; a gulf caused by increasingly specialised experts and the erosion of the usefulness of everyday knowledge that the average person experiences in today’s society (Agger and Nielsen, 1997).

To put it briefly: the increasing rate of development and complexity of society necessitates the implementation of a precautionary principle to protect human health as well as the environment. However, the concept is applied in various ways. In its severest aspect it prevents any new, as yet unknown, elements of risk from arising. Recent history teems with examples of why this is necessary. But we need procedures governing when to take action. Here science can provide the necessary help. Recognising the inadequacies of science is also part of the answer. The precautionary principle is a normative concept and should be treated as such. In political terms.

If everything is to go right, so that the public accept the risks that had to be taken, economic calculations will not be enough. The perception of risk is every bit as important as the calculation of it. The layman and the expert do not think alike. This means that mistrust can easily form between the public and the authorities.

As a result, enterprises as well as the authorities need to bear these things in mind: openness, integrity, and public participation.

Question time with Peder Agger

Aase Lynæs, Danish Environmental Protection Agency:
You say that we need to establish a procedure on how to administer the precautionary principle. Mr Harremoës has made a suggestion, in which he envisions that the speakers at this conference form a group to provide backing for his ongoing work at the European Environmental Agency. Did you have something like this in mind, or do you have any other suggestions for such a procedure?

Peder Agger:
I have no final plan regarding this question. That is why I raised it. My answer will be as vague as – begging your pardon – Mr Arler’s answer to the question of the need to involve and stimulate a larger part of the population as regards risk administration. But Mr Harremoës’ project is certainly one way of doing it. I am also on the Nature Conservation Council which I think is another way. As you can tell I am somewhat ambiguous in this respect as I am there in my capacity as an expert, and as you have heard today, experts are the worst.

Ulla Teles, The Confederation of Danish Industries:
Your definition of the precautionary principle was to prevent risks as yet unknown from arising. Mr Arler mentioned two different types of sustainability in his presentation, and I gathered that he was in favour of the second one. That is, that you should try to define some things which you definitely want to preserve instead of being constantly on the defence. It seems to me that your definition of the precautionary principle might easily clash with that of Mr Arler. Would you care to comment on that?

Peder Agger:
I would, but I will be polemic. I do not speak of those things that I imagine will be preserved because they are not really on our agenda today. Today we address those areas where we might face these risks. This may of course occasion some conflict, which is why we have this construction around the issue with the Danish EPA, advisors and so on.

Ib Knudsen:
You touched upon a very interesting issue just now by saying that you yourself are an expert. This makes me wonder about those participating in today’s meeting: coming as they do from consumers groups, and the various expert fora, can they maintain their credibility, or will they become corrupted by being part of the work done here? Maybe they will even be taken hostage by the system? I suppose there is a philosophical and practical way of approaching this issue?

Peder Agger:
Entering a forum such as this will always have two sides. You become a hostage by gaining influence. This is an old discussion; one we also had when the NOAH organisation began its work. During the first couple of years of NOAH’s existence, invitations from the government and various boards were generally considered a bit suspect. This was due to the fear of being taken hostage, so duplicity will always be there. Mr Harremoës did not go into any great detail, but his New Zealand example does demonstrate that you will find more attempts being made to expand public participation. This does not only cover hearing public opinions before the matter is to be implemented, but also – albeit on a small scale as yet – public participation in the creation of policies. This participation is arranged in other ways than by using parliamentary methods. From my time with the National Forest and Nature Agency I know that user groups have been established for each individual state forest district. The counties have ‘Green Councils’, even if they can only give advice, not make decisions. Nonetheless there are many things indicating that measures are moving in a direction which I think will become increasingly common. It is clear that many of our environmental problems have more than one solution, and very often they cannot simply be sorted out by technology or administration; quite simply because so many values are involved.

Peter Skov, Confederation of Danish Industries:
My initial reaction to your presentation is that you will be difficult to corrupt in the Nature Conservation Council. You are off to a good start there, but I still have to ask you a question.
When you assess risks – specifically risks in connection with pesticides, fertilisers, and bio-technology – as regards Denmark, i.e. the developed world, I am sure that your assessment will have restrictive measures as the result. We have to be extremely cautious; actually it would be better if we could stop using agricultural toxins – and I would agree with this. But if we could reach that ideal state, how would we feed the rest of the world? I am sure that the 5 million slightly overweight Danes would be alright, but what about the rest of the world? How do you assess risk in this situation?

Peder Agger:
I do not know if Helga Moos has left the building, but reading the papers has told me that she has some forceful opinions on this matter. As regards pesticides, it is our job in the Nature Conservation Council to be as cold as an outdoor privy in December when we look at the Danish landscape to determine which factors are of influence to our flora and fauna, partly in a wider perspective, partly on a long-term basis. I have no doubt that pesticides is one of the most important long-term factors, which is no great wonder. They have been designed to kill this very flora and fauna. I have been ordered to say that.
I cannot claim any expertise when it comes to your question of the risk to the rest of the world, but my personal opinion is that it will be alright. First of all, most of the world’s agriculture is free of pesticides: large parts of the world cannot afford them. Secondly, my information about ecological agriculture does not indicate imminent collapse; there is a 5per cent, maybe a 25per cent reduction of output. And we must not forget the fact that what a pig can eat, a man can eat. If all you require is feeding I see no problems.

Jørgen Henningsen:
The discussion about feeding the rest of the world is completely irrelevant – from a Danish as well as a European point of view – as long as we have large areas of land lying fallow due to the fact that we do not know how to handle excess production. After working ten years in Brussels on pesticide issues – in legal terms or in terms of contaminated drinking water – I am completely satisfied that the forces behind pesticide use are the agricultural establishment and the agro-chemical industry, not any concerns about feeding the world. So I do not think that this is question that needs an answer!

Poul Harremoës:
You challenged me over the issue of my New Zealand example, which indeed I did not elaborate on. Instead I will give an example that is closer to home. Let us say someone wanted to build a bridge to Germany. If we compare this to the situation as I saw it in New Zealand, there would now, long before any decisions are made, be a group to deal with all the stakeholders connected with such a bridge; a group aiming to ensure that discussions start as early in the process as possible. I am not and have never been directly involved with any of the existing or future bridges built in Denmark, but my impression of these cases is one of political manipulation. When a group is made it is already too late!

What are consumers’ demands regarding the application of the precautionary principle?

Peter Nedergaard
Department Manager, The Consumer Council

It is a good idea for the authorities to host a conference like this, where some of the more fundamental issues are addressed. Others should learn from this example.

Safety and precaution have become important concepts in the public debate. From mad-cow disease to global warming, from salmonella to pesticides in water, from the effect of certain chemical substances on men’s sperm count to the issue of genetically modified organisms; constant controversy surrounds the issues of risk and the application of the precautionary principle.

The precautionary principle is the principle that in cases of potential damage, the person or group who might be subjected to this damage should have the benefit of doubt. Most people agree that the precautionary principle should be applied; the question is how. When is a suspicion of risk strong enough to warrant application of the precautionary principle? Who carries the burden of proof regarding the alleged harmful properties of a substance or product? Both issues cause arguments between specialists and laymen, between politicians and enterprises, and amongst politicians, specialists, and laymen.

Foodstuffs in particular have been the centre of fierce arguments about the hazards of eating beef, raw eggs, genetically-modified soya protein, and chicken, as well as the problem of growth promoters in livestock. The result is that we cannot be certain that what we eat is safe, and that confidence is unlikely to be restored immediately.

As a consequence, governments are facing an increasing amount of pressure forcing them to account for the way they handle food-related hazards; regardless of whether they must defend their lack of actions, or justify a series of initiatives regarding the agricultural establishment and the food industry.

There are those who claim that the elements of risk are actually being emphasised too much, and that the precautionary principle is being abused as a result of this. According to some observers, focus on elements of risk is the real danger. They go on to claim that we are subject to indoctrination which has caused us undue concern, and that there is an imminent danger that we will all be paralysed by fear, cutting us off from all the pleasant things in life, making us the docile victims of a
nanny state.

Outside Denmark this has given rise to books carrying titles such as Mass-Listeria and The Culture of Fear, and in Denmark you will find those who claim that the focus on safety risks is part of a growing ‘industry of concern’, whose one goal is self-preservation. You will also hear voices saying that everything entails a risk and that you might also be hit by a falling piano. That death is the one sure thing in life; and that you may end up so cautious that the only safe place left is life as a monk in the desert.

You will also find instances where the media are charged with twisting the facts, lacking nuances, and blowing cases up out of all proportion. However, the truth behind the headlines is sadly often more complex and is actually cause for concern. There is no doubt that media reports can lead to violent reactions among consumers. The mad-cow-disease scandal practically led to the collapse of the European beef market in 1996. More recently, investigations of salmonella in chickens have caused a drastic drop in poultry sales.

The real issue here is that both of these reactions were caused by actual conditions in the food industry. As such there is no basis for claiming that media coverage is the cause of consumer panic. It is, however, perfectly viable that media coverage of e.g. food-related hazards can be seen as an indication of a shift in public perceptions of risks and the precautionary principle.

One possible explanation for the increasing awareness of risks and the precautionary principle is the ever-increasing amount of knowledge in existence. So the reason behind the change of perceptions of risk is not ignorance! It is knowledge; too much information instead of too little. According to this way of thinking, the advances of society have increased public awareness of risks and public demand for caution. This way of thinking also entails that the natural hazards of the past have been replaced by the manufactured hazards of our modern world. For this reason we are less likely to be exposed to natural disasters like floods, the plague, or starvation than we are to the less predictable chains of events caused by global warming, Chernobyl, or cattle fed on ground-up sheep’s brains.

The increased awareness of risk in the West is also caused by more basic social changes. In this respect it is important that this awareness has been increased by questioning conventional authorities and values. The natural authority of the past is called into question. Former groupings in terms of nationality and social sphere have been replaced by far more individual approaches. At the same time, life today is likely to pose far more social risks than before; risks such as unemployment, divorce, substance abuse, etc.

We are also told ever more frequently that we, and we alone, are responsible for making a series of major decisions vital to our future. This could be decisions about things like pensions and education. All of these changes serve to undermine the traditional confidence in the stability of the existing institutions in society. Our position on risk, and on accepting it, is closely linked to the question of confidence.

This leads to the fact that the public stance on risk acceptance relies far more on whether the public trust the decision-makers than on specific risks found in experts’ calculations.

Several attempts have been made to reinstate confidence in those who have the power to assess risk and its relevance to consumers. The most widespread attempt is to advocate so-called ‘Sound Scientific Evidence’ as a means of reaching objective criteria for solving arguments about safety.

For instance, the Codex Alimentarius under the WTO uses the concept of Sound Scientific Evidence as the basis of decisions made to remove any barriers to global trade. The goal is to make the concept of Sound Scientific Evidence the basis for resolving all disputes relating to trade policy; this is to ensure that issues of safety are not used as invisible barriers to trade.

The European Commission has also created a new administrative unit which is to take Sound Scientific Evidence as the basis for an assessment of issues of safety, the aim of which is to remove all barriers to free trade in the single market. The administrative unit is also a response to the mad-cow-disease crisis. That was a good example of divergent risk assessments determining the question of how to deal with consumer considerations.

If you take a broad view of post-war Western politics it has been marked by a rationalistic tradition of considering risk assessment as part of a sort of political management. Politics following the American tradition was meant to be some kind of social-engineering science to be based solely on so-called objective and mathematical assessments of risk. Only this perception of risk was considered scientific. This model governed risk assessment in the USA during the 1970s and 80s, but even during the late 80s the model was criticised, quite simply because it did not meet with public approval.

Europe has had a different subspecies of the rationalistic tradition, where risk assessment has relied on experts and authorities. The minute a number of esteemed experts on a committee have decided that there was no risk, their statement has been taken as gospel. The vital matter has been the professional and personal integrity of the decision-makers. All things taken into consideration, however, there is not much to indicate that the European model has done any better than the American when it comes to settling risk-related disputes.

More than anything else, once again the mad-cow-disease incident has made it clear that the European model for risk assessment is inadequate, to put it mildly. This calls for a new model for making decisions within the area, but which one?

In Europe, the consumer organisations have been particularly active when it comes to establishing a new model for risk assessment. The starting point is that, on the whole, the public has lost faith in those assessments based purely on so-called Sound Scientific Evidence. As a consequence new models are needed, models using a wider perspective on risk assessment; models which place science within a larger social setting and which give the public the opportunity to voice their opinions on risk assessment.

Most of the issues I have dealt with up to now have shown that there is a gap between the public’s assessment of risk and the official one. Conventional literature on risks sees this as an indication that the public has the wrong idea about risk and does not realise that things are not as bad as the media claim. All this because the public is largely ignorant of the actual facts.

It will be a source of joy to any Grundvigian soul in this country to see that the public is in fact often wiser than the experts – the public disbelieved claims that pesticides would never enter the ground water, that the hazards of nuclear power were purely hypothetical, and so on. That aside, however, public assessment of risk is actually based on a much wider perspective that goes far beyond the purely scientific and calculable.

Public assessment of risk includes social justice, ethics, potential consequences to the development of society and indirect effects on the environment and wildlife, just as it includes an overall assessment of the balance between risk and potential advantages in a wider social sense. So when the public refuses to buy old, conventional risk assessment it is not due to a communication problem. They quite simply hold wiser views on the matter.

The problem of the natural sciences in connection with risk assessment is their focus on technical safety; this in spite of the fact that all scientists are frequently asked questions about matters far outside the purely technical. When scientists and experts within natural science are told to assess safety and risks on social areas outside their field of competence, their assessments will obviously exceed the limit of their knowledge. The reason for asking natural science to provide knowledge where it has none to give is often a simple lack of responsibility among politicians or civil servants. They wish to avoid making unpleasant decisions and so leave them to the scientists, who then become public scapegoats, even though such criticism is misdirected.

The problem with taking a completely scientific view on safety is that scientists often share the same methodical background and hence have similar assumptions about certain hypotheses. This is due to the fact that these scientists concentrate on specialised areas of detailed study with a view to achieving knowledge within that particular area. This will cause problems in situations where the assessment must take place across such specialist fields.

Once again, the mad-cow-disease crisis is a good example of this situation. Here, the only scientists assessing the risk were veterinarians, a fact which had fatal consequences when the disease jumped, as it were, from the veterinary field into the field of human medicine. This is not to say that natural science should not be applied in risk assessment, it should, however, be less sure of itself and more open to alternative views and perspectives, and it ought to have a far more inter-disciplinary basis.

Aside from the fact that science should play a different part in risk assessment and the limitations of the precautionary principle, it is also crucial that stronger public participation become an element of risk assessment. In other words, the top-down approach should be replaced by two-way communication. From risk assessors to the public and vice versa.

This may happen in a variety of ways, for instance through public debate, consensus conferences, committee work, and so on. In this connection it is crucial to carry through a paradigm shift to establish the view that risk is not just a natural phenomenon, it is also a social one. Hence, the precautionary principle should be assessed in social as well as scientific terms. The dialogue between those producing risks and those subjected to them should take the form of a broadly-based negotiation process, hopefully resulting in mutual trust.

In other words, we want a paradigm shift, a move from having risk assessment and the application of the precautionary principle based solely on the rationale of natural science to having it based on interdisciplinary science.

This paradigm shift also entails that risk assessment and the application of the precautionary principle should take communication as a starting point; communication between those assessing risks and the public as consumers of these risks. This communication process must make sense to the public, and it must take account of the public range of wishes and demands, which is much wider than the rather narrow range of issues usually addressed by risk assessment based solely on natural science.

You could put this in another way: risk assessment and the process of determining the limits of the precautionary principle cease to be based on natural science and move to being based on social science. However, specialist knowledge from natural science will still be part of the wider social assessments that are the basis for applying the precautionary principle. So this paradigm shift also reflects the fact that we have moved away from a situation where risks were mainly connected with natural phenomena. In our part of the world, risks are mainly man-made.

In practical terms, this paradigm shift should entail more public involvement in the decision processes surrounding risk assessment; involvement which is to supplement specialist assessment and to provide science and scientific assessment with the social insight that is too often lacking in laboratories.
First of all, we need to take a look at all the existing advisory committees, where risk assessment and application of the precautionary principle takes place. Do they have the terms of reference required to be able to include social aspects of risk assessment? It is also essential to increase consumer representation in all relevant expert committees.

Fortunately, there is already a development towards a broader perspective in risk assessment. The Danish Minister of Energy and Environment has stated that he will apply the precautionary principle and carry through a ban on phtalates, substances which are used to make PVC softer, in toys. This is done even though there is no hard evidence that these substances are harmful.

The European Commission’s ban on the growth promoter Avoparcine can also be said to be based on a wider risk assessment than before, since there is no positive proof that the substance can effect humans. One of the main reasons behind this ban was the public discussion about growth promoters and the hazards connected with them – a discussion that was particularly lively in Denmark. So things are moving, but according to the Consumer Council they are not moving fast enough.
Hopefully, a conference such as this can help speed up the paradigm shift which is required to establish a new model for risk assessment and the limits of the precautionary principle.

Question time with Peter Nedergaard

Peder Andersen, the Danish Economic Council:
My question is for Mr Nedergaard the economist, not Mr Nedergaard in his capacity as a representative of an interest group: you speak about increasing public participation. Wouldn’t this cause the whole thing to become a marketplace, where people demand more security and safety? And if you should get this amount of security in your capacity as a representative of an interest group, how would you suggest – as an economist – that this is paid for? Which other areas should be downsized?

Peter Nedergaard:
I am here to represent the Consumer Council, you know…

Peder Andersen:
My question was addressed to you as an economist…

Peter Nedergaard:
There are good reasons for taking a marketplace perspective of risk assessment. The collapse of the beef market showed us that the public does not trust the risk assessments that are made. So there are also strong financial interests at stake.

So it makes good financial sense to base risk assessment on consumer confidence. How is such confidence created? Well, in our complex society this takes a lot of communication. Many of the errors within the marketplace can be easily solved by establishing confidence. This is why we can use public involvement. So I see no dichotomy between economic and consumer perspectives on the issue of risk.

Ib Knudsen:
When it comes to the mad-cow-disease scandal and similar cases, it is impossible to avoid having other aspects enter the arena. The economists know that the German and Danish beef markets were booming as long as fear surrounded British beef. Danish pork production did a brisk trade as long as the Dutch outbreak of swine fever scared the Japanese and others. The food industry claims to have confidence in the additives used in their products, but nonetheless we see many products that are advertised as having no artificial additives, which implies that this is a quality on its own.

So economics enter this arena in many circumspect ways, and the consumer may be taken hostage, not realising the economic motives behind campaigns which attack competitors’ products on issues of safety. This is why Codex Alimentarius and the WTO are trying to create some systems to achieve consensus on how to address these matters.

This is also why the Americans are trying to implement the method you mentioned. It is a process, one we must all follow, enabling us to see through these declarations of danger and scare mongering and to realise that there might be someone out there who will profit from having these messages broadcast, for instance by increasing sales of their own products.

Peter Nedergaard:
The mad-cow-disease crisis had various detrimental effects to the entire European beef market. In some countries, such as Great Britain, people stopped eating beef altogether; but the Danish market also suffered because of the drastic price drops. I see no dichotomy between considering consumer and economic interests. Quite the opposite; the two may balance each other and offer mutual support.

Aase Lynæs, Danish Environmental Protection Agency:
My question is addressed to both Peter Nedergaard and Poul Harremoës. I like Mr Harremoës’ suggestion that the public should be far more involved in large public works such as bridges. But it would be wrong to involve large groups of the population when assessing approval of pesticides, chemical substances, CO2, CFCs, and so on. We need to distinguish between the issues addressed. Nuclear power plants, gene technology, large public works, etc. are areas which I think would benefit from more public involvement, but I also think that there are areas where public participation would be misplaced. How do you respond to this?

Peter Nedergaard:
There are no areas where some form of public involvement is not suitable. This may be through public discussion in newspapers or other media, or it may be through conferences such as this; consensus conferences that seriously address an issue. It may be through study groups, night classes, etc. In Denmark we have an excellent tradition of general education and public participation. We really ought to be an exploratorium for public participation in risk assessment, however great the extent of this participation.

Poul Harremoës:
To put it very briefly I still think there is a need for public participation, but using widely different methods. The main point is to avoid problems by nipping them in the bud. There are different ways to do this.

Hans Henrik Christensen, Danish Environmental Protection Agency:
I agree that no subject is unsuitable for public discussion, but one of the problems is to create a meaningful discussion. This is, I presume, what we as authorities really want. You have talked a lot about risk assessment. Here we find some obvious paradoxes, for instance with regard to our water supply. Sadly, our water supplies will occasionally be contaminated by bacteria, and when this happens it is a serious problem. On the other hand, we have seen practically no damage caused by the occasional pesticide contamination.

Nonetheless there are now plans to increase the real risk by investing DKK 17 billion in rain water installations in order to save four per cent of water consumption. We know with absolute certainty that this will drastically increase the hazard to public health. This is something we ought to be able to discuss with the public. There is nothing wrong with presenting this material to the public and asking, "Is this what you want?". People may well end up by saying, "Yes, it is", but the object must be to have a balanced discussion of the various aspects of risk.

In 1997, the Danish EPA produced a report on air pollution from city traffic. We can calculate an excess mortality of 500-600 people a year due to pollution from this source. This report caused virtually no discussion. However, a case which did provoke a lot of discussion concerned a bit of earth contamination, which in theory may have undesired long-term effects, particularly for the very young. There is no immediate hazard from this pollution, whereas people actually die from air pollution! Do you have a suggestion on how to bring the more objective relevance of balancing different risks into the discussion?

Peter Nedergaard:
We have to start by concluding that there is no such thing as an objective discussion. You cannot expect to base a discussion on an objective scientific basis. You have a discussion, and from this discussion we should be able to extract some sort of public opinion on the risks involved. Is this risk acceptable or unacceptable? How are we going to balance this risk against others? This can be done in many ways.

An agency like the Danish EPA cannot arrange for study groups across the country, but this ought to be done if confidence is to be generated. At present there is a widespread lack of confidence in the risk assessments that are carried out behind closed doors – in committees, within the authorities – and this can only be helped by public understanding that this or that risk is worth taking, or not.

The Danish EPA also stands to gain from increased discussion. Not just through headlines, but through general discussion. Discussions about the environment are in full swing, but it would be nice to shift it slightly to include the aspects you mentioned. The grass root organisations, the Consumer Council, and the environmental organisations must be involved through discussions and consensus conferences around the country. You could do a road show presenting the risk issues involved in various undertakings.

Poul Harremoës:
The first thing you have to do is to renounce all requirements about objectivity in public discussions, learn to live with all the silly statements made along the way, and display patience beyond what I am capable of. All this in the hope that the end result of this process will have a certain measure of objectivity. This is not just around the corner, but more information will help the process.
May I ask the moderator for permission to tease Peder Andersen?

Erik Lindegaard:
If you will be nice about it…

Poul Harremoës:
Then I shall sit down again… Well, alright, could Peder Andersen the economist explain why the Danish people are willing to pay 500 times more for bottled water than for tap water, when all evidence show that there is no advantage whatsoever in bottled water?

Lone Johnsen, the Danish Society for Conservation of Nature
My questions address the issue of increased public participation. We fully support this, as we ourselves work along the same lines. My first question is: when entering an increasing number of committees of a decidedly specialist nature, what part should be played by the consumer or the representative for a green organisation?

My second question is: how do we find the money? In the Danish Society for Conservation of Nature we have seats in 50-75 different committees in different ministries, ranging from committees on Christmas trees to chemicals, but it is incredibly difficult to find the resources to respond to all the kind invitations we receive and still maintain proper professional standards.

Issues with wider implications, such as traffic planning, can also pose problems, for instance the Copenhagen-Ringsted railway line, which will affect somewhere between 1-1.5 million people living on Zealand. The Danish Society for Conservation of Nature has 35 local committees along this railway line. We applied to the Green Fund for funding to have an employee offering support to all the local environmental groups involved with anything that affects people as directly as having a railway line running through your back yard.

We got a no. The issue was a problem outside the ecological focus of the Green Fund. We then applied to the Danish National Railways Agency, who refused as this would mean having to give money to all applicants. This is an example of how difficult it is to be a green organisation, a NGO, or whatever, and show foresight by entering an issue in the preparatory stages. We must do this to ensure that the discussion is sensible and to the point and does not turn into something like we have just seen in connection with the Amsterdam Treaty or Schengen.

Peter Nedergaard:
In my opinion all committee work should be publicly funded. After all, you do carry out a task essential to the proper working of society. Such funding can be hard to come by in practice, and sometimes we in the Consumer Council have problems meeting our budgets. But we try with all our might, and we talk to the grant-awarding authorities, arguing that a large amount of our man hours are spent on serving society by our participation in approximately 200 committees. We think this ought to receive funding, particularly in situations where we are asked to enter more and more committees. We cannot make ends meet without a larger grant.

Money given to organisations like the Consumer Council and the Danish Society for Conservation of Nature is money well spent. The authorities receive very valuable input, and a link to the ongoing discussion. They receive an extract of the opinions, which have been processed by the various organisations. These are then presented as a complete package to the public authorities. This should be the part you play in committees: the link to the support base. Of course you should possess some knowledge that is relevant to the committee in question, but your main job is to represent the organisation on whose behalf you enter the committee.

Erik Lindegaard:
I see that we managed to spend 6_ hours together before the inevitable question of money and budgets arose.

The precautionary principle – what is important?

Jakob Jessen
Manager, The Association of Danish Chemical Industries

Enterprises and the authorities are in the same situation. Public and political patience is about to run out. People have an image of a state of confusion, with new knowledge constantly emerging about chemical substances and their harmful effects on people and the environment. We are barely clear on the known harmful effects. The authorities in charge are unable to provide satisfactory answers as to what is and is not hazardous. There is no confidence in enterprises; they have no credibility in the public eye.

We face demand for instant clarification as to what is safe and what is hazardous, and this makes it difficult to elicit any recognition for the twenty-odd year long effort to examine the dangerous properties of chemical substances and to reduce the risk of using them. We have built up a system of rules, which in principle is able to identify the hazardous properties of chemical substances and to prescribe how to make people aware of them. They can also to a large extent account for how, and to what extent, people and the environment can be exposed to these harmful properties.

With an increasing number of substances, agreement has been reached regarding the limits for acceptable effects. But only a few dare to take on the task of comparing the advantages of using these substances with the drawbacks, i.e. the actual or potential damage these substances may cause.

New chemical substances should not cause any great concern: there are such extensive requirements for examination and documentation before a new product is marketed that it is reasonable to assume that all known properties and possible effects have been assessed.

There are bigger problems and more cause for concern with regard to the old substances, which have been developed and assessed on the basis of knowledge which seems inadequate in the light of our present knowledge. The original time of production need not be that far back for this to be the case.

Society now requires the authorities and enterprises to fill in the gaps in the basis for assessment far quicker than before. Faced with the demand for fast moves, we must realise that the system is better suited to long-term efforts rather than to immediate action. However, it is somewhat excessive to declare the system regarding chemical substance policy in Denmark and Europe a failure.

It is within this framework that the precautionary principle can be applied in situations where science and technology are unable to provide an adequate basis for the assessment of all risk elements. The precautionary principle can also be applied to make a decision on how to limit risks. We have seen the precautionary principle reflected in Danish and international legislation during the last 15-20 years, but strictly speaking the precautionary principle is not a legal principle. Rather, it is an expression of the spirit behind the legislative process.

I do not believe that the precautionary principle on its own is the solution to all the problems facing us. Science still has an important part to play in the application of the precautionary principle, and we need more clarity on the issue of what constitutes ‘acceptable’ effects. I cannot provide any complete directions as to enterprises’ opportunities to apply the precautionary principle, but I will seek to describe the conditions of the enterprises as I see them. I will also address the issue of what science can contribute, and the issue of acceptance and risk. Finally, I will provide a series of actual examples of enterprises’ application of the precautionary principle.

The material from the Danish EPA states that there is no one, unambiguous definition of the precautionary principle. The nearest thing we have to an authoritative definition is from the Rio-declaration of 1992, which states that ‘ where there is the threat of serious or irreversible damage to human beings or to the environment, the absence of complete scientific evidence shall not occasion a delay of cost-effective precautions to prevent environmental damage.’

I think this definition is backed by most, but it requires interpretation, for instance with regard to what constitutes a serious threat. A demand for 100per cent full evidence of the connection between cause and effect is by and large as unrealistic as a demand for zero risk. We do, however, need a certain amount of knowledge about a substance and its serious and irreversible effects before we can start applying the precautionary principle.

This amount of knowledge is not fixed. It will depend on what risk you wish to prevent and on what you wish to protect. For instance, it goes without saying that we aim for a higher level of protection for children and pregnant women than we do where normal adults are concerned. A desire for such a higher level of protection will naturally occasion lower requirements for the amount of knowledge needed about causality.

The exact nature of the precautions to be taken to limit risks must be based on a complete assessment of harmful and beneficial effects, and of the cost of implementing the precautions. There are several ways to limit risks, from warnings, labels, and directions for correct usage, to substitution or bans.

Warnings, labels, and directions are well known concepts. Substitution requires knowledge about the biological mechanisms that lie behind the damage done. The substitute must be within reach. It makes no sense to use substitute if this does not lead to significant improvements. It must be absolutely certain that the substitute is significantly less dangerous. The cost of substitution should be in proportion to the damage you wish to avoid. All of this is expressed by the concept of proportionality. For instance, you do not want to move the problem from being air pollution to being water pollution, or from the working environment to the outer environment.

A ban is a drastic measure, which should only be considered when all other options have been exhausted. It may have far-reaching repercussions to completely remove a substance from the product cycle, a substance which may have proven its usefulness in society. Today, no-one can disagree with the early examples of bans from the 70s and the 80s, bans concerning substances such as PCB and asbestos. Of these, PCB may have been the easiest to remove from circulation, at least where products are concerned. This is in contrast to asbestos, which proved to be rather more difficult. The phase-out of CFC gases from the late 80s onwards also turned out to be a complex affair.

Science must supply the main parts of the working basis for the authorities and enterprises. Science must determine the connections between cause and effect. It must develop suitable test methods and model tests to serve as the basis for a choice between different substitution options. But scientific developments take time. This was apparent with the Ames-test, which came into existence in the mid-70s. This test was first thought to be a failsafe model for assessing cell changes as the basis for determining cancer risks. However, experience was to demonstrate that the test could be used for initial screenings, but subsequent animal tests were necessary to determine how relevant the assessment was to human beings.

At the other end of the time scale, it can be said that the development of the working theory about substances that cause dyshormonism has also taken a long time. This task takes up a large part of all work within the field of toxicology, both in Denmark and abroad. As yet, we do not have sufficient knowledge about test methods, nor sufficient understanding of biological mechanisms to predict any hormonal imbalances caused by any given substance. As a result, we have no basis for deciding on substitution or phase-out.

Enterprises’ demands for scientifically-grounded assessments are often seen as stalling. Undoubtedly, there are instances where enterprises have sought to do this through demands for more tests. However, such instances cannot be used as an argument for reducing the part science needs to play. Enterprises can validly claim inclusion of all relevant issues in the assessment process. It is somewhat misplaced to accuse enterprises of being pedantic, when the authorities have a long tradition for building a system whose requirements as regards testing could also be called pedantic. But the cost of scientific testing imposes a limit to the amount of testing that can be done.

There are many ways to determine what constitutes an ‘acceptable’ risk and which risks are unacceptable. We tolerate the risks of smoking, even though we are all aware of the connection to lung cancer. We accept that 6-700 people die in accidents every year as the inevitable consequence of using modern modes of transportation. But we are not willing to accept a risk connected to the use of chemical substances, even though the connection between cause and effect is far less obvious and losses in terms of illness or death much less extensive. I do not know if it is possible to change this perception. I realise that enterprises certainly cannot bring about such a change, but I do feel that we need more clarity on the issue of what is acceptable.

In this situation, enterprises can do little more than accept that it is easier to cast suspicion than to prove it wrong. Enterprises quite simply have to resign themselves to working according to rules laid down by fear, trying as far as possible to limit the risks that are within their sphere of authority.

I should like to present a few instances of actual application of the precautionary principle. A good yet unheeded example of an extreme application of the precautionary principle is the development of medicine. It is estimated that one out of a possible 10,000 molecules of potential active agents make it through the development stages. New pharmaceutical products usually take 12-15 years to develop, a process which costs DKK 3 billion. The other 9,999 molecules are discarded along the way, not just because they are not sufficiently effective, but also because they may have incalculable side effects which are not examined more closely. There will almost always be side effects to some extent. Known side effects must be described and may lead to restrictions on the use of the product. Side effects that are evident at a later stage must be reported immediately.

This is an example of willingness to accept a limited, but still potentially dangerous, risk in order to achieve the remedial effect that represents the usefulness of the product. This is in marked contrast to the area of natural medicines, where there are only very few requirements to documentation for effects and side effects. You are, in effect, leaving the consumer with responsibility for his or her choice. Very few natural chemical substances have been as rigorously tested as the synthetic ones.
The development of pesticides is an equally good example of strict application of the precautionary principle. It is estimated that only one out of 40,000 potential active agents make it through all the stages of development. This development usually takes 10 years and costs DKK 750 million. The dilemma of acceptance here concerns the user, who wishes to run a modern, efficient agricultural business, and the public, which demands zero effect aside from the specific object of using the product.

The phase-out of CFC gases is an example of a phase-out process which began by voluntary substitution. When the issue of the ozone layer was first known, some enterprises were able to develop alternatives fairly quickly. The opportunities for producing these alternatives improved, reducing the time frame for the phase-out process. In this connection, there is a tendency to overlook the fact that CFC gases were originally developed as non-toxic, inert alternatives to the substances that were used up to that point.

VOCs are another instance where enterprises have been able to develop new processes and products before any legislation was introduced, in this connection with regard to volatile solvent emission. The result is far better and more cost-effective environmental improvements than would have been the result of legislation. The substitution of lead in petrol by MTBE has also been carried though without any legislative pressure. The fact that there have been subsequent problems of water contamination due to leaking MTBE tanks is surely not sufficient reason to introduce bans on the use of MTBE. Cost-effective precautionary measures here would be to prevent such leaks. CO2 and the issue of global warming is an instance where enterprises have carried through environmental improvements solely on the basis of issues of resources; the oil crises has been a valuable lesson here. If we take just the chemical industry, it has had a 50per cent increase in production since 1980 but has still been able to maintain the same level of energy consumption and to reduce CO2 emissions by 15per cent. CO2 has since become an object for taxation, a fact which has diverted attention from the fact that significant environmental improvements had already been achieved without taxes.

Let me conclude by addressing the ‘List of Undesirable Substances’, which oddly enough has hardly been mentioned today. This is, after all, the area where the co-operation on application of the precautionary principle will stand its test. I see this list as an invitation to determined collaboration between authorities, science, and enterprises. We need to fill in the gaps in our knowledge about the harmful effects of substances, knowledge which is necessary for the protection of people and the environment. We agree that it is necessary to give priority to these efforts, otherwise, the demands for increased safety when using chemical substances cannot be met within a reasonable span of time.

However, this presupposes that the list is used according to the terms of the Danish EPA. The list is a signal, a guide to taking a good look at the use of problematic substances. It cannot, and should not, be abused to confront enterprises with strict demands of phase-outs on pain of bans. It serves no purpose to have as a fixed objective a ban on all the 100 undesirable substances – to say nothing of the 1,100 substances on the ‘Effect list’.

I confidently predict the emergence of completely new European chemical substance policies over the next years. More substances will be phased out or banned, but there will also be restrictions on use and substitution where these measures are the most effective way of limiting risks. I am also convinced that controversy is counterproductive. So I should like to urge us all to use the countless examples in existence as a basis for the search for the effective results that can be achieved in a co-operative relationship based on mutual trust.

Question time with Jakob Jessen

Lisbet Seedorff, Danish Environmental Protection Agency:
I should like to hear the opinion of the chemical industry on what we should do about the thousands of substances that we know nothing about, substances that have not been tested. We have some suggestions in this area; for instance, we use computer simulations and other methods to calculate the effects so that we have some sort of risk assessment at least. My question is caused by the fact that there are vested interests at the other end. There are industries producing these substances. What steps does the chemical industry take to assess the hazardous properties of substances?

Jakob Jessen:
That is a quite open-ended question. We do have the duty to carry out self-assessment. Any substances that are marketed without official assessments must have been assessed by companies themselves. I am not greatly concerned about the measures taken by the industry to assess substances. Did you ask about anything else?

Lisbet Seedorff:
I did. This self-assessment must be carried out on the basis on the tests that have been made. But what if there are no such tests?

Jakob Jessen:
Then we shall just have to make them! I really cannot give you any other answer. I think that we are quite covered as regards information on substances of commercial significance. I cannot venture an opinion on substances that are less important commercially. I am confident that we are moving towards a situation where we will find an increased rate of data generation to fill in the gaps in our knowledge, a situation where enterprises and the authorities must be said to have common interests.

Jørgen Henningsen:
I simply have to make an observation which is based on 25 years of working with the environment. It seems to me that we are witnessing a tendency on the part of enterprises to say that ‘what we had to do five or ten years ago was reasonable enough, but these present demands are unfair.’ If this state of affairs continues, we will find that in five or ten years the next generation of people in the industry will say the same thing; i.e. that the present demands are actually quite reasonable.

An example of this is the phase-out of CFC gases, which Jakob Jessen said was tolerable to enterprises. Now we face the issue of the HFC gases, which as we know are not within the Montreal protocol. This makes them somewhat harder to deal with. We have been constantly entertained in Brussels by manufacturers of foam plastics and by certain parts of the chemical industry, who give us a song and dance about how unreasonable, impossible, and expensive it would be for them to replace HFC gases with alternatives. We want to be rid of HFC gases, as they contribute to global warming.

I would like to ask if you recognise the tendency I have described – we might also mention the discussion current in the 80s about acidification, where electricity power stations were reluctant to desulphurise. Now, they mention desulphurisation as an integrated part of their production.

If you do recognise this tendency, could we not hope that the chemical industry and enterprises as such would try to learn from history? Try more actively to address some of the problems? I think this would have an enormous effect on the situation that always causes enterprises to complain of being subjected to unjustified public hostility.

Jakob Jessen:
I agree completely. There is, however, a limit to how much of the weight of the world I am willing to carry on my shoulders. You are ten years my senior and have seen more of the development, but we can both agree that we need more concerted efforts. Part of the solution might be that the accusing finger was pointed somewhat less aggressively. I think that the moment you start a fire-and-brimstone sermon on sin and guilt, you are bound to see a lot of defence mechanisms snapping into action. This is what I meant by counterproductive controversy. Too much energy is wasted on being defensive instead of taking action. If we take what you said as a philosophical starting point for development and improved co-operation, I completely agree with you.

Finn Bro-Rasmussen, the Danish Technical University:
I have two observations to make, one of which contains a question. You said that you expect to see changes in chemical substance policies in Denmark and in Europe over the next few years, and many of us share those expectations. In my opinion, we can compare our present situation to the early 80s, where new legislation had been introduced regarding the approval of industrial production. This new legislation put forward requirements to new industries and to changes made in existing industries, but there was no effective legislation addressing production in existing enterprises as such.

However, there was a breakthrough which required all enterprises to have environmental approval. This breakthrough was due to the developments which took place when Lone Dybkjær was Minister of Energy and Environment . During this period the number of enterprises was cut from 60,000 to 20,000. Today, 90per cent of all substances in the lists of potentially hazardous substances have not been tested or assessed. If we are to use this as a parallel, we must say that we need to approach this the same way we did production approval. Everything must be classified!

Given the existing methodologies and test systems, of course it is possible that some of the substances will be classified as harmless, but then they have been classified as posing no threat to health or the environment and can be labelled as such. As yet they are simply off the hook. They are manufactured and sold freely. All we know about these substances are their names, their CAS-numbers, and the fact that they are on the market.

We often hear about the 100,000 unknown substances. Out of these, we need to have the first 20,000 – 40,000 substances classified as hazardous or harmless. If it turns out that there is no data to support any classification – and this is the issue that is being addressed – the enterprises need to inform us that this is the state of affairs, and the substances will then have to be classified on the basis of the knowledge at hand. This is an area where legislation actually makes it possible to apply the precautionary principle to chemical substances. If this applies pressure to the chemical industry, it must respond by providing more data and information.

My other point concerns the 100 undesirable substances. Risk assessment is inevitable with regard to these substances, and there is an ongoing discussion in the Netherlands about lifting risk assessment out of the traditional ‘scientific’ basis which is concerned with the relationship ‘between exposure and zero effect’. Instead it has been suggested to apply a safety factor of a 100 in order to achieve ‘minimal risk’. This risk has not been defined according to known scientific facts, but is based on a precautionary principle, which adds an extra safety factor.

Is this something the Danish EPA will consider? Could you administer this as it is done within food products, where a safety factor of 100 is actually used in connection with issues of toxicology?

Jakob Jessen:
I cannot speak on behalf of the Danish EPA, but safety factors may be considered as good an instrument for assessment as any. However, simply applying a safety factor of 100 in all areas seems somewhat arbitrary. I cannot evaluate that suggestion here, but it is certainly something to consider.