San Francisco adopts precautionary principle
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted the precautionary principle as city and county policy June 17, 2003, a stunning and unprecedented breakthrough in the management of environmental matters in the U.S. The vote carried 8 to 2.
The long political road to the June 17 vote began when San Francisco mayor Willie Brown hired Jared Blumenfeld to head the city's Department of the Environment.
Under Blumenfeld's guidance, San Francisco government spent more than 2 years studying and debating how to integrate the precautionary principle into city- and county-wide policy. It was Blumenfeld who corralled the political resources to put precaution on the agenda in San Francisco.
Source: San Francisco Department of the Environment
Update December 2003:
Update April 2004:
Answering Critiques of Precaution, Part 1, April 15, 2004 Rachel's Environment and Health News # 789
Answering Critiques of Precaution, Part 2, April 29, 2004 Rachel's Environment and Health News # 790
The following is the Text of the San Francisco Precautionary Principle Policy
Chapter 1 Precautionary Principle Policy Statement.
Sec. 100. FINDINGS.The Board of Supervisors finds and declares that:
A. Every San Franciscan has an equal right to a healthy and safe environment. This requires that our air, water, earth, and food be of a sufficiently high standard that individuals and communities can live healthy, fulfilling, and dignified lives. The duty to enhance, protect and preserve San Francisco's environment rests on the shoulders of government, residents, citizen groups and businesses alike.B. Historically, environmentally harmful activities have only been stopped after they have manifested extreme environmental degradation or exposed people to harm. In the case of DDT, lead, and asbestos, for instance, regulatory action took place only after disaster had struck. The delay between first knowledge of harm and appropriate action to deal with it can be measured in human lives cut short.
C. San Francisco is a leader in making choices based on the least environmentally harmful alternatives, thereby challenging traditional assumptions about risk management. Numerous City ordinances including: the Integrated Pest Management Ordinance, the Resource Efficient Building Ordinance, the Healthy Air Ordinance, the Resource Conservation Ordinance, and the Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Ordinance apply a precautionary approach to specific City purchases and activities. Internationally, this model is called the Precautionary Principle.
D. As the City consolidates existing environmental laws into a single Environment Code, and builds a framework for new legislation, the City sees the Precautionary Principle approach as its policy framework to develop laws for a healthier and more just San Francisco. By doing so, the City will create and maintain a healthy, viable Bay Area environment for current and future generations, and will become a model of sustainability.
E. Science and technology are creating new solutions to prevent or mitigate environmental problems. However, science is also creating new compounds and chemicals that are already finding their way into mother's milk and causing other new problems. New legislation may be required to address these situations, and the Precautionary Principle is intended as a tool to help promote environmentally healthy alternatives while weeding out the negative and often unintended consequences of new technologies.
F. A central element of the precautionary approach is the careful assessment of available alternatives using the best available science. An alternatives assessment examines a broad range of options in order to present the public with different effects of different options considering short-term versus long-term effects or costs, and evaluating and comparing the adverse or potentially adverse effects of each option, noting options with fewer potential hazards. This process allows fundamental questions to be asked: "Is this potentially hazardous activity necessary?" "What less hazardous options are available?" and "How little damage is possible?"
G. The alternatives assessment is also a public process because, locally or internationally, the public bears the ecological and health consequences of environmental decisions. A government's course of action is necessarily enriched by broadly based public participation when a full range of alternatives is considered based on input from diverse individuals and groups. The public should be able to determine the range of alternatives examined and suggest specific reasonable alternatives, as well as their short- and long-term benefits and drawbacks.
H. This form of open decision-making is in line with San Francisco's historic Sunshine Act, which allows citizens to have full view of the legislative process. One of the goals of the Precautionary Principle is to include citizens as equal partners in decisions affecting their environment.
I. San Francisco looks forward to the time when the City's power is generated from renewable sources, when all our waste is recycled, when our vehicles produce only potable water as emissions, when the Bay is free from toxins, and the oceans are free from pollutants. The Precautionary Principle provides a means to help us attain these goals as we evaluate future laws and policies in such areas as transportation, construction, land use, planning, water, energy, health care, recreation, purchasing, and public expenditure.
J. Transforming our society to realize these goals and achieving a society living respectfully within the bounds of nature will take a behavioral as well as technological revolution. The Precautionary approach to decision-making will help San Francisco speed this process of change by moving beyond finding cures for environmental ills to preventing the ills before they can do harm.
Sec. 101. THE SAN FRANCISCO PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE.
The following shall constitute the City and County of San Francisco's Precautionary Principle policy. All officers, boards, commissions, and departments of the City and County shall implement the Precautionary Principle in conducting the City and County's affairs The Precautionary Principle requires a thorough exploration and a careful analysis of a wide range of alternatives. Using the best available science, the Precautionary Principle requires the selection of the alternative that presents the least potential threat to human health and the City's natural systems. Public participation and an open and transparent decision making process are critical to finding and selecting alternatives.
Where threats of serious or irreversible damage to people or nature exist, lack of full scientific certainty about cause and effect shall not be viewed as sufficient reason for the City to postpone measures to prevent the degradation of the environment or protect the health of its citizens. Any gaps in scientific data uncovered by the examination of alternatives will provide a guidepost for future research, but will not prevent protective action being taken by the City. As new scientific data become available, the City will review its decisions and make adjustments when warranted.
Where there are reasonable grounds for concern, the precautionary approach to decision-making is meant to help reduce harm by triggering a process to select the least potential threat. The essential elements of the Precautionary Principle approach to decision-making include
1. Anticipatory Action: There is a duty to take anticipatory action to prevent harm. Government, business, and community groups, as well as the general public, share this responsibility.
2. Right to Know: The community has a right to know complete and accurate information on potential human health and environmental impacts associated with the selection of products, services, operations or plans. The burden to supply this information lies with the proponent, not with the general public.
3. Alternatives Assessment: An obligation exists to examine a full range of alternatives and select the alternative with the least potential impact on human health and the environment including the alternative of doing nothing.
4. Full Cost Accounting: When evaluating potential alternatives, there is a duty to consider all the costs, including raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, use, cleanup, eventual disposal, and health costs even if such costs are not reflected in the initial price. Short- and long-term time thresholds should be considered when making decisions.
5. Participatory Decision Process: Decisions applying the Precautionary Principle must be transparent, participatory, and informed by the best available information.
Sec.102. THREE YEAR REVIEW.
No later than three years from the effective date of this ordinance, and after a public hearing, the Commission on the Environment shall submit a report to the Board of Supervisors on the effectiveness of the Precautionary Principle policy.
Sec. 103. LIST OF ALL ENVIRONMENTAL ORDINANCES AND RESOLUTIONS.
The Director of the Department of the Environment shall produce and maintain a list of all City and County of San Francisco ordinances and resolutions which affect or relate to the environment and shall post this list on the Department of the Environment's website.
Sec. 104. CITY UNDERTAKING LIMITED TO PROMOTION OF GENERALWELFARE.
The Board of Supervisors encourages all City employees and officials to take the precautionary principle into consideration and evaluate alternatives when taking actions that could impact health and the environment, especially where those actions could pose threats of serious harm or irreversible damage. This ordinance does not impose specific duties upon any City employee or official to take specific actions. In adopting and undertaking the enforcement of this ordinance, the City and County of San Francisco is assuming an undertaking only to promote the general welfare. It is not assuming, nor is it imposing on its officers and employees, an obligation for breach of which it is liable in money damages to any person who claims that such breach proximately caused injury nor may this ordinance provide any basis for any other judicial relief including, but not limited to a writ of mandamus or an injuction.***************************************
The decision seems to have corporate public relations people extremely worried. Here is what Ross Irvine, President / Corporate Activist of ePublic Relations Ltd has to say about the San Francisco move towards a more environmentally friendly City and County policy.
Environmentalists win victory of unprecedented importance and magnitude:
PR changed globally and foreverEnvironmental activists have won a victory that's so stunning and far-reaching that even they are amazed. It's a win that -- over time-- will have an impact on PR across the United States, North America, and the entire world.
Regardless of the business you're in -- biotechnology, banking, transportation, chemical, nuclear, mining or agriculture -- you will feel its influence. It will stifle innovation, creativity and progress in your company or organization. And, it will change the way you do PR on a day-to-day basis.
On June 17, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted the precautionary principle as the basis for city and county policies.
The precautionary principle is a notoriously vague and imprecise concept for which there are at least 23 definitions. One activist has said, "It (the precautionary principle) is a broad ethical principle.
It can guide us all - workers and environmentalists - in a righteous fight against corporate greed."
It's little wonder that the activist newsletter Rachel's Environment & Health News describes "a city guided by the precautionary principle" as a "dream." Rachel's also said the San Francisco development was "a stunning and unprecedented breakthrough in the management of environmental matters in the U.S."
The precautionary principle made its major public debut in the 1992 United Nations Rio Declaration but has a history that's much longer.
It has been discussed on this web site, its predecessor --EnviroScan, a newsletter distributed by fax in the early and mid 1990s -- and in ePublic Relations presentations to PR and business groups.
Framework for future laws.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors stated: "...the City sees the Precautionary Principle approach as its policy framework to develop laws for a healthier and more just San Francisco."
It goes on to say "Where threats of serious or irreversible damage to people or nature exist, lack of full scientific certainty about cause and effect shall not be viewed as sufficient reason for the City to postpone measures to prevent the degradation of the environment or protect the health of its citizens. Any gaps in scientific data uncovered by the examination of alternatives will provide a guidepost for future research, but will not prevent protective action being taken by the City. As new scientific data become available, the City will review its decisions and make adjustments when warranted."
In this single paragraph, San Francisco discards accepted and effective scientific risk assessment programs. Instead, the mere suspicion that something may cause harm is sufficient to bring an activity to a halt. Furthermore, any gap in knowledge or information-- not matter how small -- can be used to bring an activity to a halt. As a result, if opponents of a technology or residential development ask proponents "Have you thought of this? Have you considered that?" and the answer is "No," the technology or development can be stopped. It's simply impossible to think of -- let alone consider and evaluate -- all alternatives and their implications.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is asking for the impossible when it states "An obligation exists to examine a full (emphasis added) range of alternatives and select the alternative with the least potential impact on human health and the environment including the alternative of doing nothing."
There's no leeway here! The burden on business is great and costly.
San Francisco adoption of the precautionary principle also includes a high degree of public participation with which most corporate and organizational PR folks are unfamiliar.
The board of supervisors says "The alternatives assessment is also a public process because, locally or internationally, the public bears the ecological and health consequences of environmental decisions. A government's course of action is necessarily enriched by broadly based public participation when a full range of alternatives is considered based on input from diverse individuals and groups. The public should be able to determine the range of alternatives examined and suggest specific reasonable alternatives, as well as their short- and long-term benefits and drawbacks."
This opens the doors to international activists in addition to the homegrown variety to become in San Francisco's public participation process. In addition, uninformed, malevolent and self-serving activists individuals and groups now have a role in setting the range of alternatives to be considered in the San Francisco decision-making process.
Business must participate.
Participation in the public process will require business to take part in decision-making from every ad hoc committee to the mayor's office. Failure to do so, will mean business forfeits the right to partake in the final decision and to criticize the final decision. If business isn't there from day one and throughout the process it can't complain that it didn't have the opportunity to make its case.
To cope with this new reality, corporate PR folks need to intensify and broaden their efforts at the local level. This will be necessary in every village, town, and city across the U.S. and eventually around the world. Local PR, not global PR, is the PR challenge of the future. It will usurp crisis PR as the ultimate PR challenge.
The history of the San Francisco precautionary approach and the documentation adopted by the city board of supervisors has been circulated around the world. Just as nuclear-free, GE-free, pesticide-free and smoking-free communities have sprung up around the world, it's only a matter of time before precautionary-principle communities surface everywhere. The model is in place and available.
It only needs to be adapted for use in other communities.
The San Francisco situation illustrates one of the great differences between corporate and activist PR. Corporate PR folks are concerned about the business, the industry, the brand, the next news cycle and media relations. Activist PR folks are concerned about the environment in which business, industry, the brand, the news cycle and media relations are conducted. Corporate PR folks manage issues while activist PR folks manage the context in which issues occur. Put another way, activist PR folks deal with values and visions, corporate PR folks deal with things.The San Francisco board of supervisors talks a great deal about values and visions in the information explaining its adoption of the precautionary principle. For your information and thoughtful consideration the board of supervisors' policy follows.
Read it carefully. Its implications are much broader than described here. PR as you know it has changed forever.
See also:An interesting article discussing the independence of science and the precautionary principle, found in an ISIS Report - www.i-sis.org.uk
25 February 2005:
Which Science or Scientists Can You Trust?SAN FRANCISCO'S RIGHT TO PROTECT ITS CHILDREN IS CHALLENGED AGAIN By Peter Montague. The American Chemistry Council (ACC) -- formerly known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association -- on November 16 filed a second lawsuit against the City of San Francisco, aiming to prevent the City from protecting children from toxic chemicals in toys. San Francisco passed a law in June prohibiting the sale of toys containing six toxic chemicals called phthalates (tha-lates) and another toxicant called bisphenol-A. In October, the ACC and other corporations sued the city in California state court, claiming that state law preempted the city's right to protect children by controlling toxics in toys.
HORMESIS IN PRECAUTIONARY REGULATORY CULTURE: MODELS PREFERENCES AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE
ABSTRACT
The article focuses on flaws in the actual approaches of exposure to a chemical of recipient organisms. It demonstrates the excessive use of arguments based on adverse effects and underlines the necessity to take adaptive effects seriously. Regulators are invited to rethink their inclination to the 'When in doubt, keep it out.' precautionary approach, with results in counter-productive and costly regulations. The authors are clear about the necessity to include hormesis, in the form of a TIE (toxicologically insignificant exposure level) related to the concentration, as a regulatory translation of adaptive effects. This inclusion might well be the 'brake' for the looming 'collision' with reality of the actual linear toxicological models. This analysis includes the advice to EPA, not to follow the 'witch hunt of synthetic chemicals' as embodied in the EU REACH program.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday June 29 2003
updated on Wednesday December 8 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/06/29/san_francisco_adopts_precautionary_principle.htm
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