[PART I. Introduction]

Part I aims to clarify when and how the polluter-pays, preventive, and precautionary principles co-exist: complementing, enriching, and in some cases contradicting each other. It stresses that these principles could be best described using three distinct models representing three paradigms of regulation: a curative model, a preventive model, and an anticipatory model. A curative model of nature characterized the early stages of environment policy and shaped the polluter-pays principle. This model was practicable only if accompanied by a preventive policy intended to limit environmental damage. The emergence of increasingly unpredictable risks is at present causing the authorities to base their policy on a third, anticipatory model that gave rise to the precautionary principle. The three principles examined in the first part of this book correspond to the three models described in this introduction.