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Environmental Impact Assessment And The Precautionary Principle: Legislating Caution In Environmental Protection, Warwick Gullett

Faculty of Law - Papers (Archive)

A noteworthy feature of international environmental discourse since the late-1980s has been the shift toward anticipatory policies. Precaution is the leading policy approach that has emerged to guide environmental decision-makers confronted with inadequate information. The "precautionary principle" has found expression in Australia in the 1992 Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment, various Commonwealth environmental management strategies and a number of pieces of Commonwealth and State legislation. It also has been accepted tentatively by the courts as a factor which should be taken into account in appropriate circumstances. However, existing Australian environmental management approaches fail to advance precaution in a substantive manner. …