On The Precautionary Principle In International Law

Precautionary principle is a new principle in international environmental law. This principle means that precautionary approaches should be taken even there is no sufficient scientific evidences of a relationship between reason and result for avoiding serious or irreversible damages in the fields of environment,biology,human health and so on. As an elemental principle in international environmental law, the intention of precautionary principle is to prevent the risks which cause the damages of human health,biology,nature resource, but the procedure and the result may relate to the trade. Therefore, how to balance trade and environment under precautionary principle is a question in the agenda.Whereas the disputes concerning the definition and application of precautionary in the research and practice, the author try to discuss the status of precautionary principle in current international law and present the own opinion of the development and improvement of this principle by collecting the documents, taking comparative research and analyzing cases.There are four parts in this dissertation:First part concerns the summary of precautionary principle. The dissertation begins with the emergence and definition of precautionary principle, than introduces the historical development, discuss the mental base and inevitability of the Emergence of Precautionary Principle.Second part concerns the presentation of precautionary principle in international law. The author discuss the current situation of precautionary principle in current international law by studying involved attitude and practice of international law and international organizations, such as WTO, EU .Third part concerns the attitude and practice of some countries to precautionary principle. The author comes to the conclusion that precautionary principle has been embedded in domestic law by analyzing the law of America,France,Australia,Canada. Meanwhile, this part also contains Chinese situation of application of precautionary principle.Fourth part concerns the development trend and system design of precautionary principle. The author discuss primarily the status of precautionary principle in current international law, come to conclusion that precautionary principle should have further development, and express the suggestions ( having new meaning, opening environmental information, considering proportional principle and fixing procedural standard ) for improving the precautionary principle.The conclusion of this dissertation is that we should make more efforts to improve the precautionary principle for solving environmental problems and balancing trade and environment.