Environmental Risk Governance Research Articles

Surveillance of public risk perceptions on outdoor air pollution: evidence from online search behaviours in China

Severe outdoor air pollution in China has long constituted a threat to public health and environmental governance efficiency. Surveillance of online search behaviours that reflect real-time public risk perception and behavioural responses on environmental issues is essential in improving environmental governance. However, owing to the absence of an appropriate analytical framework, quantitative evidence of analysing online data is scarce in the extant research. To address this research gap, we analysed Baidu search indexes (BSI) keywords relevant to the public risk perception and behavioural responses on outdoor air pollution by a surveillance framework consisting of two parallel steps (prediction and monitoring). The proposed framework may improve environmental risk governance efficiency and benefit environmental risk governance policy decision-making through considering real-time public risk perceptions and behavioural response information. Using online search behaviour data, this study adds to the methodology for improving the efficacy of environmental social risk governance.

Citizen Sensing from a Legal Standpoint: Legitimizing the Practice under the Aarhus Framework

Abstract ‘Citizen sensing’, grassroots-driven environmental monitoring, could revolutionize environmental risk governance and decision-making. Yet, citizen sensing is far from being accepted by governmental authorities. This contribution explores the environmental law doctrine and legislation for a possible legal basis on which the ‘sensing citizens’ could perform their actions. I argue that the practice, by nature, voices the citizen’s claims to have access to (accurate) environmental information. I defend that citizen sensing is a legitimate manifestation of ‘rights in action’ that can enhance the respect of human environmental rights and promote their enforcement. This study demonstrates how, from the Aarhus Convention framework, an obligation for competent authorities to ‘listen’ to the sensing citizens might even be constructed in case of institutional informational gaps and failures.

The Power of Place

Investigating the role of geographical location in public engagement with science we examine the West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS) Partnership’s undertaking of one of the most extensive local public engagements with environmental risk science in the UK. The case study highlights the transformative impacts of this three-year long local engagement on both science and the public. Differently from other invited public engagements, organised as experiments controlled by scientists in spaces set aside from the everyday, the Partnership’s lay members led a process unfolding in the place that was potentially at risk. The Partnership had the authority to demand that scientists addressed issues of local interest. We frame the analysis with the notions ‘re-situating technoscience' and ‘re-assembling the public' to illuminate how scientific knowledge claims were modified and a new local public emerged, at the intersection of public engagement with science and public participation in environmental risk governance.

Engaging with Comparative Risk Appraisals: Public Views on Policy Priorities for Environmental Risk Governance.

Communicating the rationale for allocating resources to manage policy priorities and their risks is challenging. Here, we demonstrate that environmental risks have diverse attributes and locales in their effects that may drive disproportionate responses among citizens. When 2,065 survey participants deployed summary information and their own understanding to assess 12 policy‐level environmental risks singularly, their assessment differed from a prior expert assessment. However, participants provided rankings similar to those of experts when these same 12 risks were considered as a group, allowing comparison between the different risks. Following this, when individuals were shown the prior expert assessment of this portfolio, they expressed a moderate level of confidence with the combined expert analysis. These are important findings for the comprehension of policy risks that may be subject to augmentation by climate change, their representation alongside other threats within national risk assessments, and interpretations of agency for public risk management by citizens and others.

An Estoppel-Based Approach to Enforcing Corporate Environmental Responsibilities

Within the regulatory space that exists at the intersection of UK company law and environmental regulation, the business community has generated its own environmental governance initiatives to address growing anxiety about companies’ externalised risk. Yet, there is currently nothing in law to prevent companies from frequently acting inconsistently with these voluntary unilateral assurances, which has led to widespread concern that environmental values are treated as merely instrumental to the dominant idea of achieving economic benefits for the company. This article examines a specific case for the legal facilitation of binding obligations owed to the environment, which require a company to make good on its previous commitments about environmental responsibility. It seeks to demonstrate that this is possible through the common law doctrine of estoppel, which can be opened up to prevent a company from acting inconsistently with its previous statements or actions about the governance of environmental risk.

Unsettling Neoliberal Rationalities: Engaged Ethnography and the Meanings of Responsibility in the Dominican Republic and Mexico

AbstractNeoliberal urban environmental governance is premised in part on the development of collaborative arrangements between state and non‐state actors through which residents in informal settlements are encouraged to participate in their own governance. The neoliberal rationality of participation is implemented through governmental techniques such as responsibilization, whereby residents are rendered responsible for provision of basic environmental services previously seen as the responsibility of government authorities. However, neoliberal urban governance is incomplete, fragmented and fractured, affording room for maneuvering and innovative social agency, whereby residents mimic, reinterpret, negotiate and contest neoliberal subject formations. In this article, we discuss how engaged scholarship can facilitate such alternative productions of neoliberal subjectivities through the development of ‘knowledge encounters'. We draw on cases of solid waste management and environmental risk governance in the informal settlements of Los Platanitos, Santo Domingo Norte, Dominican Republic, and Gaviotas Sur, Villahermosa, Mexico, to suggest that knowledge encounters facilitated through engaged ethnography furnish stages for alternative conceptions of responsibility, whereby residents negotiate neoliberal techniques of governance through diverse forms of acquiescence, reconfiguration and contestation.

A multisector alliance approach to environmental social movements: flame retardants and chemical reform in the United States

Research on environmental social movements often focuses on movements that target a limited spectrum of policy outcomes and that mobilize primarily around a relatively narrow swath of environmental issues. Through a case study of research and advocacy around flame retardant (FR) chemicals, we describe an unusual multisector alliance involving a broad coalition of participants and multiple levels of state and non-state targets aimed at influencing environmental governance of potentially toxic chemicals. This issue has brought together environmental and health activists, scientists, regulators, firefighters, fire safety professionals, journalists, hospital and building sustainability experts, and manufacturers and retailers. Our research draws on analysis of 126 in-depth interviews, literature and website reviews, and observations at an FR manufacturing company, government regulatory and research offices, and scientific and advocacy conferences. As part of the multisector alliance around FR regulations, many parties play a role in defining and acting on environmental health risks, with significant emphasis on public engagement in science and the impact of media. In these ways, the FR coalition partners have highlighted a new participatory form of environmental risk governance.

Reinventing rules for environmental risk governance in the energy sector

The debate over expert versus laypeople participation in risk analysis has deep theoretical roots. It also has practical implications, with both camps often attempting to assign the blame for shortcomings in risk analysis to the other side's faulty approach. A fairly recent concept in risk analysis, risk governance attempts to put the strengths of each camp into productive use by making them work together toward the same goal. Yet the legal and regulatory frameworks for implementation of the non-technical context of risk governance, as well as the underlying theoretical concepts, need development. This paper attempts to elaborate on the theoretical foundations of the debate and its practical applications, and propose an agenda for future research.

Unravelling science-policy interactions in environmental risk governance of the Baltic Sea: comparing fisheries and eutrophication

Interactions between scientific assessments and management decision-making are key determinants for the efficiency of environmental risk governance. This applies particularly to marine ecosystems like the Baltic Sea, where fisheries and eutrophication pose serious threats connected to environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability. Using contemporary science-policy theory, this paper investigates structures, challenges and prospects of science-policy interfaces connected to fisheries and eutrophication governance in the Baltic Sea. We analyse and compare the two cases with respect to two aspects: first the design and organisational structures of the institutional frameworks and second the management of uncertainties and stakeholder disagreements in the two risk cases. The analyses reveal how conventional natural science-based policy-making is insufficient for the requirements of complex environmental governance arenas like fisheries and eutrophication. Both cases show a high, almost exclusive, dependence on science-based advice regarding the organisational and institutional structures of their science-policy interfaces. They also expose remarkable differences with respect to stakeholder disagreements about the interplay between science, other knowledge and policy decisions. In the eutrophication case, consensual science-based advice shaped policy decisions in a comparatively uncomplicated manner. In fisheries by contrast, stakeholder disagreements and different interpretations of scientific uncertainties created serious confusions about the basic role of science in policy. We identify and discuss factors contributing to the observed differences in the science-policy interplay of fisheries and eutrophication management. Our results highlight a misleading conceptual understanding of science-policy interfaces between the normative idea of objective, science-based policy-making and the political challenges of dealing with the social aspects of uncertainty and stakeholder disagreements in environmental risk governance.

Global Environmental Risk Governance under Conditions of Scientific Uncertainty: Legal, Political and Social Transformations

Introduction One of the prominent features of the contemporary society, as it enters into the second decade of the 21 century, is an increased anxiety over ‘risks’. The potential adverse effects of industrial development and technological innovation have been the subject of wide-spreading social concern, leading to a surge in the number of risk-disputes involving environmental contamination, contested illness and novel technologies (Royal-Commission-on-Environmental-Pollution 2008; Janka and Maldarelli 2004; Brown 2007; Corburn 2005 ). These risk-disputes are taking place against a diverse institutional background, reflecting a continuing struggle over epistemic authority and the control of policy-making process (O'Malley 2009; Kahan 2009; Frickel and Moore 2007). Further, in many cases these risk-disputes take place at the transnational arena, reflecting global public 'bads' (climate change), trade-related health issues (trade in GMOS/Nano products) or other cross-national health concerns (SARS).

Employing the citizens' jury technique to elicit reasoned public judgments about environmental risk: insights from an inquiry into the governance of microbial water pollution

Devising policy instruments and interventions that can manage and mitigate the risks associated with microbial watercourse pollution is a significant concern of the contemporary environmental protection agenda. This paper reports on the work of a citizens' jury that sought to elicit reasoned public judgments about the nature and acceptability of these risks as they relate to the role of livestock farming, and what might constitute socially acceptable and sustainable pathways to their management. By exploring this issue through a logical and sequential process of risk characterisation, risk assessment and risk management, the paper reveals how citizens' juries can be used to contextualise and structure science-policy apprehensions of microbial watercourse pollution, and highlight where priorities for innovation and intervention might lie. Reactions and responses of participants to the jury process and its outputs, including issues of social and practical impact of the exercise, are also considered. The jury technique is argued to be useful in the way it cuts across disparate domains of responsibility and expertise for the governance of environmental risks, and therein challenges decision makers to think more broadly about the political, moral and economic framings of otherwise narrowly conceived science-policy problems.

Framing Environmental Risks in the Baltic Sea: A News Media Analysis

Scientific complexity and uncertainty is a key challenge for environmental risk governance and to understand how risks are framed and communicated is of utmost importance. The Baltic Sea ecosystem is stressed and exposed to different risks like eutrophication, overfishing, and hazardous chemicals. Based on an analysis of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, this study discusses media representations of these risks. The results show that the reporting on the Baltic Sea has been fairly stable since the beginning of the 1990s. Many articles acknowledge several risks, but eutrophication receives the most attention and is also considered the biggest threat. Authorities, experts, organizations, and politicians are the dominating actors, while citizens and industry representatives are more or less invisible. Eutrophication is not framed in terms of uncertainty concerning the risk and consequences, but rather in terms of main causes.

Complex Governance to Cope with Global Environmental Risk: An Assessment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

In this article, a framework is suggested to deal with the analysis of global environmental risk governance. Climate Change is taken as a particular form of contemporary environmental risk, and mobilised to refine and characterize some salient aspects of new governance challenges. A governance framework is elaborated along three basic features: (1) a close relationship with science, (2) an in-built reflexivity, and (3) forms of governmentality. The UNFCCC-centered system is then assessed according to this three-tier framework. While the two-first requisites are largely met, the analysis of governmentality points to some institutional weak spots.

Governance of environmental risk: New approaches to managing stakeholder involvement

Disputes concerning industrial legacies such as the disposal of toxic wastes illustrate changing pressures on corporations and governments. Business and governments are now confronted with managing the expectations of a society increasingly aware of the social and environmental impacts and risks associated with economic development and demanding more equitable distribution and democratic management of such risks. The closed managerialist decision-making of the powerful bureaucracies and corporations of the industrial era is informed by traditional management theory which cannot provide a framework for the adequate governance of these risks. Recent socio-political theories have conceptualised some key themes that must be addressed in a more fitting approach to governance. We identify more recent management and governance theory which addresses these themes and develop a process-based approach to governance of environmental disputes that allows for the evolving nature of stakeholder relations in a highly complex multiple stakeholder arena.

Corporations and the Governance of Environmental Risk

The authors sketch a framework within which the contributions to this theme issue can be understood. In particular, they discuss various frames of reference or ways of thinking that can be brought to bear on the challenges that arise in evaluating attempts to govern environmental risks. The discussion is divided into three sections. First, they discuss the factors that have led to the emergence of new ways of governing those corporate activities that are associated with the generation or management of environmental risks. Second, they problematise these new forms of governance, adopting the United Nation's Global Compact as an example, and drawing particularly on the insights derived from the contrasting perspectives associated with communicative and strategic action. As an alternative to both of these perspectives, they next focus on the Foucauldian concept of governmentality. The need for analyses to consider (a) the nature of the ways in which different risks are problematised, (b) the character of different governance regimes, (c) the significance of the organising ideals that guide the operation, and (d) the evolution of the multidimensional processes through which risks are governed, are highlighted. They conclude by suggesting that new ‘governmental technologies’ are unlikely to enable either ‘governance at a distance’, for instance, by creating opportunities for new forms of engagement and new spaces of accountability, or ‘governance of the self’, for example, by instilling values and developing technologies which allow corporations to govern their own activities more effectively.

Risk, regulation and the right to know: exploring the impacts of access to information on the governance of environmental risk

AbstractWithin the context of broader debates on the potential of more open, inclusive and deliberative approaches to decision‐making, this paper examines the influence that enhanced access to environmental information has had on the governance of industry in the UK. After considering the extent to which information on emissions from industrial sites is practicably accessible to stakeholders, it examines the strategies that the different actors have adopted as a response to the provision of enhanced access to environmental information. In so doing, it highlights the pros and cons of greater transparency and more open engagement from the perspective of regulators, industry, community and pressure groups. It then assesses the impacts of access to information, both on the governance networks through which the different actors interact in an attempt to influence the emissions of the chemicals sector and on the environmental outcomes associated with these networks. It concludes that the provision of access to information has been associated with the emergence of new forms of engagement between regulators, industry and stakeholder groups and that this has coincided with (but has not been the main cause of) dramatic improvements in the environmental performance of the associated firms. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Science and precaution in the appraisal of electricity supply options

The technological risks associated with electricity generating options are a crucial consideration in the governance of energy strategies. Conversely, many central issues in the broader social debate over the governance of environmental risk (such as acid gas emissions, radioactive waste management, nuclear safety and global climate change) relate very strongly to technology choice in the electricity supply sector. The particularities of this field, therefore, offer a topical and pertinent case with which to explore the relationship between science and precaution in the governance of technological risk. By reference to the electricity sector, the present paper examines the contrasts between ‘risk-based’ and ‘precautionary’ approaches to the governance of risk, paying particular attention to the problems of intractable uncertainties and divergent values. A number of theoretical and methodological issues in conventional risk-assessment and cost–benefit analysis are examined and their practical implications for appraisal explored. Attention then turns to the form that might be taken by approaches to the governance of energy risks that are at the same time scientifically well-founded and precautionary. Conclusions are drawn for decision and policy making in this area.

Governing environmental risk: regulation, insurance and moral economy

In this article I examine the governance of environmental risks produced by business. I disagree with Ulrich Beck that we now live in a distinct ‘risk society’ which renders science, government and business impotent in managing risk. However, I argue that centralized state regulation (and its corollary in commercial insurance) discourages relationships of mutual responsibility between private actors, exacerbating any so-called ‘tragedy of the commons’. This limits the effectiveness of both public regulation and private incentives, such as liability, in altering corporate behaviour. I then examine institutional arrangements which encourage mutual regulation between private actors. Governments are increasingly attempting to enrol this ‘moral economy’, which exists within business groups such as mutual insurance clubs. Although reinforcing some limitations of traditional governmentality these co-operative arrangements may enhance corporate environmental performance.