Risk Governance and PolicyMaking for Emerging Science and Technology

1

• Risk Governance and Policy-Making for Emerging
  Science and Technology
• Professor Robin Williams
• Institute for the Study of Science, Technology
  and InnovationThe University of Edinburgh
• Adapted from presentation to UK-Korea Risk
  Management Workshop, Seoul 12 - 13 March 2007

2
A personal history lesson

• When I started analysing the social implications
  of technology 30 years ago
• people were very afraid about the unemployment,
  deskilling and control effects of
  microelectronics,
• We were still using asbestos as a building
  material
• lasers were seen as weapons
• Today
• if asbestos is discovered in a building
  Millions will be spent taking it out
• my children each have at least 10
  microelectronics based toys
• There is a laser in every supermarket check-out
  and every CD player

3
Central thesis

• Old risk governance regime has been called into
  question e.g. by BSE, GMOs
• New risk governance and policy framework being
  widely adopted eg with genomics and
  nanotechnology
• Lack of evidence that this new risk governance
  regime will resolve problems of risk governance
  of new and emerging science and technology

4
Challenges to the traditional risk governance
regime

• traditional risk governance regime
• focus on expert assessment of health and
  environmental risks e.g. through quantitative
  risk assessment techniques
• Risk probability x effects
• Introduce risk management, based on balance
  between costs of control and risk reduction so
  far as is reasonably practicable

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Challenges to the traditional risk governance
regime

• Problem in applying this to new and emerging
  science and technology, where we find
• Complex risks - hard to assess and manage
• Uncertainty - confidence in risk assessment/
  possibility of error in assessment of extent of
  risk
• Indeterminacy - do our risk models capture the
  risk? may actual risk differ in degree or
  qualitatively from assessment?
• Lack of consensus about risk governance
• Erosion of public trust in existing governance
  mechanisms
• Mad Cow Disease (BSE), biotechnology
• reflected in widespread European public rejection
  of GMO foods

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New risk governance and policy framework

• Attention to a wider range of stakeholders
  (including lay publics)
• Public engagement in policy formation
• some support for upstream engagement at early
  stages of research development
• Wider view of risks than just health and
  environmental hazards ELSIethical, legal and
  social implications

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New risk governance and policy framework

• Emerges with genomics (HuGo)
• Applied to nanotechnology etc.
• Elements of policy mimicry between countries (US,
  EU and beyond)
• risk governance (despite differences re
  precautionary principle)
• Broader science and technology policy
  socialisation - public engagementNBIC
  convergenceCentres of excellence scale
  heterogeneity different disciplines and
  academic/policy/industry players

8
Success of STS perspectives?

• The new risk governance framework
• response to criticisms by science and technology
  studies (STS) and others of traditional risk
  governance model
• it exemplifies STS idealistic vision of how
  change should be introduced in an equitable and
  accountable manner
• HOWEVER
• I have some reservations and concerns

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But, But, But

• Still need traditional risk governance
• UK Royal Society early recommendation for
  specific regulation of nanoparticle health/
  environmental hazards (rapidly gained widespread
  acceptance, partly as this may alleviate other
  concerns)
• New risk etc governance (NRG) framework still
  unproven
• Many issues of NRG are potentially problematic
• How to deal with risk perception/acceptance?
• How to deal with wider social and ethical
  concerns?

10
Nature Leading experts call for strategic
research programme to assess nanotechnology risk

• Safe handling of nanotechnologyThe pursuit of
  responsible nanotechnologies can be tackled
  through a series of grand challenges,
• Without strategic risk research,public confidence
  in Nanotechnologies could be reduced through real
  or perceived dangers. Nature vol 444 16 Nov
  2006 p.267-8.

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Will dialogue produce consensus?

• We have no evidence that wide public dialogue
  will produce consensus about new technologies
• Innogen research by Bruce and Tait distinguishes
  value based from interest based actors
  engaging in risk debates
• With value-based actors, fundamental opposition
  to technology is at stake rather than a question
  of balancing increments of risk and benefit that
  characterised previous (interest-based)
  regulatory negotiations

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Engagement in governance may induce public
responses

• Engagement initiatives seek to induce some public
  response - but will it be the one policymakers
  tacitly desire?
• Engagement as a mode of managing acceptance of
  technology??
• Engagement may elicit anodyne response - people
  happy to proceed with nanotechnology as long as
  its risks are controlled
• Presumes that there is such a thing as
  nanotechnology
• Imputes need to attend to its possible risk
• May elicit exaggerated concern ltltif they are
  asking me it must be seriousgtgt

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Will upstream engagement work?

• Collingridge dilemma (1980) suggests need for
  early involvement
• However 3 decades of science and technology
  studies point to the unpredictability of
  innovation pathways and outcomes
• initial expectations so far removed from ultimate
  outcomes as to be uninformative (Williams,
  Stewart and Slack 2005)
• Linear projections therefore unhelpful
• Need better analytical tools for anticipating
  future risks and to guide risk governance
  (smarter, more humble, empirically-informed)

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The Collingridge dilemma

• At the initial stages of development of a new
  technology, knowledge about its consequences
  (including undesired outcomes) is limited. It is
  therefore difficult to win support for public
  intervention and control.
• Later we have more systematic knowledge about
  costs and benefits of technology, but now change
  is costly and technology is entrenched must
  confront powerful vested interests
• David Collingridge (1980) The social control of
  technology

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Compressed foresight

• Nano as research promoters future vision
• (specialist communities construct expectations
  with research policymakers)
• Public discourse influenced by elements of
  science fiction
• Very high stakes high uncertainties
• Expectations of rapid technical advances and
  enormous economic and social benefit
• Growing anxieties about imagined outcomes
• Tendency to present potential long-term (e.g. 20
  year) outcomes as assured and imminent
• (utopian dystopian views - polarisation)

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Better tools for anticipation

• Avoid linear presumptions about relationship
  between innovation goals and outcomes- e.g.
  ethical process may not yield ethical outcomes
• We can reason about outcomes e.g. some
  innovation processes more linear/predictable than
  others
• Pharmaceuticals innovation - linear/stable -
  choice of materials is key (material) - risk
  governance mechanism creates stable development
  pipeline (institutional). Early intervention
  needed
• ICTs innovation - plural/chaotic configurations
  of devices with equivalent functions leaves much
  choice with intermediate final users. Can
  intervene and reshape at late stage of application

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Tools for analysis and intervention

• We have better tools (more robust
  established) for assessing health and
  environmental risk than other kinds of outcome of
  new technologies
• Risk avoidance - universalistic goals
• features of bodies/ecologies
• choice of materials and how used
• Social impact - particularistic
• values/position of social group
• How technologies are implemented/integrated in
  social practices structures
• Can we build social acceptance criteria? (note
  attempts to define ethical criteria)

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Nanotechnology a suitable case for treatment?

• Why have some technologies become the focus of
  public concern and not others?
• Why nanotechnology?
• US, most EU states and others have nanotech ST
  programmes and Nano ELSA programmes
• Policy mimicry/reinforcement of view about
  technical potential
• Compressed foresight

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What is nanotechnology?

• Danger of treating nanotechnology as a thing
  determinate homogenous entity
• Nano is a bundle of diverse capabilities
  expectations of synergies between them
• Term creates boundaries around the field and
  hierarchies within it
• We should talk of nanotechnologies

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Very different reactions to red and green
biotechnology

• Health applications (red)
• seen as bringing strong benefits - high levels of
  risk and strangeness tolerated
• GMO food
• seen to offer little social benefit cf
  profitThis leads to risk intolerance labeled
  unnatural (Frankenstein foods)
• Black biotechnology
• (yeasts etc in brewing and waste treatment
  accepted without public attention)

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May anticipate similar range of responses to
diverse nanotechnology applications

• Health
• Defense
• Communication
• Public responses will be shaped by
• Social benefits
• How benefits and risks distributed
• Character and novelty of risks and disbenefits
  (seen as transgressive?)

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Distinctions important for health and
environmental risk governance

• Nanotechnologies Different kinds of entity
  nanotextured surfaces, engineered nanotubes and
  spherical engineered nanoparticles? in future,
  engineered nanomachines?
• engineered nanoparticles vs. unwanted or
  unintentionally produced released
• free (can migrate in body or environment) vs.
  fixed nanoparticles (embedded in a matrix)
• coated vs. uncoated NPs (toxicology)
• short lived vs. durable NPs

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Social Learning the need for reflexive innovation

• Introducing any new technological capability
  involves a social learning process
• characterised by incomplete information,
  uncertainty, imperfect communication, conflicts,
  wrong turns, setbacks, expectations unfulfilled,
  unexpected benefits and costs
• Can social research on technology help us promote
  and steer nano development?
• analyse and intervene as nanotechnologies develop
  and are applied
• Learn to develop risk governance
  mechanisms/coping strategies

24

• Thank You

25
The Samsung Silver Nano washing machine

• a comedy of errors and terrors
• Samsung launches Silver Nanowashing machine and
  other domestic appliances claims that ltsilver
  particles sterilise clothesgt
• Machine sells well in Korea success aim to
  market worldwide
• Attracts opposition from anti-nano activists

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Friends of the Earth Australiahttp//nano.foe.org
.au/node/162

• FoE calls for Samsung "Nano Silver" washing
  machine recall in face of growing risk concerns
  In the face of growing concerns about the
  toxicity risks that nano silver poses to
  environmental systems and human health, the US
  Environmental Protection Agency announced that it
  would move to introduce the worlds first
  nanotechnology-specific regulations. The US EPA
  will now move to regulate products that contain
  nano silver and claim to act as anti-bacterial as
  pesticides, including Samsungs Nano Silver range
  of appliances.

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Friends of the Earth Germanyhttp//www.nanowerk.c
om/news/newsid1037.php

• Nanowerk News (16 November 2006) Concerns about
  nanotechnology washing machine The German branch
  of Friends of the Earth, Bund fur Umwelt und
  Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) has warned
  consumers not to buy a new type of washing
  machine that uses silver nanoparticles.

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UK DEFRA Advisory Committee on Hazardous
Substances Discussion 6 March 2007

• The use of silver as biocide in clothing, now
  confirmed to not involve nanoparticles, continues
  to be discussed
• Since the EPA regulation is based on the
  declaration of germ killing properties, one US
  company removed information about silver
  nanoparticles from marketing materials. The
  product itself remained the same. "It sounds
  like a major legal loophole and is probably
  something that will have to be dealt with in the
  courts" Mae Wu, Natural Resources Defense
  Council attourney
• Berkeley (CA) city government is to amend its
  hazardous materials laws so that researchers and
  manufacturers have to report what nanomaterials
  they are working with

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Korea nanotechnology policy

• 2001 MoST Comprehensive Plan for Nanotechnology
  Development US 1.3 billion over 10 years
• 2003 Nanotechnology Development Promotion Act
  (NDPA)
• Article 19 government should assess in advance
  the economic, social, cultural, ethical, and
  environmental consequences of nanotechnology
  development and industrialization, and
  incorporate results into policy

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Korea nanotechnology policy

• Technology Assessments undertaken by Korea
  Institute of ST Evaluation Planning (KISTEP)
  under 2001 Framework Act on Science and
  Technology
• Policy mainly influenced by policymakers and
  innovation communities (science industry)
• Also involvement of social science etc experts
  and NGOs including Green Korea and Citizens
  Coalition for Economic Justice
• How much public involvement in/awareness of nano
  debates?

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Traditional risk governance modelACCEPTABLE,
TOLERABLE AND INTOLERABLE RISKS
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The Certainty TroughDonald MacKenzie
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The Precautionary Principle

• 1984Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution,
  10th Report Tackling pollution - experience and
  prospectsPrecautionary principle'Evidence that is
  not conclusive when judged by the conventions
  adopted in scientific research may yet be
  reasonable cause for concern to those who have to
  act on it outside the laboratory. The politician
  or manager who must decide what action to take
  now cannot wait for the rigorous proof that is
  properly demanded by the referee of a scientific
  journal. For those responsible for the well-being
  of the public and the protection of the
  environment there will sometimes be a difference
  between what can be believed with confidence and
  what in the absence of certainty it is prudent to
  assume.' (Quoted in the 12th Report of the Royal
  Commission on Environmental Pollution Best
  Practicable Environmental Option, London, HMSO,
  1988, p. 11, para. 2.30.)