Prevention, Precaution, Logic and Law: The Relationship between the Precautionary Principle and the Preventative Principle in International Law and Associated Questions
The main purpose of this article is to promote clarification of the relationship between the precautionary principle and the prevent(at)ive principle in public international law. One of the questions addressed in this connection is whether the presence of uncertainty is a condition for the applicability of the precautionary principle. The article stresses and discusses the distinction between preventative and precautionary logic on the one hand and the corresponding legal principles on the other hand. It concludes, among other things, that in the international law of the environment the precautionary principle must be regarded as having absorbed the preventative principle or, alternatively, as being its most developed form. The widespread endorsement of the precautionary principle has thus made the continued existence of a separate preventative principle in international law superfluous
