08/April/20

 

For years, the precautionary principle (PP) has been under attack, especially from influential right-wing think tanks close to governments. Although the PP is enshrined in Article 191 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, and applied in fields as diverse as health protection, biodiversity management and emerging technologies, there has been little discussion of it recently, even in the context of Brexit – where one might have assumed it would loom large. It constitutes one of the main dividing lines between EU and US approaches to health and environmental regulation, including the different approaches to genetically modified crops and neonicotinoid pesticides. But the COVID-19 pandemic is showing the value of caution as a guiding influence. New Statesman

 

 

COVID-19 has mocked immigration controls, biometrics, digital surveillance and every other kind of data analytics, and struck hardest — thus far — in the richest, most powerful nations of the world, bringing the engine of capitalism to a juddering halt. Temporarily perhaps, but at least long enough for us to examine its parts, make an assessment and decide whether we want to help fix it, or look for a better engine, writes the novelist Arundhati Roy. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. Financial Times