Suchergebnisse

Systemische Risiken sind das Produkt tiefgreifender und rasanter technologischer, ökonomischer und sozialer Veränderungen, welche die moderne Welt jeden Tag erlebt. Sie sind durch hohe Komplexität, Ungewissheit, Ambiguität und sich allmählich ausbreitende Wirkungen charakterisiert. Aufgrund dieser Eigenschaften überfordern systemische Risiken das etablierte Risikomanagement and erzeugen neue ungelőste Herausforderungen für die Politikgestaltung in der Risikosteuerung. Ihre negativen Auswirkungen sind häufig durchdringend und beeinträchtigen Bereiche jenseits der direkt ersichtlichen Schadensbereiche. Der Artikel bezieht sich auf ein integratives Risikokonzept zur Bewältigung systemischer Risiken, das Bewertungskriterien, unterschiedliche Risikoklassen und entsprechende Managementstrategien berücksichtigt. Wir argumentieren, dass es eines deliberativen Ansatzes im Risikomanagement und in der Politikgestaltung in der Risikosteuerung bedarf, um systemische Risiken vermeiden, mildern oder kontrollieren zu können.

This thematic issue aims at unravelling how the global consensus towards a shift to risk reduction and inclusive disaster governance evolves in everyday governance practices, where roles and responsibilities are evolving and negotiated, permeated by politics of power and legitimacy. It identifies three different dimensions of disaster governance. The first is the formal dimension: the way governance arrangements are designed or meant to work. The second is 'real' governance: the way in which formal governance arrangements manifest and evolve in actual practice. The third is invisible governance: an amalgam of household and neighbourhood-level activities and networks for disaster response that happen outside of the gaze of the formalized governance arrangements. The 21 articles in this issue address the politics of governance based on thorough empirical work, while theoretically contributing to several themes relating to the politics of disaster governance. The outcomes of the thematic issue are: 1) The three governance dimensions are useful to reveal what the roles and room for manoeuvre is of different actors, including governments, international community, experts, non-state actors and affected communities; 2) Technical solutions for risk reduction and disaster response crucially rely on socio-technical, political, and administrative systems and processes and hence need to be adjusted to the specific context; and 3) The political nature of disaster governance calls for a deeper understanding to advance accountability to affected populations.

Risk assessment can be thought of as the lens through which we anticipate the consequences of research and the impact of the actions of researchers. The way in which risk of harm is managed in research is strongly influenced by the surrounding social and political environment, leading to differences in national and local styles of regulation and review.

"This is a paper based on the annual lecture in honour of Hugo Sinzheimer at November 10, 2005, Hugo-Sinzheimer-Institute at the University of Amsterdam. In 1928, Sinzheimer wrote an article entitled 'Die Demokratisierung des Arbeitsverhältnisses' ('The Democratisation of the Employment Relationship'). His references to unemployment insurance that had been enacted just one year earlier went beyond the participation of trade unions and employers in administration as an essential element of democratization. Sinzheimer put even more emphasis on another aspect of democratization, namely, the enlargement of the risksharing community to embrace all workers, indeed, the whole economy. The argument of the paper is that sharing risks through universal and state-guaranteed unemployment insurance is still as valid as in the time of Hugo Sinzheimer. There is no reason to roll back the welfare state. On the contrary, there are strong reasons to defend the principle of social insurance. By combining a kind of work-life insurance with soft forms of governance, this principle - that of 'sharing risks' - can even be extended to include the new risks related to critical events during the life course. The argument is developed by answering the following questions: First, what are the new risks to which established insurance systems have to respond? Second, what are the advantages of social insurance compared to private savings? Third, how should we share for example the risks related to parenting and to continuing education and training? Fourth, how do we overcome risk-aversion to stimulate more individual risk-taking and thereby more responsibility?" (author's abstract)

Proposed geoengineering interventions, like other high-stakes and potentially disruptive technologies, present both a compelling case for expanded research to inform future decisions, and significant concerns about societal harms that may follow from this research, directly or indirectly. In response, there have been widespread calls to both expand research and govern this research with greater care and scrutiny than typical of the normal processes that govern all research areas. We propose that for geoengineering and similarly controversial issues, governance of research must fulfill three broad functions. First, processes are needed that enable reliable research, by providing the authorization, resources, and management necessary for research to proceed, together with the strategic planning and quality controls to ensure that research results are useful and relevant to inform societal choices. Second, processes are needed to assess potential harms or risks from research activities and ensure that these are appropriately managed. These potential harms may include both direct physical risks, and indirect risks mediated by social, economic, or political processes. Finally, processes are needed to support the legitimacy of the research program, by ensuring that the topics, methods, and conduct are compatible with relevant legal, political, and moral principles and are broadly acceptable to affected citizens. These requirements may interact closely with the processes that serve the first two functions, by requiring that research priorities, aims, conduct, participants, and results are transparently and promptly disclosed, that relevant citizen and stakeholder groups are consulted, and that broader implications of proposed research are acknowledged and addressed. Drawing on the concerns expressed in the current geoengineering debate, and on experience conducting and governing research in other areas, we discuss alternative concrete ways to provide these functions for geoengineering research. This paper was prepared as input to a workshop of senior state officials considering the implications of potential geoengineering research for California.

This thematic issue aims at unravelling how the global consensus towards a shift to risk reduction and inclusive disaster governance evolves in everyday governance practices, where roles and responsibilities are evolving and negotiated, permeated by politics of power and legitimacy. It identifies three different dimensions of disaster governance. The first is the formal dimension: the way governance arrangements are designed or meant to work. The second is 'real' governance: the way in which formal governance arrangements manifest and evolve in actual practice. The third is invisible governance: an amalgam of household and neighbourhood-level activities and networks for disaster response that happen outside of the gaze of the formalized governance arrangements. The 21 articles in this issue address the politics of governance based on thorough empirical work, while theoretically contributing to several themes relating to the politics of disaster governance. The outcomes of the thematic issue are: 1) The three governance dimensions are useful to reveal what the roles and room for manoeuvre is of different actors, including governments, international community, experts, non-state actors and affected communities; 2) Technical solutions for risk reduction and disaster response crucially rely on socio-technical, political, and administrative systems and processes and hence need to be adjusted to the specific context; and 3) The political nature of disaster governance calls for a deeper understanding to advance accountability to affected populations.

This thematic issue aims at unravelling how the global consensus towards a shift to risk reduction and inclusive disaster governance evolves in everyday governance practices, where roles and responsibilities are evolving and negotiated, permeated by politics of power and legitimacy. It identifies three different dimensions of disaster governance. The first is the formal dimension: the way governance arrangements are designed or meant to work. The second is 'real' governance: the way in which formal governance arrangements manifest and evolve in actual practice. The third is invisible governance: an amalgam of household and neighbourhood-level activities and networks for disaster response that happen outside of the gaze of the formalized governance arrangements. The 21 articles in this issue address the politics of governance based on thorough empirical work, while theoretically contributing to several themes relating to the politics of disaster governance. The outcomes of the thematic issue are: 1) The three governance dimensions are useful to reveal what the roles and room for manoeuvre is of different actors, including governments, international community, experts, non-state actors and affected communities; 2) Technical solutions for risk reduction and disaster response crucially rely on socio-technical, political, and administrative systems and processes and hence need to be adjusted to the specific context; and 3) The political nature of disaster governance calls for a deeper understanding to advance accountability to affected populations.

1. Regulating risk in a fragmented world -- 2. Making rules and shaping knowledge -- 3. Mobile telephony and radiation protection : regulating risk or local self-governance -- 4. Oil transport in the Baltic Sea : environmental protection and the freedom of the high seas -- 5. Climate change adaptation : regulation under formation -- 6. Regulating coexistence : the creation of new discursive sites for the battle over GM crops -- 7. Co-producing frames, actors and knowledge.

European urban agglomerations face increasing flood risks due to urbanization and the effects of climate change. These risks are addressed at European, national and regional policy levels. A diversification and alignment of Flood Risk Management Strategies (FRMSs) can make vulnerable urban agglomerations more resilient to flooding, but this may require new Flood Risk Governance Arrangements (FRGAs) or changes in existing ones. While much technical knowledge on Flood Risk Management is available, scientific insights into the actual and/or necessary FRGAs so far are rather limited and fragmented. This article addresses this knowledge gap by presenting a research approach for assessing FRGAs. This approach allows for the integration of insights from policy scientists and legal scholars into one coherent framework that can be used to identify Flood Risk Management Strategies and analyse Flood Risk Governance Arrangements. In addition, approaches for explaining and evaluating (shifts in) FRGAs are introduced. The research approach is illustrated by referring to the rise of the Dutch risk-based approach called 'multi-layered safety' and more specifically its application in the city of Dordrecht. The article is concluded with an overview of potential next steps, including comparative analyses of FRGAs in different regions. Insights in these FRGAS are crucial to enable the identification of action perspectives for flood risk governance for actors at the level of the EU, its member states, regional authorities, and public-private partnerships.

Efforts to collaboratively manage the risk of flooding are ultimately based on individuals learning about risks, the decision process, and the effectiveness of decisions made in prior situations. This article argues that much can be learned about a governance setting by explicitly evaluating the relationships through which influential individuals and their immediate contacts receive and send information to one another. We define these individuals as "brokers," and the networks that emerge from their interactions as "learning spaces." The aim of this article is to develop strategies to identify and evaluate the properties of a broker's learning space that are indicative of a collaborative flood risk management arrangement. The first part of this article introduces a set of indicators, and presents strategies to employ this list so as to systematically identify brokers, and compare their learning spaces. The second part outlines the lessons from an evaluation that explored cases in two distinct flood risk management settings in Germany. The results show differences in the observed brokers' learning spaces. The contacts and interactions of the broker in Baden-Württemberg imply a collaborative setting. In contrast, learning space of the broker in North Rhine-Westphalia lacks the same level of diversity and polycentricity.