The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms)

TL;DR

This paper refines the Precautionary Principle to better address uncertainty and systemic risks, especially in the context of genetically modified organisms, emphasizing the importance of limits on GMO use to prevent global harm.

Contribution

It formalizes a non-naive version of the Precautionary Principle within a probabilistic framework, distinguishing between different risk types and applying it to GMO regulation.

Findings

GMO risks are classified as systemic and associated with fat tails.

The formal framework highlights the need for strict limits on GMOs.

Comparison shows GMO risks are potentially more severe than nuclear energy.

Abstract

We present a non-naive version of the Precautionary (PP) that allows us to avoid paranoia and paralysis by confining precaution to specific domains and problems. PP is intended to deal with uncertainty and risk in cases where the absence of evidence and the incompleteness of scientific knowledge carries profound implications and in the presence of risks of "black swans", unforeseen and unforeseable events of extreme consequence. We formalize PP, placing it within the statistical and probabilistic structure of ruin problems, in which a system is at risk of total failure, and in place of risk we use a formal fragility based approach. We make a central distinction between 1) thin and fat tails, 2) Local and systemic risks and place PP in the joint Fat Tails and systemic cases. We discuss the implications for GMOs (compared to Nuclear energy) and show that GMOs represent a public risk of global harm (while harm from nuclear energy is comparatively limited and better characterized). PP should be used to prescribe severe limits on GMOs.