When science meets politics: the EU’s impact assessment review and the precautionary principle

Frederic Simon in EurActiv: Since the turn of the century, the European Union has striven to improve its decision-making by requesting a detailed impact analysis before taking new major policy initiatives. Impact assessments (IAs) are now routinely conducted to predict the likely consequence of EU legislation on citizens and the wider economy, in a detailed cost-benefit analysis.

The European Commission is currently reviewing the guidelines on how it carries out IAs and has committed to publish new ones by the end of 2014. The debate may sound technical but could have far-reaching consequences: an IA may lead the Commission to make substantial amendments to a legislative proposal, scale it down or even drop it altogether. Products and technologies may be approved or rejected as a result, leading to new growth opportunities or job losses depending on the outcome.

And some questions can easily turn explosive when science is thrown into the mix – on topics such as climate change, renewable energies, GMO authorisation, shale gas or the regulation of endocrine-disrupting chemicals. On each of these, the Commission seeks advice from the scientific community to determine what form of regulation is needed, if any, applying the precautionary principle. It is therefore no surprise that IAs have attracted attention and sometimes, criticism.

Some see them as just another layer of bureaucracy and a further impediment to faster and leaner law-making. Others have been suspicious of the IA process, saying the “evidence” presented there is prone to political manipulations and influence from a wide variety of interest groups, including powerful business lobbies.

Even the scientists feel they are being manipulated by politicians seeking to push specific policy initiatives. A big challenge for the incoming European Commission will be to disconnect its evidence gathering processes from the “political imperative” that’s driving policy proposals, said Anne Glover, the EU’s chief scientific advisor....

Aftermath of a car crash, shot by Jeff Attaway, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license 

Geoengineering isn’t worth the risk

Roger Williamson in SciDev.net: ...It’s easy to see why geoengineering is attractive to scientists. Finding a technological fix for climate change is a nice, big, juicy project, with lots of scope for lucrative research applications and the chance of a place in the pantheon of scientific greats or even a Nobel Prize. And from the point of view of diplomats too, at a time when climate talks are in trouble, it is tempting to hope for a solution that avoids excessive negotiations.

But the implications of such grandiose engineering projects are far from clear. So, as well as considering the statutory regulation of geoengineering research, policymakers should think over the ethics of investing in such strategies — given their uncertainty, would the money be better spent elsewhere?

As an illustration, a study published last week by researchers from the University of Reading, UK, suggests that large geoengineering efforts could have side effects that would disproportionately harm the globe’s poorest people. [1] It argues that a massive injection of sulfate particles into the upper atmosphere may well lower average global temperatures by reflecting sunlight, but this could also cause huge changes to rainfall patterns around the equator — with potentially devastating impacts for poor people.

Andrew Charlton-Perez, the lead author of the study, said in a statement: “We have shown that one of the leading candidates for geoengineering could cause a new, unintended side effect over a large part of the planet. A reduction in tropical rainfall of 30 per cent would, for example, quickly dry out Indonesia so much that even the wettest years after a man-made intervention would be equal to drought conditions now.”

Here is an example of where society should employ the precautionary principle, the basis of European legislation regarding environmental protection...

The sorcerer's hat, worn by Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, shot by Fabi1994, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Beyond the precautionary principle

Steve Fuller in the "political science" blog at the Guardian (UK):... [T]he precautionary principle remains ensconced in legislation, especially at the level of the European Union, because it caters to a certain self-understanding that welfare state policymakers have about their own jobs. They see government as mainly in the business of protecting people. The government may also promote people but, in the first instance, people must be protected.

Protection and promotion are, of course, not incompatible, but they pull in opposite directions. If you believe that you are in the business of protecting people, then minimising risk can become an end in itself. Thus, the welfare state is often said to provide a "safety net" for the most vulnerable members of society, who in principle could be anyone, given the world's fundamental uncertainty.

...But some critics would reverse the priority of protection over promotion of humanity as the goal of government. In one of the seminal meetings of the transhumanist movement, the philosopher Max More (now CEO of Alcor, the leading US cryonics company) advanced the "proactionary principle" as a foil to the precautionary principle. The proactionary principle valorises calculated risk-taking as essential to human progress, where the capacity for progress is taken to define us as a species.

Moreover, "proactionaries" believe that by restricting risk-taking the "precautionaries" place humanity at still greater risk, as we are prevented from making the sort of radical experiments that in the past had resulted in major leaps in knowledge that enabled us to overcome our natural limits. Perhaps the proactionaries overstate their case. Nevertheless, were any of the path-breaking lab-based research that was done on humans and other mammals before, say, 1980 to be proposed to the precautionary institutional review boards that authorise academic research today, they would probably face serious objections, if not be outright prohibited.

To be sure, proactionaries are under no illusions that the precautionary principle will be reversed soon, though the question of whether risk should be avoided or embraced may come to be a defining feature of future ideological struggles....

A Royal Air Force bomb disposal expert carefully attaches a Rocket Wrench to the tail of a 1000lb bomb during a training exercise at RAF Wittering, Cambridgeshire. A CVR(T) Spartan Armoured Vehicle waits in the background. Under the Open Government Licence v1.0.

Climate migration will not wait for scientific certainty on global warming

Achim Steiner in the Guardian (UK) makes the case for the precautionary principle, an idea that has come in for much ridicule in the US. But some version of it, suitably worded, seems necessary: …Climate change perhaps triggers some of the most polarised debate between precaution and those who say that without scientific perfection it is all just hot air. This has re-surfaced in recent weeks over the issue of climate change and migration.

It has been sparked by a map, produced by a Unep-collaborating centre in Norway, overlapping vulnerable areas of the globe and forecasts of climate impacts. The map was linked to scientific projections, made in 2005, suggesting there might be 50 million "climate refugees" by 2010.

Presenting complex data is a challenge for any public or private institution – in respect of migration, rising populations, unsustainable use of resources, poverty and civil war all contribute to vulnerability in the face of natural and weather-related disasters.

The science has moved on since 2005, as has the debate at about how best to classify people affected by natural hazards, either temporarily or permanently and within or across national borders. Looked at today, the map over-simplifies the message, which is why we asked for it to be removed.

Yet the question remains – are there people being displaced by climate change, and what of the future? These are questions that are likely to be high on nations' minds when the UN security council debates climate change and security in July to review a growing body of informed opinion and evidence.

…The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) looked at the data for 2008. The data suggests that at least 36 million people were displaced by "sudden-onset natural disasters", of whom more than 20 million were displaced owing to the sudden onset of weather-related disasters, including about 6.5 million people because of floods in India….

From 2005, Indonesian refugees gather under an approaching helicopter to receive food and supplies. A US helicopter is transporting supplies, bringing in disaster relief teams and supporting humanitarian airlifts to tsunami-stricken costal regions. U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate Airman Patrick M. Bonafede

US blocks fishing trawlers from following retreating Arctic ice

Science Daily: Commercial fishing in US Arctic waters is to be banned at least until its effects are understood, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council has decided [dated February 5]. In the most powerful application yet of the precautionary principle to fisheries, the council said its prohibition should stay in force until impacts of commercial fishing in previously ice covered waters are fully understood.

“This is a courageous and ethical move by Alaska’s fishermen,” said Bill Fox, Vice President of Fisheries with WWF-US. WWF, along with other groups, has been lobbying for a ban on commercial fishing in the Arctic until a fisheries management plan for the region is developed.

“We do not know enough about the ecology of these areas to allow them to be fished commercially. Until we have that information in hand, we should not tamper with these vulnerable ecosystems, particularly at a time when climate change is already threatening them.”

Council member Bill Tweit, of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, said, “Traditional knowledge and the precautionary principle is applied here which is important in the scientific management of fisheries in the Arctic" while US State Dept Nicole Ricci described the decision as “a pioneering piece of domestic regulation which will provide international leadership for fisheries management in the Arctic”

…Arctic ecosystems are considered extremely fragile and slow to recover from disruptions or damage. Fish stocks are particularly sensitive to ocean temperatures with even small changes resulting extremely unpredictable shifts in the locations and productivity of the stocks and even a small commercial fishery in the Arctic could have substantial impacts…..

USCGC Polar Sea, shot by Jcmurphy

Szalavitz on "10 Ways We Get the Odds Wrong"

Much of the discussion about climate change adaptation boils down to weighing risk, something that hardly anybody does well. In fact, the insurance industry exists because most people, businesses included, do a lousy job of gauging the uncertainty of various outcomes – another name for risk. They focus on spectacular but unlikely risks, while ignoring stealthier dangers that are much more pertinent.

With scarcely a word about climate, Maia Szalavitz explores this point in the January/February issue of Psychology Today. She deftly illustrates such points as “We underestimate threats that creep up on us,” and “fear skews risk analysis in predictable ways.”

Szalavitz is a senior fellow at the media watchdog group STATS, and a journalist who covers health, science and public policy. Her recent work about abusive teen boot camps have been superb pieces of journalism. She is a co-author of Recovery Options: The Complete Guide.

Wingspread statement on the Precautionary Priniciple: tenth anniversary

From a great blog, Effect Measure, a bit of history about the precautionary principle. Many have criticized the precautionary principle for vagueness and other flaws, but at the worst it's a significant starting point. And it's especially important in discussions of climate change adaptation, since we are often required to make choices with a lack of complete scientific knowledge:

This week sees the tenth anniversary of an important event in the American environmental movement, although few people know it (even some who were there had forgotten the date). In late January, 1998, a group of 32 environmental scientists, activists and scholars sat down together at the Wingspread Conference Center in Racine, Wisconsin to hash out a consensus statement on The Precautionary Principle. After a grueling three days, the statement was put into final form on January 25 (just in time to see my beloved Green Bay Packers lose the Superbowl. Is history repeating itself? Aargh!).In the ten years since Wingspread, the Precautionary Principle has itself spread its wings. It has developed into a nuanced and flexible paradigm that has affected the thinking of both the public and the scientific community.

Image of precautionary-based decision model from the Massachussetts Precautionary Principle Project, via the Science and Environmental Health Network.