of development and conservancy endeavours. These adverse
outcomes can arise within one or a combination of three
contexts: those affecting the project proponents, and/or the
project recipients, and, or also, the project adjudicators. They
can be understood as the ‘costs’ resulting from those project
‘effects’ which are not intended initially to be carried by a
project’s progenitor or a project’s decision-granter (permitter).
Risk assessment relates, historically, to the adverse outcomes
associated with resource degradations and impairments to the
environment, now extended to include trans-scientific deter-
minations of economic risk and prognostications of social
shortcomings. These risks arise from ethnic and equity
imbalance, ecological damage, adverse economic outcomes,
pollution hazards, and social impacts, reverse-imaging Elkington’s ‘triple bottom
line’ (1999).
The pragmatic bounds of risk assessment and risk management are both
anthropocentric and ecocentric, andcontingent upon ever-changing and emergent
technology, and nowdelineated by the sustainability ideal, developer intent, and
community ambition. A key generic consideration derives from the better-safe-
than-sorry ‘precautionary principle’ which flags identification of potential harm
and or also scientific uncertainty, and identifies the means to avoid that harm or
uncertainty. In effect it is an application of the Pareto Rule: predicating that any
project must ensure – by outcome or by means of compensation – that nobody is
left worse off consequent to the project, at any foreseeable future time, and or also
supposedly at any other place. In terms of risk management the application of this
‘rule’ requires that a project should only be approved if it is certain that the profit
takers and the project adjudicators could if necessary compensate any socio-
environmental loser or losers. Exporting a toxin waste manufacture, or situating
a risk activity offshore – improving the health and reducing the risk ‘at home’ –
violates the Pareto stricture.^11
Because of these complexities the process of risk assessment is prone to be
facile, a ‘going through the motions’ parody of fair procedural adjudication. There
are always regulatory shortfalls (so far, but no further) and a tendency to grapple
only with hard-facts physical outcomes – leaving the soft-facts social and aesthetic
issues to be handled in some accommodating way. That matter of ‘so far, but no
further’ suggests that a foreshortened horizon blinkers most risk-assessment pro-
cedures. This happens in ways which overlook the cumulative life-cycle conse-
quences of project outcomes, particularly for those not yet born.
The risk assessment of fiscal benefits and disbenefits, environmental safeguards
and enhancements, and social gains and losses, varies for the wider ‘national’ and
the narrower ‘local’ and ‘on-site’ situations. In summary, risk assessment varies
according to scale (national-regional-local-site) and according to participatory
roles (provider–recipient–adjudicator). Concerning proposals, risk impact assess-
ment will usually serve adequately to form a decision, or help decide on a prefer-
able alternative. Relative to procedures, the ‘precautionary principle’ has utility. The
introduction of DDT, CFCs, fluoridation and genetic modifications are instances140 Practice
RISK ASSESSMENT
POSSIBILITIES
Cost Benefit Analysis
(CBA)
Environmental Impact
Assessment (EIA)
Social Impact
Appraisal (SIA)
Technological Impact
Assessment (TIA)
Strategic Risk
Assessment (SRA)
Total Economic
Evaluation (TEE)