Scientific Uncertainties and Governance Structure for Emerging Environmental and Technological Risks

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the governance structure for the emerging environmental and technological risks originated from such areas of "food safety", "electromagnetic field", and "biological invasive species" in which high uncertainties are involved in finding scientific evidences for assessing and managing risks. A new interdisciplinark framework is constructed to evaluate the governance structure for those emerging riss areas. Our framework revealed that: 1) Scientific knowledge and evidences of the emerging risks with high uncertainty are differently perceived and evaluated by a variety of stakeholders based on their values and perspectives, and they are amplified or attenuated in their socio-cultural environments. The lack of any proper risk communication among stakeholders will lead to the collapse of the reliability of regulatory and management systems in our technological society. 2) It is "risk literacy" that enables the stakeholders to make an appropriate informed choice of risks in a proactive way to "multiple characters of risks: 3) To attain better governance toward the emerging risks, it is critical to install a social information platform of "early warning and precautionary actions" by enhancing the scientific education and training of "risk literacy" in our technology society.