Risk communication helps companies, governments and institutions minimize disputes, resolve issues and anticipate problems before they result in an irreversible breakdown in communications. Without good risk communication and good risk management, policy-makers have no road map to guide them through unforeseen problems which frequently derail the best policies and result in a breakdown in communications and a loss of trust among those they are trying hardest to persuade. Most policy-makers still use outdated methods — developed at a time before health scares such as BSE, genetically modified organisms and uranium-tipped shells eroded public confidence in industry and government — to communicate policies and achieve their objectives. Good risk communication is still possible, however. In this book, through the use of a host of case studies, I identify a series of methods that are being used in a post-trust society. That said, there is no such thing as a formula for risk communication. The same risk communication strategy may have different outcomes depending on the audience, the country, and context in which it is used. A strategy for managing risk in the USA, for example, may be wholly inappropriate in a European context.
Risk management encompasses a series of strategies or models. Max Weber, for example, defines four risk management ‘ideal types’:(a)political regulatory process, including litigation;(b)public deliberation;(c)the technocratic /scientific perspective;(d)risk management on strict economic grounds.1
These ideal types can be represented graphically (see Figure 2.1). This graphic illustration originates from Parson’s description of society,2 which was then developed and refined by Ortwin Renn in a number of articles in the 1990s (the one published in German in 1996 is the most significant).3
This case study examines the proposed siting and building of one incinerator and two aerobic waste digesters in the North Black Forest region of Germany. The risk management tool used was that of deliberation, more specifically a citizen advisory board, and is a good example of the deliberative approach, since the principal actors eventually agreed where the waste incinerator should be sited. This was no easy task. There was a deep, ingrained distrust between the public and the proposers of the two waste solutions. The public, media and the local policy-makers, moreover, were initially hostile to the use of the citizen advisory boards to help find a solution.
If we examine the ideal types summarized in Chapter 2, the USA case stands out. It encompasses all four components in varying degrees. The regulatory regime used more openly in the USA than other countries surveyed in this book is a rational risk policy on strict economic grounds. This, highlighted by the OMB’s active involvement in regulatory policy-making in the USA, was an approach first made popular in the Nixon and Ford administrations. Cost-benefit analysis, cost-life analysis, and so on are therefore frequently invoked in the policy-making process. The USA also has a technocratic/expert element branch in regulation. An example of this is the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, which is frequently asked to comment on proposed regulations.1 The US regulatory system also has a well-advanced deliberative component. Initially enshrined in legislation (e.g., the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970) which actively encourages public and interest group participation in the policy-making process, it has more recently embraced negotiated rule-making, made law in the 1990 Negotiated Rulemaking Act.
This case study examines the Swedish Nuclear Inspectorate’s and Sydkraft’s successful communication and management strategy in the aftermath of an INES 2 (nuclear accident of the second lowest severity) incident at the Barsebäck nuclear power plant in southern Sweden in 1992. Sydkraft (the owner of the nuclear plant) and special interest groups, such as Greenpeace Denmark, felt that the Inspectorate handled the situation, that of a near-miss meltdown of a reactor after a filter blockage, properly. The example is all the more striking because a technocratic form of risk management was used, with virtually no involvement of the public or special interest groups in the policy-making process. In addition, a top-down form of risk communication strategy was put in place rather than a dialogue form.
This case study examines the communication and management strategy of both Shell and the British Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) during the proposed dumping of the redundant oil storage buoy, Brent Spar, in the North Sea in the spring of 1995, and its occupation by Greenpeace demonstrators. A technocratic form of risk management was used, with virtually no involvement of the public or special interest groups in the policy-making process. In addition, a top-down form of risk communication strategy was put in place rather than a dialogue form. It is an example of an unsuccessful technocratic approach. Both in the UK and elsewhere the public sided with Greenpeace against the DTI and Shell. These results, however, are not particularly surprising. Following a series of scandals running from salmonella in eggs to mad cow disease, the British public has little trust in government regulators or of industry as a whole.1
The case studies in this book illustrate the importance of the level of public trust in determining the best risk management strategy to employ. This concluding chapter examines the factors that appear most relevant for effective regulation in different contexts and synthesizes them into a decision tree for risk managers. Three major lessons emerge from the case studies as to what leads to effective regulation in various situations, and these will be summarized below.
