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COST Workshop: Global Environmental Risk Governance under Conditions of Scientific Uncertainty: Legal, Political and Social Transformations
Date: May 2-3, 2012
Place: Faculty of Law Bar Ilan University, Israel
One of the prominent features of the contemporary society, as it enters into the second decade of the 21st 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.
Policy makers find themselves perplexed about how best to balance the multiple voices and discursive logics involved in such risk-disputes. A particular point of tension is the interaction between experts and lay citizens. This tension is exacerbated at the transnational arena, where the decision-making process is not always embedded in a robust political structure. While governments face the risk-regulatory challenge, private transnational regulators take their place. Private transnational regulation takes various forms, ranging from companies’ internal codes of conducts to international harmonized technical standards and more general policy guidelines. Overall, this transformation indicates a shift from state-centered regulatory structures to polycentric structures.
While some questions concerning transformative change in risk governance have been widely discussed in the academic literature it seems that there is still a lot to be done – at both the theoretical and practical levels. The workshop will explore several themes:
- Transformation of Global Environmental Risk Governance: Institutional Architecture and Inter-linkages.
- The Conceptualization of Risk Under conditions of Scientific Uncertainty and Cultural Pluralism.
- The Role of Science, Scientific Communities and Scientific Institutions in Global Environmental Risk Governance.
- The Articulation of the Precautionary Principle in the Transnational Domain: Fragmentation or Harmonization?
- Implications for Democratization and Legitimacy: Participation, Transparency and Accountability.
The workshop hopes to contribute in general to our understanding of the dynamic of global risk governance. Specifically it aims to contribute to the development of a sociologically and politically more nuanced understanding of the process of regulatory decision-making at the transnational risk-domain – focusing on the challenges of scientific uncertainty and cultural pluralism. We plan to choose a limited number of papers to enable in-depth discussion at the workshop, with each paper receiving detailed feedback by a discussant and the other participants. The conference organisers will explore potential avenues for publication (edited volume or special issue in a suitable journal).
Participants from countries that are members of the COST Action IS0802 will receive reimbursement of costs for travel and accommodation in accordance with applicable COST rules. For more information, go to http://www.transformation-geg.org/ or contact Ms Kathrin Ludwig (kathrin.ludwig@ivm.vu.nl).
Workshop organizers: Oren Perez, Reut Snir
The deadline for proposals is January 10, 2012.
The full call for papers can be downloaded below.
