Biodiversity and the Precautionary Principle: Risk and Uncertainty in Conservation and Sustainable Use. Edited by Rosie Cooney and Barney Dickson (Earthscan, 2005). xxi plus 314pp. £22.95 paperback.
Reviewed by Robin Sharp CB

The January 2006 issue of Sustainable contained a brief report of the conclusion of the Precautionary Principle Project, a European Union funded effort carried out by a partnership of IUCN, Fauna & Flora International, Resource Africa and TRAFFIC. This book is one of the key outputs. Edited by two people who, apart from their day jobs, are active players in the SSC Sustainable Use Specialist Group, it consists of fourteen chapters of case studies and some significant analytical material. Although embracing a significant range of perspectives, the underlying philosophy of the initiative and the book is supportive of sustainable use of wildlife as a contribution to conservation and livelihoods.

Initially the reader is reminded that the Precautionary Principle (PP) has in its short life already been subject to many different formulations, e.g. in the Rio Declaration, the CBD Preamble and the UK Biodiversity Action Plan. Indeed 19 had been identified by 1999. In essence it amounts to recognizing that complete certainty about a threat to an ecological system should not be required before taking action to mitigate or avoid it. Some, however, have interpreted it as requiring a complete prohibition on harvesting a species in the absence of clear proof that such harvesting will have no medium or long term effect on its population. As in the case of motherhood and democracy, no-one dare claim to be against the Precautionary Principle but is it a rule or an approach? If one takes the analogy of driving a car down a street of parked vehicles, there would be a wide consensus in favour of a precautionary approach, but a rule of no risk to pedestrians who might suddenly run out would entail no driving at all in such a situation.

Without coining any simple ‘silver bullet’ solution to this dilemma the book seeks to illuminate it and to imply the need for balance and common sense by examining a judicious selection of cases. Some will be familiar to readers of Sustainable, but others less so. Newton and Oldfield provide an interesting discussion of forestry issues, arguing that while the terminology of the widely applied concept of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) does not refer to the PP the ideas behind the PP are consistent with SFM. However they question the desirability of promoting it for decision-making in the forest context, since it can be used differently according to the motivation (protection or use) of the advocate. The benefits of applying a precautionary approach to pollution issues in the North Sea and the misuse of the PP for political reasons in enforcing the international ban on whaling through the International Whaling Commission are illustrated by Andresen, Walløe and Rosendal. Australian fisheries policy is strongly underpinned by the PP in theory, but hardly at all in practice, according to Sant. At a global level the 1995 FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries is generally admired and often officially endorsed, yet marine fisheries is the sector of use where over-exploitation and risk of collapse is most evident.

We are on familiar ground with the account by Tareen, Rosser and Leader-Williams of the sustainable trophy hunting regime for markhor goats and urial sheep in the Torghar region of Pakistan, where an absolute application of the PP might well have resulted in a complete loss of the former of these species. The use of the PP to persuade the courts to stop the consumptive use of green turtles in Costa Rica, where a permit regime was not being properly regulated, and the development of a significant turtle tourism industry to replace its livelihood benefits, is recorded as a conservation victory by Castro. Interestingly he cites Troeng and Drews, Money Talks, (WWF 2004) which was heavily criticized by Moyle in a previous Sustainable, while in another chapter Moyle delivers a not unexpected warning on the potential of the PP for perverse outcomes.

Another contribution of current high relevance is that of Rabinovitch on Project Elé, the Argentinian Government-supported programme for sustainable extraction of small numbers of the blue-fronted parrot, Amazona aestiva, from the Dry Chaco region. At only around 8% of earlier harvests, this replaced what was accepted as an unsustainable system. With many controls, capacity building and monitoring the project is providing modest livelihood benefits. Nevertheless to show that nothing is simple (or that the same facts can produce opposite conclusions) you can read in the Spring 2006 number of Birds, the RSPB members’ magazine , below a large picture of captive blue-fronted parrots, ‘there are no conservation programmes to ensure that the removal of the birds is sustainable’. Moreover the picture was re-inforcing a call in the leading article on the same page for a permanent European ban on the trade in wild birds to follow the temporary suspension now in force due to avian flu. (For an update on the latter see Richard Kock’s article elsewhere in this Sustainable.)

There is much more of interest, both in other case studies and the analytical sections. There is an important reminder that the application of the PP to projected developments such as airports, motorways or hotels in sensitive ecosystems, where decisions are usually irreversible, is a very different case from its use in ongoing management.

In their concluding summary chapter the editors are firm in asserting that PP is a principle to be used flexibly, not an absolute rule to applied in the same way to all situations. Many will sympathise with their conclusion that the PP must be deployed in full appreciation of the specific context, taking into account all relevant human and wildlife factors. In fact just like the CBD Addis Ababa Principles and Guidelines for the Sustainable Use of Biodiversity, which strangely do not get a mention, what they are advocating are inclusive, knowledge-based and equitable approaches to the management of wildlife by humans. Whether the PP can play a useful part in such enterprises depends on who is applying it. We must be grateful to the editors and their co-authors for demythologizing this bogey.

Robin Sharp CB is Editor of Sustainable: robin@sharpcb.freeserve.co.uk

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