Enabling regulatory innovation: precaution, risk, and new approach methodologies

The precautionary principle, a risk management tool used to justify deliberations and actions to prevent potential risks, has guided environmental policy development and implementation, both legally and culturally, and its application may play a pivotal role in the formal adoption of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) in next generation environmental risk assessment. We consider the pace of NAM integration in environmental risk assessment and ask how, and why, a disconnect exists between policy development (where one finds precaution used as an argument for the adoption of NAMs) and policy implementation (where one finds precaution used as an argument against the adoption of NAMs). Reviewing how the precautionary principle is invoked in the Canadian context, we explore how competing interpretations of 'precaution' and 'risk' can be used to justify both regulatory action and inaction, hamstringing regulatory innovation related to the validation and acceptance of NAMs. Clarification among stakeholders of convergent and divergent interpretations and hence application of these concepts in practice is recommended to increase confidence in NAMs, providing a way forward for their incorporation in environmental risk assessment.