The risks of risk-based regulation: insights from the environmental policy domain.

Risk-based regulation has become increasingly popular in recent years. Proponents argue that it facilitates robust governance, contributing to efficient and effective use of regulatory resources and delivering interventions in proportion to risk. Critics contend that the challenges of operationalising risk-based governance mitigate its potential benefits.

Characterizing environmental harm: developments in an approach to strategic risk assessment and risk management.

Environmental policymakers and regulators are often in the position of having to prioritize their actions across a diverse range of environmental pressures to secure environmental protection and improvements. Information on environmental issues to inform this type of strategic analysis can be disparate; it may be too voluminous or even absent. Data on a range of issues are rarely presented in a common format that allows easy analysis and comparison.

Current directions in the practice of environmental risk assessment in the United Kingdom.

The manner in which regulators apply environmental risk assessment to their decisions on managing risk is changing. Expectations of risk assessment work are becoming clearer, the social issues agenda is having an impact on risk assessment practice, and there is a trend toward harmonizing approaches to the treatment of environmental risk. For risk analysts, the multiplicity of environmental problems is providing opportunities for the transfer of expertise between the different contexts of applying environmental risk assessment.