| Editorial
The importance of Risk
in Modern Society: Risk Society
Environmental Policy
under Conditions of Complexity
Ulrich Beck and the social
dimensions of risk
Insurance against
environmental damage
Interview with Salvador
Giner
Environmental legislation
News
Ecology of leisure
Editorial
The conspiracy against risk
Risk is an inherent characteristic of life.
Despite the fact that this is very evident, man has made greater and greater
attempts to conspire against risk since the beginning of industrial society.
By eliminating it totally from our lives, we would be totally safe. That,
however, is a hopeless struggle.
In fact, the conspiracy began hundreds
of years ago. In Catalonia, for example, the Taula de Canvi or Exchange
House, the local forerunner of the modern-day insurance companies, was
invented. According to the interview appearing in this edition between
Medi Ambient. Tecnologia i cultura and the sociologist Salvador Giner,
they were the most highly representative of modern-day life. He is probably
right. At the end of the Second World War, Europe established the Welfare
State with the consent of the United States. The Americans were highly
concerned about the threat of Communism. Now apparently, they are rethinking
it all over again because it is economically unsustainable.
Insurance companies (the latest ones claim
for environmental damage), safer cars, lifetime jobs, retirement schemes,
social security, etc. The conspiracy continues. It is a big paradox: we
want to eliminate risk, yet on the other hand it increases day after day.
Josep Espluga, sociologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, claims
that «the real consequences of risks are always affected by social
interpretations, and are always tied to group values and interests.»
In poorer societies where the people suffer hunger, the perception of risk
is radically different to that in societies where basic needs are met.
The perception of risk in rich societies,
however, is growing in giant steps with, for example, traffic accidents
(with large numbers of fatal victims, especially at the weekend), transgenic
food and global ecological crisis. This edition of Medi Ambient. Tecnologia
i cultura is dedicated to making a critical analysis of the risk society.
The industrial engineer and economist,
Narcís Mir, gives an outline of the risk society and contends that
it is increasingly important. Josep Espluga, lecturer of environmental
sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, gives a critical overview
of the different approaches to the concept of risk. Funtowicz and Ravetz
make an in-depth study of the concept of complexity and argue that hegemonic
science needs postnormal science to be able to reflect on today's environmental
challenges. José Luis de las Heras, head of the Environmental Risk
Pool, gives the perspective from the insurance companies' point of view.
This edition of the magazine rounds off with an interview with Salvador
Giner and the regular columns on environmental law by Ignasi Doñate,
and news.
A series of articles that help to understand
why a certain amount of risk is necessary. Life is risk and uncertainty.
And today, more so than ever before •
Lluís Reales
Editor of Medi Ambient. Tecnologia i cultura
The Importance of
Risk in Modern Society: Risk Society
Narcís Mir i Soler
Industrial engineer and economist. Member
of the Board of the Catalonian Institute of Safety Studies (IDES)
The so-called «risk society»
is a new social paradigm, resulting from the modernisation of the industrial
society, characterised by the fact that the logic of risk production predominates
over the logic of wealth production. In order to demonstrate the growing
importance of risk in contemporary society, the author formulates a structural
law of risk and examines its validity.
Is risk an important factor at industrial
society’s current stage of development? And if it is important, is this
importance conjunctional or could risk be considered a structural factor
in the process of modernisation? Is it rash to speak of the emergence of
a new social figure -risk society- originated as a consequence of industrial
society’s modernisation process?
All these questions -and others- make
up a lively debate currently being held on the significance of risk production
in developed industrial societies. Those in favour of the emergence of
a new social form –risk society– maintain that whereas in industrial society
the logic of the creation of wealth predominates over the logic of the
production of risks, the development itself of this model of society is
causing this dominance to be inverted; and that this change of logic has
social significance. But that is not all. Risk society also means other
social changes brought about by the loss of traditions in the lifestyle
of industrial society: work, family, social classes and so on.
I must warn you, right from the beginning,
that the aim of this article is in no way to answer all of these questions.
To start with, I will simply make a few comments on the characteristics
of risk society, and then I will concentrate on a far more specific analysis
of risk in modern society.
An Outline of Risk Society
Risk society is a new social form which
came about as a consequence of the modernisation of industrial society.
In accordance with this paradigm, the birth of this new social form was
not produced by a political outburst, but as a consequence of the modernisation
of industrial society itself. As Beck says «industrial society takes
its leave of the scene of world history down the back stairs of secondary
effects».
Risk society has two sides. On the first
side we find the loss of innocence of the productive forces. Industrialisation
meant a materialisation of scholarly thought. Man believed that with reason
he would dominate Nature and would transform it, subjecting it to satisfy
his needs. And this process would be linear, that is, with no limits. Today
we see that the creation of wealth is accompanied by the production of
risk. The fact that at first they could be considered as side effects of
development, today they claim equality with the positive effects (utilities).
That is, they demand to become inbred variables of the development model.
The second side of risk society refers
to the collapse of the social co-ordinates of industrial society, both
with regard to the loss of traditional lifestyles and to the relationship
between science and society and between politics and society.
In the loss of traditional lifestyles
in industrial society we find the loss of weight of the stratification
of society in classes as a useful category for explaining social change;
the crisis of the family model (as shown by the incorporation of women
in the workplace, the generalised increase in the divorce rate and the
increase in the number of one-parent families); the destandardisation of
productive labour and its individualisation and so on. All in all, we can
see a process of individualisation of social inequality.
In this article I will confine myself
to the first dimension of risk society. I will begin by indicating the
fundamental characteristics of this paradigm.
1. It comes about through modern causes
Risks are undoubtedly not an invention
of the Modern Age. However, in the past they were not tied to development
itself, whereas today they come about through the very process of development.
Thus, both the production processes and the goods produced not only provide
utility, but, at the same time, risk. Think of nuclear fission, the storage
of nuclear waste, environmental pollution, the risk from certain industries,
motor vehicles and so on. These collateral or side effects are unwanted,
but go systematically along with the creation of wealth (and utility) and
acquire, increasingly, greater relevance. So much so that today nobody
talks of development, but rather of sustainable development, emphasising,
symbolically, the importance of side effects. All in all, the modernisation
process becomes reflexive, in the sense that it takes itself as object
and problem.
2. The globalisation of risk
This globalisation has two aspects. On
the one hand the effects are transnational: the Chernobyl case, the greenhouse
effect, the effect on the ozone layer, transboundary pollution and so on.
On the other, economic globalisation implies a process of transfer of sources
of danger: meat from «mad cows»; the leak of caesium-137 from
the Acerinox plant in Cadiz, which has alerted us to the dangers of the
international movement of scrap materials; and so on.
3. The future component of risk
«In comparison with the tangible
evidence of wealth, risks have something unreal about them. On the one
hand, many dangers and forms of destruction are real: polluted and dying
water, the destruction of forests, new illnesses, etc. On the other, the
real social power of the risk argument lies in the projection of threats
for the future».(1)
Consequently, risks have a highly probabilistic
element. What happens is that the consequences and the damage which have
already become apparent enable us to mention the probabilistic element
and make better predictions.
4. The perception of risk
Whereas we perceive the majority of the
goods we consume directly, this does not happen with the new risks, which
escape immediate human perception. One only need think of the effects of
radiation, pollution, the thinning of the ozone layer, the greenhouse effect,
harmful substances in foodstuffs and so on., to realise that we need science
to make these risks «visible» and to be able to interpret them
as dangers. To gain knowledge of these risks science habitually uses several
tools: it carries out experiments, it uses measuring instruments and draws
up theories. This causes it to be said that science «sets risks»
and the population «perceives risks». However, the theories
obtained have a high degree of uncertainty, that is, along with the deciding
factor, a large proportion is stochastic or probabilistic, which allows
for a powerful set of social and political pressures and gives the role
of the media considerable importance in the acquiring of a risk consciousness.
In short, the risk can be reduced, increased or removed from one’s consciousness.
All this supposes that risk society becomes
installed in an environment of speculation. Let’s suppose that the population
lives quite peacefully. At some point a «scientific» study
emphasises the harmful effect of, say, the thinning of the ozone layer,
the greenhouse effect, the population explosion or any other issue. Voices
are immediately raised in opposition or doubting the results of the study:
either because of the basic hypotheses, or because of ignorance of the
effects a particular element may cause, because of the methodology of the
study and so on. The media intervene to highlight this debate and two opposing
forces appear: the force of the bad news, which always has an impact, and
is backed up by the «scientific» study and by the favourable
opinion of social groups who want to inform society of the seriousness
of the situation; and on the other hand, the force of pressure from other
social groups who stand to lose out thanks to the measures which would
need to be taken as a consequence of accepting the study which acted as
a trigger and who contribute another or other «scientific»
studies which neutralise or notably qualify the first.
Given that risks are considered real when
the population perceives them as real, everything will depend on the ability
to influence the different forces and people’s circumstances. One cannot
forget that poverty is current and can be experienced directly and risk
is invisible and far-off. For this reason the perception of risk can only
come about in developed countries. As a consequence of gathering information
the population can acquire a risk consciousness. If this is so, the problem
suddenly appears on political agendas and develops important political
dynamics. When programmed and continuous action is required, they are incorporated
into political programmes and awareness of the problem is mentioned with
great solemnity: only in this way can the party win votes. Not even the
parties who fail to see the importance of the problem can afford not to
include it on their agenda, not unless they want to be labelled irresponsible.
Risk perception is, therefore, an important characteristic of risk society
which lends it vital political character.
5. Nature-society dialectics
Risk society supposes the end of the comparison
between Nature and society. Whereas modernity and its appearance in the
process of industrialisation thought of Nature as something given which
had to be subjected, the very process of industrialisation has destroyed
the idea of Nature as something not social. Today we find ourselves surrounded
by artificial Nature, in the sense that it is not left to its own devices.
Therefore, environmental problems cannot
be considered problems of the environment but as social problems, that
is, Man’s problems with significance for his economic, cultural and political
conditions. All in all, society can no longer be understood as autonomous
from Nature.
6. State of emergency
The control of risk can suppose a considerable
chance of intervention by the State. As Ulrich Beck says... «it is
more likely that under the pressure of imminent danger responsibilities
are redefined, the authority to act becomes centralised and all the details
of the modernisation process are set with bureaucratic control and planning.
Risk society is not a revolutionary society, but rather a society of catastrophes.
In it, the state of emergency threatens to become the normal state of affairs.
The gravity of the environmental hazards
described for the life of plants, animals and humans «legitimises»
the authors with the clear conscience of ecological morality to use language
with an abundance of expressions such as «control», «official
authorisation» and «official supervision». It is typical
that with the argument of the seriousness of damage to the environment
rights to intervene, plan and administer with greater or lesser freedom
should be demanded.
In short, the panorama of scientific-bureaucratic
authoritarianism appears.»(2)(3)
All in all, it can be observed that to
prevent «civilising side effects» other «political side
effects» may be produced which threaten the exercise of democracy.
So far I have referred to the postulates
which define the outlines of risk society. The analysis I shall undertake
from now on is of a more microeconomic nature, in an attempt to explore
the relative importance of risk in the modernisation process of industrial
society. To do this I will use an operative concept of risk and I will
formulate a law of risk behaviour. I will then present indications which
enable you to consider this law plausible. Finally, I will identify criteria
for the creation of value in safety.
The Growing Importance of Risk in Modern
Society
In order to obtain measurable propositions
in relation to risk it is advisable to first define it in an operative
manner (4). The word risk is used with several meanings: an unfavourable
contingency to which someone or something is exposed, uncertainty derived
from exercising a business activity, uncertain danger, etc. In this article
I will use the mathematical-statistical concept of risk, which quite simply
is the mathematical expectancy of loss.
If we consider an event with which it
is possible to associate a value of probability (P) and damage or an effect
(S = Severity), the risk (R) will be defined by the product of this probability
by the value of the effect, that is:
R = P • S
where
0 ? P ? 1
These effects can be measured in different
ways: in economic terms, in number of accidents, in loss of human life,
in personal injuries, etc. Thus, if an accident occurs at a frequency of
once every 10 years and causes 20 deaths, the risk will be:
2 deaths / year
If for this same accident we evaluate
the losses at 1,500 million pesetas, the risk will be:
150 million pesetas / year
In short, we will use as the risk value
the mathematical expectancy of loss, which is the value of the losses we
can expect in the long term.
When the sources of danger are various
and so are the effects of an event (injuries, patrimonial losses, etc.)
it is necessary to use a common unit of measure. In this case, the losses
are expressed in monetary units, to be able to aggregate them.
I will frequently refer to a generic form,
the objects of risk. We will understand by object of risk or source of
danger any element the use or presence of which implies a risk. That is,
the use of the object or the presence of the object brings with it the
probability of an event occurring which causes damage to people, property
or the environment. Therefore, within the concept of the object of risk
we can find products, equipment, installations, vehicles and so on.
The use of these objects in everyday life
and in social organisations is due to the fact that before they become
risk producers they are utility producers, I use the term utility loosely,
and that is why they are incorporated into society at great speed. The
paradigm of «risk society» highlights the increasingly important
role played by «side effects» in relation to utility. In this
sense, risk is not only associated with a singular event (an accident),
but with the damage that can be caused continually to the environment.
The Law of the overflowing of risk
Once risk has been defined, I will show
that in modern societies risk acquires a growing relative importance. To
do this I will analyse the natural growth of risk in relation to the income
and the number of inhabitants in a region. We will understand the term
natural growth of risk to mean that which is produced if society does not
introduce new corrective measures, which can be technological, organisational
and so on., to neutralise it.
I state that, at industrial society’s
current stage of development, the natural growth rate of risk is higher
than the growth rate of income. Consequently, it can also be said that
for those societies experiencing a growth of income per capita, the natural
growth rate of risk will be higher than the growth rate of the population
and therefore the risk per person will increase.
When there is a linear relationship between
objects of risk and income -which is a highly plausible hypothesis- the
«natural» growth of risk with income can take two forms: either
a linear function when there is no interrelation or synergies (in relation
to risk) between the sources of danger, or a briskly growing function (with
an upward slope) when the objects of risk are interrelated.
An example can illustrate this matter
more clearly: the introduction of lifts in a social system causes linear
growth of risk, that is, each of them brings the same amount of risk and
does not modify the risk values of those already in existence (as it does
not modify their probability of accidents nor the effects of the accidents).
However, the same cannot be said of motor vehicles. Ten vehicles which
are all the same driven by ten people who are all the same on ten roads
which are all the same cause a total risk which is ten times the risk of
one vehicle. On the other hand, this is not the case if we consider these
vehicles which are all the same with ten people who are all the same on
only one road. The total risk is greater than ten times the risk of one
vehicle. And, therefore, the risk per vehicle has increased. Another example
would be the saturation of air traffic, which causes a more than proportional
increase in risk.
I must point out straight away that this
is the growth of risk -which we said was natural- which would be observed
if society did not react to this phenomenon. As I shall have the opportunity
to comment on later on, this does not have to be the case, but rather societies,
to avoid the overflowing of risks, can assign more and more economic resources
to prevention and protection, both in the form of new technologies and
organisational innovations.
Apart from the interrelation of objects
of risk, there are other factors which reinforce this brisk growth. They
are as follows:
1. The introduction of sources of danger
which provide greater utility but, at the same time, greater risk. For
example, today, cars are made to go at far greater speeds, which involves
greater risk.
2. A more intensive use of objects of
risk. It is not the same to fly once a year as to fly every week. It is
not the same to make a 1000-kilometre journey as a 10.000-kilometre one.
Here the variable modified is the time we are exposed to the source of
danger. In fact, we can avoid this consideration if when we talk of the
use of objects of risk we refer to the services these objects provide (making
a two-hour flight instead of a one-hour flight means that the number of
units of service in the first case is 10 times the units of service in
the second.).
3. The globalisation of risk with modernity.
This globalisation, as I have already said, has two aspects: on the one
hand, economic globalisation brings a sharp increase in the international
movement of products and, therefore, of sources of risk; and on the other,
the effects are increasingly transnational and, in some cases, universal.
4. The conversion of «latent side
effects» into «visible side effects». This would be the
case of the greenhouse effect, the thinning of the ozone layer, etc. Science
produces this visibility of the effects, which we had no notion of previously.
All this enables us to state that growth
of income is accompanied by a «natural» growth of risk which
is, ceteris paribus, clearly accelerated. In percental values, the percental
growth of risk is greater than the percental growth of income.
If instead of referring the natural growth
of risk to income, we refer it to the inhabitants we will observe an even
more accelerated natural growth, if we bear in mind that the growth of
income per capita has been a constant in developed countries.
We can state, in short, that in industrial
societies economic growth is accompanied by a growth of risk and if corrective
measures are not implemented permanently this risk will overflow, both
in relation to income and in relation to the number of inhabitants.
Indeed, this is what Jacques Attali senses
when he says that «the emergence of new risks linked to globalisation
cannot be managed other than by assigning a growing percentage of world
income to insurance expenses».(5)
Observing Reality
But, in actual fact, do we observe this
relative growth of risk? Not necessarily, as the Authorities assign or
induce the assigning of greater economic resources to slowing down this
relative growth of risk. These resources take the form of technological
innovation, administrative action, inspections and obligatory maintenance
and so on.; all with the aim of reducing risk. That is, they are resources
aimed at reducing the probability of unwanted events and the damage they
cause, if they occur. Nor is it foreign to the aim of reducing the level
of risk to displace certain high-risk activities towards less demanding
countries, countries which are usually underdeveloped. Let us remember
that faced with the dilemma poverty or risk, risk is always preferable.
That is, it is possible that this overflowing
is not apparent due to the investments and expenses allocated to prevention
and protection. However, we should observe some signs which would enable
us to infer the existence of latent forces driving towards a relative growth
of risk.
I shall expound below a series of indications
which enable me to infer, tentatively, the existence of these latent forces.
Serious accidents
First of all, we have at our disposal
data corresponding to the hundred most serious accidents which took place
between 1957 and 1986. They are classified by decades in table 1.
These figures show that the number of
accidents has more or less doubled every 10 years. This means a year-to-year
growth of 6.8%, a value which is above the global economic growth rates
of the total economies involved.
It is clear that the number of accidents,
without knowing their effects, is not an integral indication of risk. However,
it can be stated that the negative effects have increased in the course
of these years and, consequently, the values of damages would show an even
greater rate of increase.
The risk of having an accident when
driving a motor vehicle
For my analysis I will use the data from
table 2, which apply to Spain.
In the section above we saw that the law
of natural growth of risk hinged, in the first instance, on a good correlation
between income and the number of objects of risk. Well, the correlation
observed between the total number of vehicles in the country and the real
GNP, using the period from 1974 to 1996, is 0.9816. Consequently, we can
speak of an excellent linear relationship. The adjusting of a linear function
by ordinary least squares (OLS) provides a statistically significant linear
function.
Next, I will analyse three series: the
number of accidents, the number of accidents causing losses and the cost
of these losses.
• The number of accidents
Here I use the number of accidents (NA)
with casualties (dead and injured), recorded by the Spanish Traffic Directorate
General, as a measure of risk. Its historical evolution is reflected in
figure 1. As you can see it shows a tendency to rise.
I distinguish three periods:
The first 18 records, corresponding to
the period 1972-89 (18 years and, therefore, a significant amount of time),
define a tendency to increase with a peak in 1989. The change in tendency
coincides with the passing of the vehicular traffic and road safety Act.
However, during the whole of this first period of growth a great number
of road safety measures were approved. We can mention amongst others:
• Maximum level of alcohol consumed by
drivers set at 0.8 g/l
• Obligatory use of seat belts outside
city limits
• Speed limits on roads inside city limits
and on secondary roads
• First road safety plan
• Obligatory use of motorcycle helmets
outside city limits
• Obligatory dipped headlights for motorcycles
• Regulation on driving time and rest
periods
• Regulation of an MOT test for vehicles
(introduced for private cars in 1986, although its effects did not become
apparent until later, given the transitional period and the number of vehicles
which were not in condition to pass the test and were subsequently taken
off the road)
During the second period, from 1990 to
1994, 5 reports were made, with a reduction in the number of accidents.
The third period is from 1995-97 and shows
an upturn in the number of accidents with a rise similar to the highest
of the first period.
• The number of accidents with losses
If instead of referring to the number
of accidents recorded by the Traffic Directorate General we refer to the
number of accidents causing losses which result in claims to insurance
companies (it is a far less selective record, as any road accident with
damage counts), for the period 1988-1997 we obtain the historical evolution
shown in figure 2.
The graph is conclusive: there are no
structural changes like we saw in the number of accidents. The evolution
follows a monotonously steady increase.
• The cost of losses
This is an integral datum which includes
the economic cost, paid by insurance companies, caused by road accidents.
Its historical evolution for 1988-1997 is shown in figure 3.
One must remember that cost of losses
(CL) is expressed in constant pesetas which refer to the year 1986 (so
that they can be compared to the series of the GNP in constant pesetas,
with base 1986).
We can observe two periods, with a transition
observation: the first period goes from 1988 to 1991 and is characterised
by a sharp increase; and the second, from 1993 to 1997, by a marked stabilisation.
In the middle there is a transition observation which corresponds to 1992.
We can use these observations to complete
tables 3 and 4.
In table 3 we can observe three periods.
In the first (1972-89) the growth rate of the number of accidents is higher
than the growth rate of the GNP and the number of inhabitants. In the second
(1989-94) there is a reduction in the number of accidents although the
GNP and number of inhabitants still continue to increase, albeit more slowly.
Finally, in the third period (1994-96), the growth rate of the number of
accidents is again higher than the growth rate of the GNP and the number
of inhabitants.
Consequently, there is seemingly a latent
force in existence which periodically causes a growth of risk above the
growth of the GNP and the number of inhabitants.
Table 4 is even more devastating, as for
the whole period a growth rate of the number of accidents causing losses
and the cost of losses is registered which is higher than the growth rate
of the GNP and the number of inhabitants.
On Creating Value in Safety
If we have seen that risk has an important
relative growth, and risk is damage, the first question we ask ourselves
is why decision-making agents do not allocate more resources in order to
reduce this damage. Amongst the many answers I would highlight three:
• In the first place, between poverty
and risk, people choose risk. You only have to look at which sector of
workers registers the most industrial accidents.
• In the second place, because the decision
maker will most likely make a short-sighted decision, as the costs of reducing
risk are immediate and real whereas the expected damage is far-off and
unreal.
• And, thirdly, because of the negative
externalities associated with risk. That is, the negative effects overwhelm
the decision maker and can affect many other people and property, both
public and private.
It is above all for this third reason
that the intervention of public Authorities is unavoidable.
The second question we ask is by what
criterion will public intervention be guided. For this we have to assume
that public intervention is aimed at creating value in matters of risk.
This creation of value is specified by the reduction of risk. But to what
extent is it reduced? Or rather, how is this reduction distributed amongst
different populations of sources of danger? That is, how does one go about
designing effective public safety policies?
To analyse the different types of public
policies that may be applied in matters of safety we must first define,
as I mentioned earlier, which social aims or objectives we want to achieve.
Once they have been defined, an analysis can be carried out of the public
policy applied to see if it approaches or not the social objective we have
established. Max Weber, on analysing social behaviour, defined four types
of action: rational action with regard to the aim (that would be, for instance,
action based on a principle of economic rationality); rational action with
regard to value (of justice, ethics, equality, religious, etc.); emotional
action (determined by impulses, emotions or states of mind); and traditional
action (based on habit).
Here, having considered public activity
as an exercise of rationality, we find ourselves in the first type: rationality
in relation to an objective. Acting rationally with regard to the objective
suggests the idea of methodicalness and emotional neutrality. It is impossible
to analyse public policies without first defining the aim of the action.
I will make the analysis assuming that we are pursuing an objective of
economic rationality. If we choose another, this analysis would serve to
establish the deviation caused (in economic terms) to economic optimality.
First I have to define the concept of «optimum risk». Let us
start from the assumption that risk reduction follows a curve of increasing
marginal costs (figure 4). That is, reducing the first units of risk is
relatively cheap but the reduction of successive units is carried out at
an increasingly high cost. On the other hand, when making an economic analysis,
the risk will express the expected damage valued in economic terms.
I define optimum risk as the risk value
which minimises the total economic value, which is the sum of the expected
damage plus the cost allocated to the reduction of risk. That there is
a point of balance can be seen in an intuitive manner: The first units
invested in risk reduction produces a reduction of damage (in economic
values) higher than the investment made; therefore this operation is profitable
and it is advisable to continue allocating resources to the reduction of
risk (see figure 4).
However, from a certain point onwards
(in the figure it is point A), the cost of reducing risk will be greater
than the reduction of expected damage. This is the optimum point and here
we must stop if we follow the principle of economic rationality, which
here is realised in the minimisation of total costs (minimisation of the
area a + b). The optimum risk is R*.
The project analysis technique used to
bring us closer to the optimum risk is cost-profit analysis. If, on the
other hand, the problem posed is not to determine the investment necessary
to arrive at the optimum risk, but to have a certain amount of resources
at our disposal and reduce risk to the maximum possible, then we are before
a problem of cost-effectiveness. Whilst the cost-profit analysis seeks
to determine the costs necessary to obtain the optimum risk, the cost-effectiveness
analysis departs from a given budget and seeks a way to assign it to different
objects of risk in order to reduce the level of risk to the maximum (maximum
effectiveness). Or rather, from a specific objective of risk reduction,
to obtain the distribution of costs so that the total cost is minimal.
It can be shown that the optimum solution,
in this second case, is achieved by distributing the budget in such a way
that, on balance, the marginal variations of risk per monetary unit invested
are equal for all sources of danger (or objects of risk). The solution
found is perfectly rational. If it were not it would be possible to take
a monetary unit allocated to a risk object and assign it to another which
has the highest marginal reduction value, by which we would achieve a higher
total of risk reduction. It would be profitable to carry out this reassignment
of resources until we arrived at the equality (equation?) formulated previously.
When the aim is to reduce risk and, eventually,
arrive at the optimum risk we have a collection of public policies. It
is not the purpose of this article to carry out a detailed description
and an evaluation of the effectiveness of these public policies. I will
simply confine myself to enumerating them:
1. Direct regulation, establishing safety
standards.
2. Giving responsibility to the individual
and involving insurance companies.
3. Taxes on risk.
4. Subsidising risk reduction.
There is a fifth public policy, which
is still far from ripe, which consists of delimiting a risk space or bubble,
defining property rights (transferable risk permits), defining rules of
market operations and leaving the market to regulate the transaction of
transferable risk permits.
In Conclusion
In this article I have aimed to justify
the increasing importance of risk in modern society by formulating a structural
law of risk and observing whether reality gives us any clues which could
confirm its validity. I have then given criteria (the cost-profit criterion
and the cost-effectiveness criterion) which may guide public intervention,
when the principle which guides their action is the creation of value in
safety and this is measured in terms of its fulfilment of the efficiency
objective.
When for a specific population of sources
of danger we are below the optimum risk -which is quite likely in most
cases, the mere reduction of risk means the creation of value.
If it is a question of distributing a
series of resources amongst several sources of danger, or several populations
of sources of danger, we have seen that it is the cost-effectiveness criterion
that guides the decision if the aim is to achieve an objective of efficiency
in the use of resources. However, it would also be possible to use other
criteria, such as achieving a certain distribution of risks, personal or
territorial. Consider that the origin of an action of this nature is not
necessarily produced as a result of giving in to pressure from certain
groups with vested interests (stakeholders), but it could be to neutralise
not so much the risk «objective» of a population as its «perception
of risk» with regard to specific sources of danger.
All this analysis has an identity of its
own. However, I have considered it a partial analysis which has as a point
of reference a social construct known as risk society, although the parameters
which define this construct have a far wider social range. I would be more
than satisfied if this partial analysis served to open a debate on the
importance of risk in modern society and then another on whether or not
under the umbrella of risk there is a strong theoretical category which
enables us to postulate on the emergence of a new social form: risk society
•
Notes
(1) BECK, U. La sociedad
del riesgo. Ediciones Paidós Ibérica, 1998.
(2) BECK, U. op. cit.
(3) Free translation of
the Spanish version
(4) MIR , N. Una introducción
a l’economia del risc industrial. Edicions UPC, 1997
(5) ATTALI, Jacques. «Geopolítica
de los riesgos en el siglo XXI». Gerencia de riesgos, n. 58, 1997.
Environmental Policy
under Conditions of Complexity
S. Funtowicz
Joint Research Centre of European Commission,
Ispra, (Italy)
J. Ravetz
RMC Ltd., London (England)
Environmental policies must manage
a reality which is often defined in purely scientific terms, despite the
fact that this reality is composed of uncertainties and human values which
scientific analysis does not take into consideration. Normal science, therefore,
comes up against serious difficulties when proposing solutions to the problems
facing environmental policy. Is science useless? No, it is insufficient
and, far from rejecting systematic scientific study, post-normal science
is an aid to providing a new focus for problem solving strategies.
In relation to policy, «the environment»
is particularly challenging. It includes masses of detail concerning many
particular issues, which require separate analysis and management. At the
same time, there are broad strategic issues, which should guide regulatory
work, such as those connected with «sustainability». Nothing
can be managed in a convenient isolation; issues are mutually implicated;
problems extend across many scale levels of space and time; and uncertainties
of all sorts and all degrees of severity affect data and theories alike.
This situation is a new one for policy
makers. In one sense the environment is in the domain of Science: the phenomena
of concern are located in the world of nature. Yet the tasks are totally
different from those traditionally conceived for Western science. For that,
it was a matter of conquest and control of Nature; now we must manage,
accommodate and adjust. We know that we are no longer, and never really
were, the «masters and possessors of Nature» that Descartes
imagined for our role in the world (Descartes 1638).
To engage in these new tasks we need new
intellectual tools. A picture of reality, which reduces complex phenomena
to their simple, atomic elements, can be very effective for controlled
experimentation and abstract theory building. But it is not best suited
for the tasks of environmental policy today. The scientific mind-set fosters
expectations of regularity, simplicity and certainty in the phenomena and
in our interventions. But these can inhibit the growth of our understanding
of the problems and of appropriate methods to their solution. Here we shall
introduce and articulate several concepts, which can provide elements of
a framework to understand environmental issues. They are all new, and still
evolving. There is no orthodoxy concerning their content or the conditions
of their application
The leading concept is «complexity».
This relates to the structure and properties of the phenomena and the issues
for environmental policy. Systems that are complex are not merely complicated;
by their nature they involve deep uncertainties and a plurality of legitimate
perspectives. Hence the methodologies of traditional laboratory-based science
are of restricted effectiveness in this new context.
The most general methodology for managing
complex science-related issues is «Post-Normal Science» (Funtowicz
and Ravetz 1993, 1997a). This focuses on aspects of problem solving that
tend to be neglected in traditional accounts of scientific practice: uncertainty
and value loading. It provides a coherent explanation of the need for greater
participation in science-policy processes, based on the new tasks of quality
assurance in these problem-areas.
Complexity
Anyone trying to comprehend the problems
of «the environment» might well be bewildered by their number,
variety and complication. There is a natural temptation to try to reduce
them to simpler, more manageable elements, as with mathematical models
and computer simulations. This, after all, has been the successful programme
of Western science and technology up to now. But environmental problems
have features, which prevent reductionist approaches from having any, but
the most limited useful effect. These are what we mean when we use the
term «complexity».
Complexity is a property of certain sorts
of systems; it distinguishes them from those, which are simple, or merely
complicated. Simple systems can be captured (in theory or in practice)
by a deterministic, linear causal analysis. Such are the classic scientific
explanations, notably those of high-prestige fields like mathematical physics.
Sometimes such a system requires more variables for its explanation or
control than can be neatly managed in its theory. Then the task is accomplished
by other methods; and the system is «complicated». The distinction
between science and engineering, the latter occurring when more than a
half-dozen variables are in play, is a good example of the distinction
between simple and complicated systems.
With true complexity, we are dealing with
phenomena of a different sort. There are many definitions of complexity,
all overlapping, deriving from the various areas of scientific practice
with, for example, ecological systems, organisms, social institutions,
or the «artificial» simulations of any of them. Here we adopt
a more general approach to the concept. First, we think of a «system»,
a collection of elements and subsystems, defined by their relations within
some sort of hierarchy or hierarchies. The hierarchy may be one of inclusion
and scale, as in an ecosystem with (say) a pond, its stream, the watershed,
and the region, at ascending levels. Or it may be a hierarchy of function,
as in an organism and its separate organs. A species and its individual
members form a system with hierarchies of both inclusion and function.
Environmental systems may also include human and institutional sub-systems,
which are themselves systems. These latter are a very special sort of system,
which we call «reflexive». In those, the elements have purposes
of their own, which they may attempt to achieve independently of, or even
in opposition to, their assigned functions in the hierarchy (Funtowicz
and Ravetz 1997b).
First, any «system» is itself
an intellectual construct, that some humans have imposed on a set of phenomena
and their explanations. Sometimes it is convenient to leave the observer
out of the system; but in the cases of systems with human and institutional
components, this is counterproductive. For environmental systems, then,
the observer and analyst are there, as embedded in their own systems, variously
social, geographical and cognitive. For policy purposes, a very basic property
of observed and analysed complex systems might be called «feeling
the elephant», after the Indian fable of the five blind men trying
to guess the object they were touching by feeling the leg of an elephant.
Each conceived the object after his own partial imaging process; it was
left to an outsider observer to visualise the whole elephant. This parable
reminds us that every observer and analyst of a complex system operates
with certain criteria of selection of phenomena, at a certain scale-level,
and with certain built-in values and commitments. The result of their separate
observations and analyses are not at all «purely subjective»
or arbitrary; but none of them singly can encompass the whole system. Looking
at the process as a whole, we may ask whether an awareness of their limitations
is built into their personal systematic understanding, or whether it is
excluded. In the absence of such awareness, we have old-fashioned technical
expertise; when analysis is enriched by its presence, we have Post-Normal
Science.
We can express the point in a somewhat
more systematic fashion, in terms of two key properties of complex systems.
One is the presence of significant and irreducible uncertainties of various
sorts in any analysis; and the other is a multiplicity of legitimate perspectives
on any problem. For the uncertainty, we have a sort of «Heisenberg
effect», where the acts of observation and analysis become part of
the activity of the system under study, and so influence it in various
ways. This is well known in reflexive social systems, through the phenomena
of «moral hazard», self-fulfilling prophecies and mass panic.
But there is another cause of uncertainty,
more characteristic of complex systems. This derives from the fact that
any analysis (and indeed any observation) must deal with an artificial,
usually truncated system. The concepts in whose terms existing data is
organised will only accidentally coincide with the boundaries and structures
that are relevant to a given policy issue. Thus, social and environmental
statistics are usually available (if at all) in aggregations created by
governments with other problems in mind; they need interpreting or massaging
to make them relevant to the problem at hand. Along with their obvious,
technical uncertainties resulting from the operations of data collection
and aggregation, the data will have deeper, structural uncertainties, not
amenable to quantitative analysis, which may actually be decisive for the
quality of the information being presented.
A similar analysis yields the conclusion
that there is no unique, privileged perspective on the system. The criteria
for selection of data, truncation of models, and formation of theoretical
constructs are value-laden, and the values are those embodied in the societal
or institutional system in which the science is being done. This is not
a proclamation of «relativism» or anarchy. Rather, it is a
reminder that the decision process on environmental policies must include
dialogue among those who have an interest in the issue and a commitment
to its solution. It also suggests that the process towards a decision may
be as important as the details of the decision that is finally achieved.
For an example of this plurality of perspectives,
we may imagine a group of people gazing at a hillside. One of them «sees»
a particular sort of forest, another an archaeological site; another a
potential suburb, yet another sees a planning problem. Each uses their
training to evaluate what they see, in relation to their tasks. Their perceptions
are conditioned by a variety of structures, cognitive and institutional,
with both explicit and tacit elements. In a policy process, their separate
visions may well come into conflict, and some stakeholders may even deny
the legitimacy of the commitments and the validity of the perceptions of
others. Each perceives his or her own elephant, as it were. The task of
the facilitator is to see those partial systems from a broader perspective,
and to find or create some overlap among them all, so that there can be
agreement or at least acquiescence in a policy. For those who have this
integrating task, it helps to understand that this diversity and possible
conflict is not an unfortunate accident that could be eliminated by better
natural or social science. It is inherent to the character of the complex
system that is realised in that particular hillside.
These two key properties of complex systems,
radical uncertainty and plurality of legitimate perspectives, help to define
the programme. They show why environmental policy can not be shaped around
the idealised linear path of the gathering and then the application of
scientific knowledge. Rather, policy formation is itself embedded as a
subsystem in the total complex system of which its environmental problem
is another part.
Post-Normal Science as a bridge between
complex systems and environmental policy
The idea of a science being somehow «post-normal»
conveys an air of paradox and perhaps mystery. By «normality»
we mean two things. One is the picture of research science as «normally»
consisting of puzzle solving within an unquestioned and unquestionable
«paradigm», in the theory of T.S. Kuhn (Kuhn 1962). Another
is the assumption that the policy environment is still «normal»,
in that such routine puzzle solving by experts provides an adequate knowledge
base for policy decisions. Of course researchers and experts must do routine
work on small-scale problems; the question is how the framework is set,
by whom, and with whose awareness of the process. In «normality»,
either science or policy, the process is managed largely implicitly, and
is accepted unwittingly by all who wish to join in. The great lesson of
recent years is that that assumption no longer holds. We may call it a
«post-modern» «rejection of grand narratives»,
or a green, NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) politics. Whatever its causes,
we can no longer assume the presence of this sort of «normality»
of the policy process, particularly in relation to the environment.
The insight leading to Post-Normal Science
is that in the sorts of issue-driven science relating to environmental
debates, typically facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high,
and decisions urgent. Some might say that such problems should not be called
«science»; but the answer could be that such problems are everywhere,
and when science is (as it must be) applied to them, the conditions are
anything but «normal». For the previous distinction between
«hard», objective scientific facts and «soft»,
subjective value-judgements is now inverted. All too often, we must make
hard policy decisions where our only scientific inputs are irremediably
soft.
The difference between old and new conditions
can be shown by the present difficulties of the classical economics approach
to environmental policy. Traditionally, economics attempted to show how
social goals could be best achieved by means of mechanisms operating automatically,
in an essentially simple system. The «hidden hand» metaphor
of Adam Smith conveyed the idea that conscious interference in the workings
of the economic system would do no good and much harm; and this view has
persisted from then to now. But for the achievement of sustainability,
automatic mechanisms are clearly insufficient. Even when pricing rather
than control is used for implementation of economic policies, the prices
must be set, consciously, by some agency; and this is then a highly visible
controlling hand. When externalities are uncertain and irreversible, then
there cannot be «ecologically correct prices» practised in
actual markets (with «adequate» property rights structures)
or in fictitious markets (through contingent valuation or other economic
techniques). There might at best be «ecologically corrected prices»,
set by a decision-making system. The hypotheses, theories, visions and
prejudices of the policy-setting agents are then in play, sometimes quite
publicly so. And the public also sees contrasting and conflicting visions
among those in the policy arena, all of which are plausible and none of
which admits of refutation by any other. This is a social system, which,
in the terms discussed above, is truly complex, indeed reflexively complex.
The Quality Principle
In such contexts of complexity, there is
a new role for natural science. The facts that are taught from textbooks
in institutions are still necessary, but are no longer sufficient. For
these relate to a standardised version of the natural world, frequently
to the artificially pure and stable conditions of a laboratory experiment.
The world as we interact with it in working for sustainability, is quite
different. Those who have become accredited experts through a course of
academic study, have much valuable knowledge in relation to these practical
problems. But they may also need to recover from the mindset they might
absorb unconsciously from their instruction. Contrary to the impression
conveyed by textbooks, most problems in practice have more than one plausible
answer; and many have no answer at all.
Further, in the artificial world studied
in academic courses, it is strictly inconceivable that problems could be
tackled and solved except by deploying the accredited expertise. Systems
of management of environmental problems that do not involve science, and
which cannot be immediately explained on scientific principles, are commonly
dismissed as the products of blind tradition or chance. And when persons
with no formal qualifications attempt to participate in the processes of
innovation, evaluation or decision, their efforts are viewed with scorn
or suspicion. Such attitudes do not arise from malevolence; they are inevitable
products of a scientific training which presupposes and then indoctrinates
the assumption that all problems are simple and scientific, to be solved
on the analogy of the textbook.
It is when the textbook analogy fails,
that science in the policy context must become post-normal. When facts
are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent the
traditional guiding principle of research science, the goal of achievement
of truth or at least of factual knowledge, must be substantially modified.
In post-normal conditions, such products may be a luxury, indeed an irrelevance.
Here, the guiding principle is a more robust one, that of quality.
It could well be argued that quality has
always been the effective principle in practical research science, but
it was largely ignored by the dominant philosophy and ideology of science.
For post-normal science, quality becomes crucial, and quality refers to
process even more than to product. It is increasingly realised in policy
circles that in complex environment issues, lacking neat solutions and
requiring support from all stakeholders, the quality of the decision-making
process is absolutely critical for the achievement of an effective product
in the decision. This new understanding applies to the scientific aspect
of decision-making as much as to any other.
Science with values
Post-Normal Science can be located in relation
to the more traditional complementary strategies, by means of a diagram
(see Figure 1). On it, we see two axes, «systems uncertainties»
and «decision stakes». When both are small, we are in the realm
of «normal», safe science, where expertise is fully effective.
When either is medium, then the application of routine techniques is not
enough; skill, judgement, sometimes even courage are required. We call
this «professional consultancy», with the examples of the surgeon
or the senior engineer in mind. Our modern society has depended on armies
of «applied scientists» pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge
and technique, with the professionals performing an aristocratic role,
either as innovators or as guardians.
Of course there have always been problems
that science could not solve; indeed, the great achievement of our civilisation
has been to tame nature in so many ways, so that for unprecedented numbers
of people, life is more safe, convenient and comfortable than could ever
have been imagined in earlier times. But now we are finding that the conquest
of nature is not complete. As we confront nature in its reactive state,
we find extreme uncertainties in our understanding of its complex systems,
uncertainties that will not be resolved by mere growth in our data-bases
or computing power. And since we are all involved with managing the natural
world to our personal and sectional advantage, any policy for change is
bound to affect our interests. Hence in any problem-solving strategy, the
decision-stakes of the various stakeholders must also be reckoned with.
This is why the diagram has two dimensions;
this is an innovation for descriptions of «science», which
had traditionally been assumed to be «value-free». But in any
real problem of environmental management, the two dimensions are inseparable.
When conclusions are not completely determined by the scientific facts,
inferences will (naturally and legitimately) be conditioned by the values
held by the agent. This is a necessary part of ordinary research practice;
all statistical tests have values built in through the choice of numerical
«confidence limits», and the management of «outlier»
data calls for judgements that can sometimes approach the post-normal in
their complexity. If the stakes are very high (as when an institution is
seriously threatened by a policy) then a defensive policy will involve
challenging every step of a scientific argument, even if the systems uncertainties
are actually small. Such tactics become wrong only when they are conducted
covertly, as by scientists who present themselves as impartial judges when
they are actually committed advocates. There are now many initiatives,
increasing in number and significance all the time, for involving wider
circles of people in decision-making and implementation on environmental
issues.
The contribution of all the stakeholders
in cases of Post-Normal Science is not merely a matter of broader democratic
participation. For these new problems are in many ways different from those
of research science, professional practice, or industrial development.
Each of those has its means for quality assurance of the products of the
work, be they peer review, professional associations, or the market. For
these new problems, quality depends on open dialogue between all those
affected. This we call an «extended peer community», consisting
not merely of persons with some form or other of institutional accreditation,
but rather of all those with a desire to participate in the resolution
of the issue. Seen out of context, such a proposal might seem to involve
a dilution of the authority of science, and its dragging into the arena
of politics. But we are here not talking about the traditional areas of
research and industrial development; but about those where issues of quality
are crucial, and traditional mechanisms of quality assurance are patently
inadequate. Since this context of science is one involving policy, we might
see this extension of peer communities as analogous to earlier extensions
of franchise in other fields, as allowing workers to form trade unions
and women to vote. In all such cases, there were prophecies of doom, which
were not realised.
For the formation of environmental policy
under conditions of complexity, it is hard to imagine any viable alternative
to extended peer communities. They are already being created, in increasing
numbers, either when the authorities cannot see a way forward, or know
that without a broad base of consensus, no policies can succeed. They are
called «citizens' juries», «focus groups», or «consensus
conferences», or any one of a great variety of names; and their forms
and powers are correspondingly varied. But they all have one important
element in common: they assess the quality of policy proposals, including
a scientific element, on the basis of whatever science they can master
during the preparation period. And their verdicts all have some degree
of moral force and hence political influence.
Real solutions to real problems
Along with this regulatory, evaluative
function of extended peer communities, another, more intimately involved
in the policy process, is springing up. Particularly at the local level,
the discovery is being made, again and again, that people not only care
about their environment but also can become ingenious and creative in finding
practical, partly technological, ways towards its improvement. Here the
quality is not merely in the verification, but also in the creation; as
local people can imagine solutions and reformulate problems in ways that
the accredited experts, with the best will in the world, do not find natural.
None can claim that the restoration of
quality through extended peer communities will occur easily, and without
its own sorts of errors. But in the processes of extension of peer communities
through the approach of Post-Normal Science, we can see a way forward,
for science as much as for the complex problems of the environment.
A sort of manual for Post-Normal Science
practice has recently been produced by the UK Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution. In its 21st Report, on Setting Environmental Standards, makes
a number of observations and recommendations reflecting this new understanding.
Thus, on uncertainty, we have:
9.49: No satisfactory way has been devised
of measuring risk to the natural environment, even in principle, let alone
defining what scale of risk should be regarded as tolerable;
on values:
9.74: When environmental standards are
set or other judgements made about environmental issues, decisions must
be informed by an understanding of peoples’ values. ...;
and on extended peer communities:
9.74: (continued): Traditional forms of
consultation, while they have provided useful insights, are not an adequate
method of articulating values;
and on a plurality of legitimate perspectives:
9.76: A more rigorous and wide-ranging
exploration of people’s values requires discussion and debate to allow
a range of viewpoints and perspectives to be considered, and individual
values developed.
(UK Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution1998) Chapter 9 - Conclusions].
Conclusion
The inadequacies of the traditional «normal
science» approach have been revealed with dramatic clarity in the
episode of «mad cow» disease. For years the accredited researchers
and advisors assured the British government that the risk of transfer of
the infective agent to humans was almost not existent. They did not stress
the decision-stakes involved in the official policy in which public alarm
and government expense were the main perceived dangers. Then infection
of humans was confirmed, and for a brief period the government admitted
that an epidemic of degenerative disease was a «non-quantifiable
risk». The situation went out of control, and the revulsion of consumers
threatened not only British beef, but also perhaps the entire European
meat industry. At this stage there had to be a «hard» decision
to be taken, on the number of cattle to be destroyed, whose basis was a
very «soft» estimate of how many cattle deaths would be needed
to reassure the meat-eating public. At the same time, independent critics
who had been dealt with quite harshly in the past were admitted into the
dialogue. Without in any way desiring such an outcome, the British Ministry
of Agriculture, Forests and Fisheries created a situation of extreme systems
uncertainty, unknown decision stakes, and a legitimated extended peer community.
The Post-Normal Science approach needs
not be interpreted as an attack on the accredited experts, but rather as
assistance. The world of «normal science» in which they were
trained has its place in any scientific study of the environment, but it
needs to be supplemented by awareness of the «post-normal»
nature of the problems we now confront. The management of complex natural
systems as if they were simple scientific exercises has brought us to our
present mixture of triumph and peril. We are now witnessing the emergence
of a new approach to problem-solving strategies in which the role of science,
still essential, is now appreciated in its full context of the uncertainties
of natural systems and the relevance of human values •
References
• DESCARTES. Discours de
la Methode, Part VI. 1638.
• FUNTOWICZ, S. O.; RAVETZ,
J. R. «Science for the post-normal age», Futures, 25:7(1993),
p. 739-755.
• FUNTOWICZ, S. O.; RAVETZ,
J. R. «Problemas ambientales, ciencia post-normal y comunidades de
evaluadores extendidas». Ciencia, tecnología y sociedad. Barcelona:
Marta I. González García, José A. López Cerezo
and José Luís Luján (ed.), Ariel, 1997a, p. 151-161.
• FUNTOWICZ, S. O.; RAVETZ,
J. R. «The Poetry of Thermodynamics», Futures, 29:9 (1997b),
p. 791-810.
• KUHN, T. S. The Structure
of the Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press IL.,
1962.
• UK Royal Commission on
Environmental Pollution. Setting Environmental Standards, 21st Report,
Chapter 9 - Conclusions [http://www.rcep.org.uk/].
Ulrich Beck and the
social dimensions of risk
Josep Espluga
Sociologist, lecturer of Environmental
Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona
The German sociologist, Ulrich Beck,
is responsible for the concept of the risk society, which attempts to describe
the new modernity, i.e., the social structure in transformation which characterises
late capitalism. In this «reflexive modernity», risk is a social
construct and not a probability which can be made clearly objective. Despite
the potential of many of his ideas, the universality which Beck associates
with many contemporary risks reflects the ethnocentric nature of his proposal.
In certain passages of his curious ethnography
Innocent Anthropologist, Nigel Barley refers to the relationship that the
Doyayo –a small tribe from Cameroon– have with the environment they live
in and from where they obtain their basic resources. One of the most shocking
excerpts from the point of view of a reasonably well-educated westerner
is the following:
As far as «living in harmony with
nature» is concerned, the Doyayo had a long way to go. I was frequently
reproached for not having brought a machine gun from the white man’s land
so that they could wipe out the pathetic herds of antelope which still
exist in their territory. When the Doyayo began to grow cotton for the
state monopoly, they were given large amounts of pesticides which they
immediately proceeded to use for fishing. They threw them into the rivers
and then collected the poisoned fish which floated to the surface. This
poison quickly replaced the tree bark they had used traditionally to smother
the fish. «It’s marvellous –they explained. You throw it in and it
kills everything, small fish and big fish, for kilometres downstream».
(Barley, 1996:122)
One must add that, obviously, the dead
fish were later cooked and eaten by members of the village, and that several
experts had warned them of the dangers of eating poisoned fish, but the
Doyayo took absolutely no notice of this information which in their social
and cultural system has little significance. A similar attitude is to be
found amongst the inhabitants of Belorussia, who go out en masse every
autumn to collect wild mushrooms in woods which were seriously affected
by radiation from Chernobyl, even though they know full well (thanks to
intense information campaigns) that mushrooms in particular accumulate
high doses of radiation. From our western rationality and scale of values
one could consider Professor Barley’s Doyayo to be behaving in a way which
is extremely damaging to their health and the environment they live in.
But it appears they do it without many precautions or remorse, or any sense
of responsibility, which makes you think a little about the concept of
risk. Don’t the Doyayo see the danger? Are they irrational maybe? Is it
just a question of ignorance on their part? Does a European scientist have
more chance to act in a more wholesome way than a Doyayo? Can we reduce
all the risks that affect our health? Who is responsible for risks? Are
we willing to take any kind of measures to avoid risks?
Risk as an emergent concept
The increase and broadcast of the awareness
of risk in our society is, in a way, paradoxical, if you consider that
at the same time as technological development increases and the objective
probabilities of dying (or coming to harm) decrease, the fears and anxieties
of many citizens increase. It is surprising how awareness of vague risk
has increased. More and more risk factors are identified every day in the
environment we live in, in the food we eat, in the tools we use, in the
space we move in etc.. The explanation of this apparent paradox has many
facets. Amongst the main aspects we can mention the uncertainty science
faces when controlling the effects of particular technologies (genetic,
chemical, nuclear, etc.) and greater awareness of risk amongst the population
thanks to greater information in society about risks (one must emphasise
how information creates topics of conversation in a media society such
as exists today). We can also mention the ever more socially widespread
evidence of the side effects of the modernisation process (which constitute
risks which are not distributed homogeneously throughout society, but rather
unequally both synchronically and diachronically, amongst future generations).
All together this makes for a new insurgent
risk culture which makes risk management and its political use difficult
within the framework of the classical institutions of industrial society,
with the burden of the introduction of future generations as a subject
of reference. What are suitable criteria for identifying or defining risks?
How much security can be considered reasonably secure? Should a uniform
set of criteria be adopted to manage all kinds of risk? Who decides on
such criteria? Who is to be held responsible if the criteria prove unsuitable?
These and other similar issues are at the heart of the debate on risk,
and lead one to suspect that obvious risk does not exist, nor is its distribution
homogeneous, which means that such oft repeated questions as «who’s
paying for this?» become very problematical and even useless for
risk management.
Several approaches to the concept of
risk
Despite the usefulness and centrality of
the concept of risk, its use is usually accompanied by notably imprecise
definition and concept in many of the disciplines which use it (although
mathematicians and economists use it fairly accurately, most social sciences
do not). It is possible to single out two great epistemological lines with
regard to the conceptualisation of technological risk, from the most «realistic»
positions to the most «hermeneutic»:
On the one hand there are the statistical-probabilistic
definitions based on scientific-technical criteria in the positivist sense,
of a quantitative nature, where risk is an objective property of an event
or activity, and can be measured probabilistically to calculate its adverse
effects. The origin of this definition can be found in Engineering, Statistics,
Physics or Chemistry. From this point of view risk has its reference in
expected damages or losses and can be reduced to a numerical value. With
regard to its consequences it is characterised by being a one-dimensional
concept which considers only one dimension of consequences: physical/biological
damage. This sole dimension is moreover considered universal, that is,
relevant in any place or at any moment (hence its practical usefulness).
Through calculating the odds and the extent of the damage it is possible
to draw up an averaged numerical estimate of time and/or space, comparable
to pre-established evaluation criteria, and which allows decisions to be
made. All studies in toxicology, epidemiology, probabilism, system failure
trees, etc. analyse risk from this perspective. Economics and rational
decision theories also subscribe in part to this point of view, with a
concept of one-dimensional risk but this time based on expected losses,
rather than physical damage, within a cost-profit transaction.
On the other hand, as well as the strictest
(and most restrictive) definitions of the Biological Sciences and some
positive social sciences such as Economics, risk is considered from the
viewpoints of some Social Sciences to be a socio-cultural product, so that
the definition of risk is itself considered to be historically and culturally
variable and is based on social conventions. In this respect, the definition
of risk can be approached from a more hermeneutic or interpretative viewpoint,
referring to everything most closely linked to its meaning, to personal,
social and cultural aspects. Generally speaking, risk can be conceived
as the evaluation of the possibility of an adverse effect as the consequence
of a danger (Puy). The multidimensional character of risk is emphasised,
in the sense that, as well as the numerical dimension of quantifiable probability
and loss, it brings with it another series of qualitative aspects that
people take into account when judging or evaluating a risk: such as the
degree of willingness in running it, the immediacy or delay of its effects,
the credibility of the institutions managing it, etc. From the social sciences
it is not easy to consider risk as an objective, one-dimensional concept,
as the same risk takes on different meanings for different people or contexts
at different times. From this point of view risk is more a social construct.
Cases such as health hazards, inequality, feelings of injustice, coercive
control, and other factors which cannot be determined through objective
scientific analysis, are reconstructed through the beliefs and rationales
of the various social agents. The definition and construction of a risk
reflect the interests of each group or institution involved in the process.
From this viewpoint, risk policies turn out to be a constant struggle for
all those involved to put their own definition of risk on the public agenda
and impose it on others.
In this respect, technical analyses of
risk are not necessarily above other risk constructions, as they are also
based on conventions of groups (of experts), specific elite interests and
values and implied opinions. The real consequences of risks are always
affected by social interpretations, and are always tied to group values
and interests.
Barley’s Doyayo can illustrate cases where
the identification and interpretation of some risk factors depend on beliefs
belonging to each social group, which associates them to the possibility
of occurrence of specific damage of greater or lesser extent. For example,
in Barley’s words:
The Doyayo were surprised that I was so
afraid of snakes and scorpions, but avoided running over those most horrible
of birds, owls. Once they saw me pick up a chameleon, whose bite they believed
to be fatal, to put it up in a tree after some children had been tormenting
it. That to them was madness. But the most useful of my follies was my
willingness to touch an anteater’s claws; the Doyayo won’t go near them,
so as not to risk having a permanently flaccid penis. If you stick them
in the fruit of the baobab tree and say the name of the victim the claws
can be used to kill a man; when the fruit falls, the person will die. The
Doyayo who had killed an anteater summoned me publicly and offered me the
claws as a sign of goodwill towards their neighbours. I then had to take
them out into the country and bury them far from frequented places. This
job of cosmological pollution controller I did was greatly appreciated.
(Barley, 1996:165)
In our society, the institutions in charge
of risk management often carry out objective technical analyses, but this
alone does not guarantee control of the social response, which means risk
management can be extremely difficult.
Elements common to the different
viewpoints
The different conceptions of risk share,
at least, three considerations:
1) The distinction between reality and
possibility. If the future were considered either predetermined or independent
of human activities in the present, the term risk would make no sense (Renn).
If a person’s fate were predetermined there would be no need to anticipate
future results, beyond mere curiosity, as all in all the consequences would
be unavoidable. If you accept the distinction between reality and possibility,
the term risk denotes the possibility that an undesirable state of reality
could come about as a result of natural events or human activity. In accordance
with this approach, risk is a descriptive and normative concept, as it
enables us to establish a model in which human beings can make connections
which are more or less causal between actions and their effects, and moreover
makes one suppose that the undesirable effects (damage) can be eliminated
or alleviated if the events or actions which cause them are avoided or
modified. Thinking about what constitutes a risk and what its consequences
might be, leads us to identify factors, dangers, a population exposed to
it, institutions responsible for guaranteeing safety, and, in addition,
to establish parameters which dictate what has to be done (or, more often
than not, what should not be done). Normally, supposing the possibility
of a risk in a population implies a demand to reduce or eliminate it. In
this way, a (political) decision-making process takes place around the
risk with, at least, three types of subject: those responsible for generating
the risk, public administrators and citizens.
2) The other idea underlying all study
perspectives is that the presence of risk brings with it the possibility
of losses or damage. Losses (or damage) are deemed the consequences of
risk. To define or evaluate a risk the first thing you have to do is decide
which are the possible areas of consequence to be considered. As we mentioned
before, different types of study have determined various dimensions such
as physical and biological damage, individuals’ psychological well-being,
impact on the environment, economic impact, etc. Risk is not one magnitude,
but each of these dimensions supposes different consequences, which frequently
are not commensurable or aggregable.
On the other hand, it is obvious that
not everybody perceives reality in the same way, and there are substantial
differences in the meaning things take on for some people and others, according
to their character, their experience, their social environment and the
local context of interaction in which the perception or the action takes
place, amongst other possible factors. The most remarkable differences,
or those which have received most attention from scholars of the matter
in hand, are the differences between experts and laymen (Wynne). The criteria
followed by the public to estimate the seriousness or significance of a
possible loss not only relates to biological dimensions (such as mortality
or morbility), but also to other psychological, social and cultural, dimensions
some of which have much to do with their ethical and moral convictions
about justice and the type of society they wish to live in (Douglas). Thus,
it is possible that the horror of a catastrophe not only depends on the
number of victims (which is the gauge most used traditionally), but also
on the violation of some sense of justice that people share (aspects of
a nature which is intangible and variable in time), etc. Moreover, one
must take into account that different social groups affected or involved
to varying degrees by the risk may evaluate its significance differently,
and it is a political matter to decide which group takes precedence.
3) What is more, the different viewpoints
of risk are riddled with an uncertainty intrinsic to them (Puy), to the
point where the concept of risk itself is likened to that of uncertainty.
This uncertainty appears when trying to establish, for example, to what
extent people prefer or reject risk over security. Moreover, there is uncertainty
regarding the scope or extent of losses, which leads us to assume that
the greater this uncertainty the greater the risk will be (this uncertainty
affects the analyses of laymen and experts alike). One can also speak of
uncertainty to refer to the level (extent) of the losses which may occur,
as even though you know which areas may be affected, there is still uncertainty
as to the chances of such losses occurring or not (the greater the chance,
the greater the risk).
Many studies of risks, especially of the
statistical-probabilistic viewpoint, only consider uncertainty in the sense
of the probability of physical-biological losses, but not in the other
contexts we have mentioned (perception of risk, individuals’ psychological
well-being, financial costs and profits, ignorance and fear, feeling of
injustice, etc.). Some experiences of disaster show that in reality the
scale of damage is far more extensive, and with repercussions that intentionally
realistic or objective analyses cannot grasp. In a way which is very simple
but illustrative, V. Amato (1995) compares the consequences of a risk to
the effect of the ripples produced when a stone is thrown into a lake,
which as they expand affect first of all the victims directly involved,
the company responsible, then other companies will be affected and finally
other industrial sectors. Here we could add the damage to the image of
these companies, damage to the political system that was supposed to guarantee
the citizens’ rights, etc. A real case which was widely reported was the
incident in 1979 at the nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island, where
it was shown that the number of dead and wounded and the damage to property
were only a small part of the total losses. In this case there were no
deaths or excessive worry over potential posterior illnesses, but it did
cause important social damage: the company in charge of administering the
facility folded, and the cost to the nuclear industry and society in general
was astronomical in tougher regulations of the sector, the operating capacity
of reactors was reduced on a world-wide scale, and it generated fierce
opposition to nuclear energy on the part of international public opinion.
This opposition has even extended to other technologies, such as the chemical
industry or genetic engineering, which arouse mistrust and poor credibility
in certain sectors of society.
If you accept that risk is multidimensional,
trying to express the overall idea through a number does not enable us
to give a satisfactory explanation of the social actions, individual or
collective, related to it. From this point of view, quantifying analysis
proves too rigid and reductionist to give account of the social phenomena
surrounding experiences of risk.
Some notes on the analysis of contemporary
society
One might think that we live in curious
or exceptional times where things change very quickly, and perhaps we are
in an historical moment of transition. But the history of mankind has probably
never been anything other than a transition process, of continual random
change, so our times are no more exceptional than any other prior or future
periods. However, we today live and feel with more or less unease, and
often need to draw up a plan to help us know where we are and explain certain
phenomena which affect us and shake the foundations of our existence, which
erode our convictions, our confidence or the way we are or behave. Social
researchers normally accept the hypothesis that our modern mania for explaining
society stems from the European Industrial Revolution in the 19th century,
a period in which drastic changes were evident in lifestyles, institutions,
political systems or social and cultural values. Industrial society brought
with it a whole series of social problems (an increase in inequality, urban
populations with unsanitary conditions, uprooting, industrial accidents,
etc.) but at the same time a chance for freedom, to generate collective
actions aimed at contesting the power of traditionally powerful groups
in order to achieve a new society. Thus, the 19th century saw the birth
of a string of utopias sheltered by technical and scientific progress,
which proposed a rationally better world as an alternative to middle-class
industrial society. In that context everything seemed to indicate that
scientific reason was a suitable basis for generating valid knowledge of
reality, and fomenting decision-making on matters which affect the whole
of society. Technical knowledge would allow some control over the conditions
which rule human life, and would free us from nature’s traditional constrictions.
For many decades this has been society’s image of science and technology,
as legitimating petitions for an idea of unlimited progress and for control
and domination of all types of resources.
At the end of the 20th century some of
these premises are no longer in such evidence. Increasingly, social conflicts
arise from problems derived from technological progress itself and the
unpredictable nature of many of the complex phenomena which affect the
current social order. We are starting to think that the plan that made
sense of industrial society is not as useful as it might be, so that new
forms of analysis and explanation of society appear. This is where we can
place Ulrich Beck’s work, as one scholar proposing a suggestive framework
for analysis through what he terms Risk Society.
Towards Risk Society
Ulrich Beck shares the hypothesis that
the process of modernisation is seriously eroding industrial society and
seems to be giving way to new social configurations (in spite of everything,
within a capitalist system in transformation). Beck lists a series of developments
which indicate this: the increasing importance of new social relations
which go beyond what is the strictly class-based society, such as new citizens’
movements (ecologism, pacifism, feminism, etc.), new poverty, nationalism,
fundamentalism, etc.; he also observes the redefining of the role of the
nuclear family; the change in the limits between work and non-work, the
new relationships between producers and consumers, the consolidation of
a structural employment condition; it is also evident that science is losing
its neutral image and is faced with a methodical doubt, as much for the
object of the study as for the social effects of applying it; and all in
all you end up having real problems keeping certain promises essential
to the modern project (freedom, non-formal democracy, etc.).
In this context Beck postulates the concept
of Risk Society, defined as a stage of modern society in which the production
of political, ecological and individual risks is –more and more– beyond
the control of the institutions in charge of guaranteeing the safety of
society. The political decision-making institutions continue to assume
that natural and social reality can be controlled by technology, at the
same time as they consider that it is allowed to tolerate residual levels
of risk which are more or less provisional. But it is becoming increasingly
obvious that the citizens are starting to get a different picture of the
risks to which they feel exposed, which causes a loss if legitimacy for
the institutions responsible for controlling them. Some citizens’ groups
and areas of public opinion are expressing a growing concern and mistrust
of institutions, as they perceive them to be the source of the production
and legitimisation of uncontrollable dangers, based on rigid relations
of property and power. This stage of the advent of Risk Society becomes
evident in western countries from the mid-nineteen-eighties onwards. In
the risk society the objectives are not so much to dominate nature or free
man from traditional constraints, as, in addition (or on the other hand),
to face the problems resulting from his own techno-economical development.
In this sense some reflective elements are introduced. Now we speak of
reflective modernisation. Beck understands reflective modernisation as
a transformation of industrial society, which takes place without being
planned, latently in the normal, autonomous course of modernisation, and
which supposes a radicalisation of modernity, which dissociates industrial
society from its profile and premises. If simple modernisation implies
a dissolution and substitution of the conventions of traditional society
by industrial ones (through a teleological rationality), the reflective
modernisation conceptualised by Beck implies the dissolution and substitution
of the conventions of industrial society by other types of social convention.
But, according to Beck, this reflective modernisation does not necessarily
tend towards self-destruction but towards self-transformation, and therefore
may have a positive potential for the future of society.
Critical Reflexivity
The process of modernisation which took
place in the industrial society was thought and justified as the key to
globalisation, permanent expansion, and the fact that progress could turn
against itself to the point of negating itself became unacceptable, or
was simply irrelevant. But the expansion and widespread broadcast of scientific
and technological knowledge has favoured in this society the capacity for
self-confrontation and reflection critical of the consequences and risks
the modernisation process brings with it. It is paradoxical that the depletion
of resources and the foundations of industrial modernisation cannot be
attributed to enemies outside the system which we could rise against, underlining
a common identity, but must be attributed to internal agents, to the process
of industrial modernisation itself. All in all it can be seen that in modern
society the same indicators which can explain well-being, can also be used
to explain losses and damage (or consequences of risk), which causes public
unrest, anxiety, and a sort of consciousness of vague and permanent risk.
One must add that for Beck in the risk society the distribution of benefits
and risks is not equal, but there are some groups which always benefit
and others which are always harmed. But the risks derived from the side-effects
of development are of such a nature that their effects reach the whole
of the population to a greater or lesser degree, so that, in Beck’s words,
we are all exposed to it. Even future generations.
The risk society originates where systems
of rules and social institutions fail to achieve the safety promised in
the face of dangers unleashed by decision making. In an attempt to defend
themselves and make this statement relative, those responsible for making
the decisions tend to point out that lack of safety and threats are not
a problem specific to current society but evident in all cultures and periods.
In Beck’s opinion in this new modernity there is a specific, determining
trait: the dangers and risks are the product of social decisions. That
is, the dangers and risks cannot be attributed to nature, the gods, devils
or other metaphysical instances, but rather depend on decisions made by
various social institutions (public or private). The fact that the decisions
give rise to lasting dangers (and also generate economic benefit) is of
notable political significance: the guarantees of protections –safety–
are publicly refuted, which often means that the legitimacy of the decision
makers is called into question. The decisions are argued with promises
of financial, technical and social usefulness, and are subjected to rules
which must guarantee their control. It is frequently evident that established
systems of government do not fulfil the demands of control, and what’s
more, these aspects are usually left out of public debate. The existence
of various different perceptions of the consequences and dangers can also
be established. This makes it very difficult to establish and organise
priorities. The contradiction between promises of rationality and control
and the appearance of harmful effects, gives fresh impetus to the citizens’
demands (claims, civil movements, etc., against the coalitions of interests
and institutionalised bureaucracies, often with repressive capacity).
To escape this chaos of doubt, the institutions
responsible for guaranteeing security (which they need to legitimise them
in their role) painstakingly seek a way to find objective reference criteria
which could bring about a consensus of opinion amongst the different social
agents. It must be pointed out that to do such a thing scientific discourse
is a privileged instrument, especially knowledge gained from the more positivist
disciplines. Risk analysis methods become essential tools for managing
social conflicts resulting from technological facilities perceived as risk
producers. But as we have stated above, it is not enough to evaluate the
probabilities and extent of physical-biological damage, one must also be
aware of dimensions of a psycho-social and cultural nature.
Some critical evaluations of Beck’s
approach
Beck gives great importance to the risks
of the industrial society and the risks of the new reflective society (ecological
risks, risks derived from the latest technology and so on, which particularly
worry people today), and implies that the most relevant differences are
that the latter are not only linked to their place of origin, but also
have global effects, and are therefore experienced with considerable anxiety,
and on the other hand, they are the product of social decisions.
In the first place we should discuss how
clear it is that current risks have global effects and produce universal
instability, or at least that this instability or exposure to risks is
perceived as such universally. That is, if we agree that the social response
to risk depends on multiple dimensions which are not easily quantifiable
and aggregable, that they depend on personal, social and cultural factors,
which are different in each case, it is not so clear that that which some
groups perceive as an obvious risk is seen as such by other social or cultural
groups. If we follow the case of the Doyayo it is obvious that they see
risks where we do not, and vice versa. To consider that the risks we perceive
affect everyone is to forget or underestimate the psychological, social
and cultural dimensions which make up the concept of risk.
M. Rustin’s criticism is interesting in
this sense as it implies that intellectuals from the rich part of the world,
like Beck, have concentrated their thoughts on the universality of risks
because they are themselves reflectively included in their fields of action.
And one might add that trying to apply one’s own scale of values to other
social groups constitutes a type of ethnocentrism.
In Beck’s work risks are presented as
objective, as instances that the author implies should worry everyone,
because even though we may not be aware of it, we are exposed in a «real»
way. Beck’s risk society doesn’t seem to give enough importance to the
thesis (which Beck himself points out) that the very existence of risks
depends on the knowledge one has of them, that is, on the nature they «construct»
(in the sense of Douglas and Wildawsky). From this point of view, the fact
that a particular risk is provoked or not by human decisions becomes relative,
as the meaning of risk itself, its perception and interpretation, as the
constructed social reality it is, is not univocal. A risk that scientific
experts objectively consider a product of nature, may be understood by
other individuals to be related to human decisions, and vice versa.
Emphasising the socio-cultural dimension
of risk avoids the ethnocentrism of thinking that risks generated by the
development of modern society must necessarily be experienced as such by
everyone everywhere. This means we cannot term as risky the behaviour or
attitudes of people who do not share the same knowledge or values associated
with a particular risk. The social actions put into practice by the different
social agents in the face of risks will depend on how they have been categorised
and what social and cultural significance they have for those groups. In
this sense, it is perfectly understandable that owls are a risk factor
for the Doyayo, whilst for us they are simply innocent birds – they are
even nice. The same could be said, but the other way round, of pesticides.
Finally, the theory of the risk society
explains the changes which came about on political-social agendas in late-capitalist
society, but does not seem to go much beyond the suppositions of the post-industrialist
theories of the seventies. In general it is a model which attempts to explain
the changes in industrial society through factors of change which had not
been planned, which cause important problems (externalities and side effects)
which ended by changing the social structure. Even though the thinkers
of the «classic» capitalist industrial society have taken into
account the risks and undesirable effects caused by the capitalist system
(Marx, Weber, etc.).
From the view upheld here, it is argued
that in contemporary society the industrial character has taken on new
forms because of technological development, but the relationships of exploitation
between possessors and the dispossessed still prevail in a way, and the
capitalist workings have not ceased to function in a world colonised by
the «market». What may have changed significantly is the way
these inequalities are experienced, which in contemporary society do not
determine so clearly the construction of people’s social identities as
they supposedly did in the «classic» capitalist society. Beck
refers to this phenomenon in terms of the individualisation of inequalities.
In general terms Beck’s idea of risk society
and reflective modernisation comes from a suggestive model of social organisation,
a project of deeper democratic practice, more than strictly a description
of current society. His approach implies a marked democratisation of institutions,
even science (whose authority so far had been taken for granted). This
project demands the reconstruction of the institutions and their cultures,
as in order to manage risk you must first restore trust. But perhaps Beck’s
work’s greatest merit is that it constitutes a reasoned cry of alarm in
the face of the outlook appearing on a not-too-distant horizon: a sort
of scientific-bureaucratic-authoritarianism.
"With the growth of danger completely
new challenges for democracy emerge in the risk society. The risk society
has a tendency towards «legitimate» totalitarianism in the
defence against dangers, with the pretext of avoiding this hypothetical
damage. The political «side effects « of the civilising side
effects threaten the political-democratic system in its essence, which
thus falls into the dilemma of either failing in the face of dangers which
arise systematically, or abolishing the basic principles through authoritarian
measures, typical of an autocratic state. Solving this dilemma is one of
the essential tasks of democratic thinking and action in the future present
of the risk society». (Beck, 1998: 88 )
It only remains to add that incorporating
the social dimensions in the analysis and evaluation of technological and
environmental risks is an important step to take in this direction •
Notes
1 Free translation of the
Spanish version.
References
• AMATO, V. Rischio tecnologico,
ambiente e territorio. Napoli: Edizione Scientifiche Italiane, 1995.
• BARLEY, N. El antropólogo
inocente. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1996.
• BECK, U. La sociedad del
riesgo. Barcelona: Paidós, 1998.
• BECK, U. Políticas
ecológicas en la edad del riesgo. Barcelona: El Roure, 1998.
• DOUGLAS, M & WILDAWSKY,
A. Risk and culture. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California
Press, 1982.
• DOUGLAS, M & WILDAWSKY,
A. La concepción del riesgo en las ciencias sociales. Barcelona:
Paidós, 1996.
• GARCIA, E. El trampolí
fàustic. Ciència, mite i poder en el desenvolupament sostenible.
València: Germania, 1995.
• PUY, A. Percepción
social de los riesgos. Madrid: Mapfre, 1995.
• RENN, O. «Concepts
of Risk. A Classification». Social Theories of Risk. Krimsky, S &
Golding, D. (ed.), Westport & London: Praeger, 1992.
• RUSTIN, M. «Risk
and Trust: the significance of May 1st 1997», 25th Anniversary Conference
of School of Social Sciences. Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ,
9-10 May 1997.
Insurance against
environmental damage
José Luis de las Heras
Manager of the Environmental Risk Pool
The conservation of environment is
a communal right and, consequently, we are all obliged to preserve it.
This idea is deeply rooted in society. This, environmental degradation
raises liabilities upon the person causing it. The Ministry of Environment
is now working on a Civil Liability Law with regard to activities which
might affect the environment. The author analyses this norm from the insurance
view.
Environmental degradation places responsibilities
on the person causing it: «He who pollutes, pays». It is the
task of legislators, both in Spain and in other countries, to include the
practical application of this principle in specific regulations and in
doing so they come across difficulties which arise from the special nature
of the environment as an object of protection, and the great awareness
generated in society today by everything connected with the environment.
On the other hand, as all activity, and
in particular all industry, creates environmental risk, there is widespread
consensus of opinion on the part of businessmen and public opinion on the
idea that insurance is an instrument that can guarantee that potentially
pollutant activities should inspire in society a confidence which would
make up for the risk they create.
As insurance is a mechanism based on the
possibility of preventing risks through their evaluation, for it to work
well it is essential that the «rules of the game». In this
case, regulations governing civil liability for damage to the environment,
be clear and of foreseeable consequences, which on the other hand, constitutes
an aspiration common to the chiefs of industries with the potential to
cause environmental accidents –those who can be made answerable, and to
those interested in the conservation, and where necessary restoration,
of the environment, that is, the whole of society.
In this article we shall attempt to reflect
the point of view of insurance, using a practical, constructive approach,
of problems and possible solutions related to civil liability for damage
to the environment and its insurance.
Basic concepts of liability
As a starting point for the comments below,
it is interesting to remember the following principles:
Liability is the burden which arises for
he who fails to fulfil an obligation; it can consist of
a) A sanction.- Imposed by the competent
Authority, with the aim that the person responsible does not break the
law again; the sanction can be
• Criminal.- When it is imposed for breaking
a criminal law, that is, for committing a crime or offence. It can only
be imposed by criminal courts.
• Administrative.- When it is imposed
for breaking other laws or regulations which entail administrative sanctions
(fines, suspension, etc.)
b) Compensation or obligation to repair.-
Demanded by the person or entity affected or damaged.
It is worth pointing out that Administrative
or Criminal Liability is normally imposed for the law-breaking itself and
does not set out to compensate for damages, although the sanction may be
economic (fines), whereas Civil Liability is incurred for the damage or
harm caused, independently of whether a law has been broken or not.
For greater clarity, the field of action
of each type of liability can be summarised in a table as follows (veure
taula 1):
Consequently, the situations represented
in the following tables may arise (veure taula2):
When does civil liability exist?
There is a tendency which is becoming
increasingly widespread, especially in the area of business liability,
to apply objective criteria, that is, a company will be understood to have
civil liability for damage caused in the following circumstances:
• Damage or injury to a third party has
been caused.
• The damage is unjust, that is, the company
had no right to cause it.
• There is a relationship of cause and
effect between said damage and a deed attributable to the company considered.
To avoid incurring civil liability it
is not enough to abide by the regulations governing the activity; risk
situations must be avoided as far as possible, however slight the risk
may be, maximising preventive measures, because the professional or employer
causing the damage is usually declared liable.
The regulation of environmental liabilities
Administrative and criminal liability.
In Spanish state and autonomous legislation, an abundance of administrative
obligations and liabilities have been established to protect the environment;
all of them impose duties of prevention, organisation, information, or
limitations of polluting activities and the corresponding sanctions for
failure to comply.
On the other hand, the latest reviews
of the Penal Code incorporate specific provisions for so-called ecological
offences; a series of offences are described and the corresponding penalties
for such offences are established.
Civil liability. We could
define this as the burden which arises for the person causing damage to
another, consisting of repairing the damage or injuries caused. Damage
can be caused without infringing a specific bye-law or as a consequence
of unlawful conduct, for this reason, both administrative laws and the
Penal Code establish that, if the offender has caused damage through his
conduct, apart from the corresponding sanction, he will be subject to civil
liability, that is, obliged to repair the damaged caused.
Said civil liability, however, has no
specific control for damage to the environment, being subject to general
bye-laws of the Civil Code and, if necessary, bye-laws concerning Civil
liability for offence included in the Penal Code.
Is specific regulation of civil liability
for damage to the environment necessary?
Judging by the rule-making carried out
in the last few years by the legislators of several European countries
and the European Union itself, the answer is yes.
On the other hand, they all agree that
this legal tool is very useful; in a communiqué to the European
Commission, on the presentation of the project called «White Book»
in January 1997, the Commissioner for the Environment put forward the following
arguments in favour of civil liability as a mechanism for protection of
the environment:
• It allows the efficient implementation
of the principle «He who pollutes, pays».
• It promotes compliance with environmental
legislation.
• It encourages self-control on the part
of financial agents, which redounds in better environmental management
forecast of damage.
The Commissioner is likewise in favour
of harmonising the above regime within the scope of the Union because:
• There are enough differences currently
in existence between national regimes of environmental civil liability
to create distortions in areas of responsibility.
• A harmonised regime can help reduce
these differences and therefore the consequent distortions.
To what extent is current legislation
in Spain inadequate to efficiently solve the problems posed by damage to
the environment as an object of civil liability?
Requirements for successful claim
of civil liability, in Common Law
a) Causing of damage or injury, which
must be quantifiable or estimable in some way.
b) Attribution of the damage to an act
–or failure to act– to a liable individual (passive legitimisation); said
act, according to the Civil Code, must be negligent.
c) Right of the claimant (active legitimisation).
d) Making the claim within the appropriate
period.
e) Capacity of the liable individual to
repair the damage (solvency).
When applying these requirements to the
field of the environment, we encounter the following drawbacks:
a) Most environmental damage cannot be
valued in economic terms, as it is not replaceable or an object of appropriation.
b) Frequently, environmental degradation
is the result of an accumulation of acts by a number of agents, so it is
difficult to attribute individual liability. The claimant’s obligation
to prove that the person responsible for polluting the environment has
done so through negligence is another frequently insurmountable obstacle.
c) The environment in itself belongs to
nobody, although the consequences of its degradation can be suffered by
specific persons or entities, in their health or patrimony. We can therefore
speak of primary or direct damage, (polluting the water of a river) and
indirect or consequential damage (the loss of a crop which was watered
with the now polluted water). The injured parties’ right to claim is restricted
to injury to their person or damage to their property, so that the restoration
of goods which have no owner (res nullius) cannot be required by anyone.
d) The period in which actions for non-contractual
civil liability can be brought (limitation period) is, under Spanish Law,
one year counting from when the injured party first had knowledge of the
damage and was able to claim ; bearing in mind the slow evolution environmental
damage undergoes on occasion, this period would appear to be excessively
short .
e) It is sometimes technically impossible
to repair certain natural elements; and very often so is replacing them
with equivalents.
On the other hand, for damage which has
yet to be discovered, the limitation period does not begin to elapse, so
that the causer of still-latent damage, could continue to be liable for
an indefinite period, as there is no regulated period for expiry of his
liability .
Consequently, the efforts of legislators
to find specific formulae in this area seem justified. In Spain, as is
well-known, the Ministry of the Environment has been working for over two
years on a bill called the «Civil Liability for Damages Caused by
Activities with Environmental Consequences Act»; below we will analyse,
from an insurance point of view, to what extent and how well this bill
covers the deficiencies of common legislation and what problems its application
will foreseeably give rise to, and incorporating, in addition, some suggestions
regarding those as |
