Responding to Ecological Uncertainty in the Context of Climate Change: Thirty Years of the Precautionary Principle in Australia

Abstract

The precautionary principle is one of the central principles to have emerged from the 1992 international Earth Summit and subsequently to have been integrated into Australian law. It is a principle that responds to the uncertainty attending serious environmental threats by justifying measures to prevent threat materialisation. This article explores the contemporary relevance of the precautionary principle three decades on, at a time when Australia’s ecology and biological diversity is subject to multiple compounding and cumulative threats, including the serious and irreversible consequences of climate change. Following the decisions in three recent cases — Leadbeater’s, Masked Owl and Tree Geebung — I make three contentions in relation to the principle. First, if particular ‘conditions precedent’ to the application of the principle are met, then the principle must be applied; the need to apply and act on the principle cannot be trumped by other considerations. Second, application is capable of demonstration. Third, precautionary approaches can and should take into account the state of the environment. These contentions underscore the precautionary principle’s importance in the context of activity that threatens to exacerbate the baseline threat of climate change to the species and places that form part of Australia’s complex ecological systems.