where application of the precautionary principle – quarantine until a product or
process is proved benign or acceptable – are justified. Yet there is a perverse ‘risk’
in that by fully observing the precautionary principle, innovation can be poleaxed.
Risk analysts and assessors must of course be wide-eyed and open-minded about
‘which community of concern’, and thus ‘what constituency’ they are evaluating
and implementing for. Communities of concern vary as much as an individual, a
landowner group, a for-profit agency, a river catchment population, a town and
its hinterland, or a tourist attraction: all in addition to the formal local govern-
ment and statutory delineations. Analysts and managers must be clear and frank
about the tolerable thresholds of broadly acceptable social and environmental loss.
This tolerance has to be balanced against the economic and social gains as viewed
from the perspective of a project’s progenitors (sometimes as donors) andthe
wider panoply of community recipients. A further complication is a tendency for
risk and uncertainty assessment procedures to work tacitly to the assumption,
before any decisions are made, that environmental degradation and pollution
costs are lesssignificant in poor neighbourhoods, poor regions and poor nations,
a matter explored seriously for the US context by Robert Collin and Robin Morriss
Collin in their ‘Sustainability and Social Justice’ (2001). An ‘after the event’ and
an ‘only if necessary’ prolongation underscores evasiveness for at-risk situations
in poor communities. It is clear that the tacitly decreed boundaries of ‘tolerable
risk’ situates individuals differently to reject or accept what would be an ‘unrea-
sonable risk’ situation. In short, unreasonable risk needs to be fixed for consis-
tency by technical dicta, and not be allowed to stray into uncertainty or
expediency.
The initial evaluation of risk needs to be conducted by an assessing authority in
an all-accepting and defining-of-issues brainstorming style, intent on sifting
‘project wheat’ from ‘project chaff’ – hard facts from soft opinions. This scopingis
in line with the predication that a preliminary review of the uncertainty involved
leads to a more assured assessment of eventual and actual risk. From base infor-
mation about a project, reflected against data received from the community of
impact and concern, an assumption about probable effects can be formed: first,
relative to the scale of the project plant and infrastructure and the utilities needed
to service the proposal; and, second, relative to the short- and long-term accept-
able and unwelcome effects. These are bottom line enquiries, applicable to any
style of project. They are the kinds of initial evaluation of effects (adverse,
acceptable, welcome) which would normally and rationally be
‘scoped’ in the first instance through an ‘initial strategic risk
evaluation’.
It is an indication of analytical poverty when an ‘initial strate-
gic risk evaluation’ is not undertaken. An explanation for this
can be that at the initial evaluation stage there are too many
unknowns, uncertainties and externalities. Rather than come
down clearly ‘for’ or ‘against’ a proposal, advisory personnel
usually feel obliged to recommend that matters be put ‘on hold’
Growth Pattern Management 141The boundaries between
NIMBY (Not In My Back
Yard) positions
according to economic
standing, is of less
significance than Not In
Anybody’s Back Yard
community criteria.