International Risk Governance Council - Why IRGC Was Established

Why IRGC Was Established

IRGC’s establishment followed the heightened level of public concern about risks and their management in the late 1990s. The cumulative impact of the BSE (Mad Cow Disease) crisis in Europe and particularly the UK, apprehension about genetic engineering, fears of the global failure of IT systems (the “Millennium Bug”) and an increase in the frequency and severity of natural disasters gave the impression that society appeared on the verge of losing control of a number of risks. This anxiety compounded other public concerns about the increasing speed of technological change and the difficulties facing governments, regulators and others involved in risk governance in fully assessing and controlling the associated risks. The knowledge community, those responsible for providing the best scientific advice on which risk management decisions depend, were also encountering difficulties in meeting the demands for factual certainty; where this was clearly established, there were problems in communicating the knowledge to the decision-making community. Decision-makers were themselves struggling with problems which included the burgeoning volume of data, the sheer pace of technical and natural developments, the increase in public expectation of effective risk management and organisational and ownership changes affecting how, and by whom, risk decisions are made.

It was against this background that, in early 1999, the 10th Forum Engelberg, an annual gathering in Switzerland of scientists, government leaders and heads of industry, concluded by resolving to create an independent, international body to bridge the increasing gaps between science, technological development, decision-makers and the public and, in doing so, act as the catalyst for improvements in the design and implementation of effective risk governance strategies. It was felt that a new organisation would be better able to do this than the many existing risk-related institutions whose single sectoral, disciplinary and/or geographic emphases made it difficult for them to undertake such a broad mandate. Based in Geneva, Switzerland, the IRGC was formally established in 2003.

More recent events confirm that the issue of risk governance remains of the utmost importance. The outbreak of SARS, spreading rapidly through 27 countries and killing 774 of the 8096 people infected, demonstrated the capacity of a new pathogenic virus to cause considerable health risks and to have a substantial economic impact. Losses, both human and economic, continue to increase from natural disasters such as the tsunami of December 2004, Hurricane Katrina, the Pakistan and Sichuan earthquakes and Hurricane Nargis that hit Myanmar in 2008. The fragility of critical infrastructures has been demonstrated in the early 21st Century by the massive blackouts in the US and Canada and across Italy and other European countries. There are concerns about maintaining secure energy supplies and developing sustainable sources of energy. Most prominent of all global risks are those which derive from the impacts of climate change, with side-effects in many unanticipated areas. All such risks have rippling effects and secondary impacts; they all exceed the capacity of any individual country to manage them, reinforcing the need for an organisation such as IRGC to propose governance approaches with global validity.