Should we risk it? Exploring environmental, health, and technological problem solving

Abstract

Risk assessment and management is increasingly permeating almost any discipline in which decisions have to be made regarding human well–being. A diverse array of government agencies in developed countries regulates the use of substances in foods and medicines, and the production, transportation, and emission into the environment of potentially harmful products. Risk analysis is at the core of procedures from which intervention management and regulations eventually emerge. Most NGOs follow similar procedures for their assistance and relief policies for developing economies. Financial risk analysis companies are mushrooming all over the world. Although far less developed, risk assessment is also inching its way into the ecological arena. Risk analysis is right in the middle of the swampy issue of deriving policy from science, just one step before the point where values, preferences, attitudes, and beliefs merge with applied science to produce management policies and regulations (i.e. where ‘the rubber meets the road’).