The precautionary principle v the fierce urgency of now by Dr
Robert Merkel, Lecturer in Software Engineering at Monash
University and an FAQ Research writer.| Feb 20, 2012 11:30AM
|EMAIL|PRINT In discussions of the coal seam gas issue, the
precautionary principle is regularlyinvoked as a reason to
abandon or delay the development of the industry. But what is
the precautionary principle? And how does it apply to the issues
surrounding the development of coal seam gas? A deceptively
simple principle It is common to refer to “the” precautionary
principle. However, there is no such beast – at least, there is
no single, consensus wording of the precautionary principle. It
is an idea that has evolved over time, and found written
expression in different ways. While those one-sentence
statements of the principle seem clear enough on first reading,
using it as a practical decision-making tool is, as is often the
case, far less straightforward. Queensland’s Sustainable
Planning Act states that that one of the act’s ve