Background of the RISKGOV project

Many situations where risk — be it radiological, chemical or of some other nature — gives rise to social concerns, end up with a lack of confidence in science itself, in institutions and in collective decision making processes. As the various actors radicalise their position, it results in an increasing inability to conduct a reasonable dialogue or even to a rejection of technological developments.

In this respect, blockage of decision could have significant economic consequences not only for industry, but for society as a whole, depriving it of new opportunities. Moreover sub-optimal risk management also may enhance the risks themselves and lead to delays in resolving important issues for health and the environment, when larger risks are addressed too slow or too little in comparison with smaller risks, or in a too short-term perspective, when resources for risk assessment and management are misallocated. More specifically, for the radiological exposures from environmental discharges, the question emerged to determine how far to go into the reduction of the risk in the perspective of the implementation of the ALARA approach, as well as in the perspective of the application of the OSPAR convention.

Sustainable development also challenges current risk governance systems. When the resource base for human survival is currently threatened by e.g. large scale accidents, releases into the environment with impact for future generations, climatic change, deforestation and loss of biological diversity, progress through science in e.g. pharmaceuticals, genetic engineering and new energy systems is needed to enhance efficiency and save resources to enlarge the resource base. Failures in management of the associated risks may hamper worthwhile technological progress.

In the 90's, the traditional background for risk assessment and management was widely criticised. It was recognised that the large uncertainties associated with the evaluation and the disagreement between experts had negative effects on the risk management and public risk acceptability. Facing the lack of social trust, the development of new risk management approaches has emerged oriented towards a larger involvement of the different stakeholders and taking into account the specific context of risk situations.

In this context, reflections started in 1997 in the TRUSTNET European concerted action involving decision makers from public authorities, elected representatives, NGOs, decision makers from industry, and experts. These reflections focused on situations of risk where public confidence and social trust are affected. The following definition of risk governance was proposed: "Risk governance is the sum of political, social, legal, ethical, scientific and technical components that permit the operation of hazardous activities". Risk assessment and management take place in the context of a global governance system where specific actors are entrusted with the task of assessing and managing the risks.

Concerning the quality of risk governance, the TRUSTNET reflections stressed that the most suitable risk governance system remains the one that the different concerned components of society consider as reasonable, reaching concrete and applicable decisions within accepted political processes, meeting several objectives such as to:

• provide a level of protection which is widely recognised as acceptable,
• ban activities where the combination of risk and societal concerns is too high, not justified for the concerned actors,
• promote accountability and autonomy of the concerned actors in the risk taking process (empowerment, capacity building),
• make sure that risk exposure is equitable among society,
• allow sustainable development and give access to worthwhile scientific and technological developments that may help to solve the current and future social concerns,
• give the concerned actors access to a pluralistic review of scientific opinions on risk,
• allow efficient collective decision-making, as regards costs and delays,
• ensure that protection resources are allocated in an efficient way,
• facilitate rehabilitation or resolution in case of accidents or emergencies and to prevent social crisis,
• contribute to improve Social Trust and Confidence among Stakeholders, Public Authorities and Experts.