Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution

This submission is based on ongoing Green Alliance work examining practical ways forward for policy and regulation on issues of scientific uncertainty, including GMOs and chemicals regulation. This work has included looking at the framework for assessing the risks and uncertainties involved in issues such as chemicals regulation. Green Alliance has been working with representatives from government departments including the Cabinet Office, DETR, DTI, Office of Science & Technology, HM Treasury; industry; environmental NGOs and academics in this area.

Below is a brief summary of some of the issues and recommendations explored in a recent Green Alliance briefing, Steps into Uncertainty: Handling risk and uncertainty in environmental policy-making, published in conjunction with the ESRC's Global Environmental Change Programme, which the Commission may like to investigate in its new study.

1.    Involving the public in chemicals assessment and regulation
How can government and the Chemicals Stakeholder Forum genuinely engage the public in issues concerning chemicals assessment and regulation? Increasingly, issues of environmental and human risk such as the long-term effects of chemicals are seen as political problems, to be tackled by society, not just science. People are interested in, and concerned about, the wider impacts of chemicals, and are increasingly asking to be involved in decisions that might affect them. There is growing recognition that participatory approaches are a necessary part of good decision-making, and of rebuilding public trust in the regulatory system. Government and industry may fear that any departure from a public position of 'absolute safety' will cause panic and loss of trust. However, academic research shows that the public are prepared to and routinely do cope with risk and uncertainty, and that it is the denial of uncertainty that leads to distrust and backlashes. Ways must be found to communicate uncertainty and complexity more openly, and to allow two-way dialogue.

The Commission could look at the 'culture shift' necessary if bureaucracies were to take the values and attitudes of the public more fully into consideration. Academic researchers have developed a wealth of tools and techniques for involving the public. Methodologies include citizens' juries and panels, consensus conferences, deliberative polls and multi-criteria mapping. Where participatory methodologies are used in policy-making, the objectives and responsibilities of the forum or process should be clearly delineated. The cost and logistical difficulties involved in scaling up these techniques are considerable. However any calculation of cost must be weighed against the cost of inaction, in terms of loss of public trust, as was shown clearly in the case of BSE.

The Chemical Stakeholders' Forum could be very effective in engaging the public. They must be given the opportunity to be bold and experimental. They should consult widely, using participatory processes and tools, and feed results from consultation processes into policy-making.

2.    Transparency
As well as engaging the public, it is also crucial that decisions are conducted in a transparent and open fashion. How can this be achieved at a national and an EU level? The Amsterdam Treaty explicitly acknowledges the need for more transparency and openness in EU procedures. In the USA, all expert advisory committees which advise US Executive Agencies, like the Environment Protection Agency meet in public, publish agendas and minutes. The Commission could investigate ways to ensure that chemicals policy and regulation at a national and EU level are genuinely transparent and open.

3.    The role of the precautionary principle in chemicals assessment
The precautionary principle or 'a precautionary approach' is enshrined in much environment and health policy and law at a UK, European and international level - from the sustainable development strategy, to the European deliberate release directive, to the recently signed Biosafety Protocol.

What this means in practical policy terms, however, is unclear. The European Commission's Communication on the Precautionary Principle, published in February 2000, attempts to codify the essential elements of precaution in EU policy and to set a predictable framework for its application. There is a need for greater clarity in the use of the precautionary principle. The fluid nature of the precautionary principle demands totally transparent policy-making so that it is clear how the principle is being applied. The UK Government could consult on the potential for developing its own guidelines for the use of the precautionary principle, to stimulate discussion about the relevance of the precautionary principle in the UK context. The Commission could investigate how the precautionary principle could best be applied to the assessment of the long term effects of chemicals in the environment as part of its study.

Green Alliance is currently working on a project to discuss how the precautionary principle should be applied and will bring together different stakeholder groups - business, government and NGOs. It will explore the different perspectives of these sectors, highlighting consensus between the different groups, as well as areas of dissent. The seminar findings will form the basis of a Green Alliance publication, which will put forward recommendations to Government on the use of precaution in practice.

4.    Assessing the risks of long term effects of chemicals in the environment
Academic work has shown that a statistical risk assessment is only fully valid when we have a clear idea of possible outcomes, and of the probability of these outcomes occurring. With hormone disrupters, for example, we do not have this information, and technical risk assessment tools become problematic. In conditions of uncertainty, risk assessments depend greatly on the assumptions made by the assessors and the variables that they factor into the risk equation. Behind the number crunching are built in values made in the framing of assessments. This 'framing' has important consequences for the policy outcomes. Where possible outcomes are irreversible or persistent, as with certain chemicals, for example, this needs to be explicitly considered in any process of risk assessment. The importance of understanding how risk assessments have been framed again demands total transparency of the risk assessment process.

The way government handles risk is reviewed as part of the Modernising Government process. The Commission could look at how this framework could be broadened out to explicitly consider issues of environmental uncertainty, and precautionary approaches.

5.    Role of science and scientific advice in chemicals assessment
Over-reliance on scientific evidence, without proper examination of the assumptions behind the evidence, is extremely problematic. It is damaging to the reputation of science, as it makes conditional, contingent findings appear as assertions of fact. It is damaging to the reputation of government, as it creates a false sense of certainty which may be overturned, as happened over BSE, with every new scientific finding resulting in new policy response. This in turn is damaging to industry, which loses ability to predict policies or regulatory environments. The research of the Global Environmental Change Programme (GECP) has highlighted that other types of knowledge should be built into the decision-making process - for example, in both BSE and genetic modification, farmers' knowledge provides an important addition to laboratory-based scientific knowledge. The challenge lies in how and at what stage to build in these other forms of knowledge into the policy process.

Equally, more science is needed. There should be more monitoring of the effects of chemicals as we still have a poor evidence base on issues such as endocrine disrupters. This scientific research needs to be carried out by independent scientists and not just by the industry itself.

6.    Placing risk assessment in a wider policy context
Any proper assessment of chemicals needs to focus on potential benefits as well as potential risks. This implies the need for an assessment of the wider policy context, including a look at alternatives. The need to contextualise individual risk and uncertainty issues and consider the wider context is an important part of the assessment.

Chemicals assessment should be placed in a wider social and economic context and should be asking the questions "Why are we doing this? What are the social benefits?" Is it possible to ask these wider questions as an integral part of the risk and regulatory process - as the so-called 'fourth hurdle' of the regulatory system? The fourth hurdle requires policy-makers to consider the need for a new technology or practice, weighed against risks and possible unintended consequences. In GM regulation for example, there was an attempt to integrate 'fourth hurdle' concerns into the original GMO Directive and further attempts in the amended Directive. Elsewhere, though, such an approach is enshrined in legislation - The Norwegian Gene Technology Act of 1995 requires releases to the environment to be compatible with sustainable development and to meet fourth hurdle requirements. Although in legal terms the wording is vague, it gives recognition to wider discussions which otherwise may be ignored. How could we encourage debates about social purposes and benefits alongside risk, as part of the routine democratic social assessment of chemicals?

7.    Early warning systems of the effects of chemicals
Effective responses to scientific uncertainty rely on thorough early warning systems to identify and deal with unexpected consequences as they arise. Careful thinking about the future requires a shift in focus from individual risk issues to the broader social dimension - how these individual issues contribute to future societal trends. There is a need to do this not just to highlight potential problems, but potential opportunities too. Do we currently have the adequate mechanisms and institutions for fostering foresight?

There are various sites for proactive futures work in government, including the Performance and Innovation Unit in the Cabinet Office, as well as individual Departmental initiatives. Tools like scenario planning and visioning, which provide ways of conceptualising and discussing potential futures, even those which are uncertain are beginning to be used more widely in Government. However there is a need for a more coherent strategy to integrate these initiatives, to channel work into policy-making and to ensure political prioritisation. The UK government could consider extending the role of the Interdepartmental Liaison Group on Risk Assessment (ILGRA), creating an ILGRA Futures Group to anticipate issues involving scientific uncertainty well in advance. Those involved in innovation policy could also investigate approaches to more inherently sustainable innovation that might obviate the need for handling an increasing number of risk issues.

8.    Learning from past experience
There are currently no clear processes through which lessons learned from previous attempts at handling scientific uncertainty, can be drawn out and used to inform future policy, be it in chemicals, food safety or mobile phones. There is a need for 'feedback loops', to ensure that decisions made are well informed, iterative and adaptable. The costs and benefits of new technologies are best assessed through examination of similar past experience. A recent report by the European Environment Agency: Late lessons from Early Warnings: The Precautionary Principle 1898 - 1998, which GECP researchers have been involved in, examines lessons learnt from past experiences. Feedback loops would help predictability, which is particularly important to industry, which relies, rely on a predictable, informed policy framework in order to make R&D decisions. The Commission could look at how to ensure effective feed back loops are in place so that lessons from past experiences with chemicals and other policy areas involving risk and uncertainty are in place.

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