Founded in June 2003 at the initiative of the Swiss government, the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) is an independent and neutral organisation whose purpose is to help improve the understanding and management of potentially global risks that have impacts on human health and safety, the environment, the economy and society at large. This involves working to develop concepts of risk governance, anticipating major risk issues and providing risk governance policy advice for key decision-makers.
IRGC focuses in particular on emerging, systemic risks for which governance deficits exist, and aims to provide recommendations for how policymakers can correct these deficits. Many of these risks are complex, uncertain, or even ambiguous. In most cases, the potential benefits and risks interconnect. By facilitating a better understanding of these risks and their scientific, political, social, and economic contexts, IRGC aims to foster improvements in risk governance that will ultimately optimise risk-related decision-making and maximise public trust in governance processes and structures.
Where important, global risks are concerned, IRGC considers it essential that the principles of integrated risk governance become accepted and implemented at the very highest levels of decision-making. It believes that, by combining forces and strengthening their scientific research agendas, governments, industry, international and large non-governmental organisations can achieve more coherent and better science-based policymaking, regulation and risk communication, resulting in implementation of the best possible options for governing global risks.
Areas of concern to IRGC include to:
- Champion ignored, neglected and emerging issues
- Mobilise the creation of risk governance cultures in developed and emerging economies
- Help organisations across the globe anticipate and respond to risks more effectively
- Facilitate scientific and technological innovation
- Slow-developing catastophic risks
Read more about International Risk Governance Council: The IRGC Network, Projects, Focus and Work Programme, Why IRGC Was Established
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