“As we continue to look for and pick up bundles we left along the wayside, others will help create new bundles for the journey ahead. For sure these steps will be difficult times filled with hardship. But, unless we start now, the future simply will not exist. And, as their scientists report more and more facts, some of us are already dying. Let's join together now, today and lead the way - the Anishinaabe way. If, as the elders have told us, we are our grandparents dream, then we must today begin dreaming of our grandchildren.”

OUR GOAL AND WHAT THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE IS

We are building alliances that envision a world in which our food, water and air are clean, and our children grow up healthy and thrive. Everyone needs a protected, safe community and workplace, and a natural environment to enjoy. We can make this world vision a reality. The tools we bring to this work are prevention, safety, responsibility and democracy with the foundation of our Indigenous knowledge - our spiritual beliefs.

Our goal is to prevent pollution and environmental destruction before it happens. This is called the precautionary “approach” or “principle” because it is preventive medicine for our environment and health. The precautionary principle states that when there is reasonable suspicion of harm, lack of scientific certainty or consensus must not be used to postpone preventative action. Given the uncertainty, we must act on caution first, science second. When an activity or development raises threatens human health, habitat, ecosystems, the environment and sacred sites, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

The precautionary principle states that if there are reasonable scientific grounds for believing that a new process or product may not be safe, it should not be introduced until we have convincing evidence that the risks are small and are outweighed by the benefits. It can also be applied to existing technologies when new evidence appears suggesting that they are more dangerous than we had thought (as in the case of cigarettes, CFCs, greenhouse gasses and now genetically modified organisms - GMO).

www.ienearth.org/precautionary.html