O princípio da precaução e sua aplicação diante de riscos catastróficos

Abstract

The present paper studies the application of the Precautionary Principle in the face of the catastrophic risks. Environmental disasters have potential impact and complexity, which is why Brazil has developed a branch of law focused on risks and catastrophic damages. Whathever, because it’s a branch differentiated from Environmental Law, his components also have new features. One of them is the Precautionary Principle, which is conceptualized in Environmental Law as a powerful mechanism to deal with scientific uncertainty in the face of the threat of serious or irreversible damage and lack of absolute scientific certainty, and must be irradiated to concretize the decision-maker process within the risk management, subject to compliance with the limits established by the rules of proportionality, no-discrimination (equality), consistency (reasonableness), according to the parameters of the scientific evolution of each place and time. In the face of catastrophic risks, however, the Precautionary Principle acquires a refined form, since in view of graduations and differents intensities, the greater the expect of gravity (verified by the Environmental Impact Assessment), the latter must be more restrictive. Caution for catastrophes should be more sensitive to scientific information because the impact of the disaster is very intense. For this reason, the present work was concerned with the management of catastrophic risks, based on the dimensions of uncertainty, on clarifying the difficult and complex issue with the contributions of the theoric framework specialized in Disasters and Precautionary Principle, allowing to see the way of applying the principle with the lens of antecipation to the catastrophic risks and their damages.