Focus and Work Programme
Most of the problem fields prioritised by IRGC are characterised by the scale of their potential impact, their long-term nature and by complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity. They all present substantial challenges to those responsible for developing and implementing appropriate policy initiatives, not least because of their global nature and the complicated network of international, governmental and other organisations – including business – responsible for their management.
In particular, IRGC concentrates its attention on ignored or neglected risk issues – issues for which no single organisation, government or company perceives itself as having responsibility and where there is a general lack of interest because the consequences of the risk seem uncertain, remote or without ramifications for stakeholders’ immediate material interests. IRGC tasks itself with bringing these emerging risk issues, along with their potential benefits and potential adverse consequences, to the attention of policymakers and risk practitioners. Examples of past projects include, but are not limited to:
- Risk Governance
- Synthetic Biology
- Geoengineering
- Pollination Services
- Carbon Capture & Storage
- Nanotechologies
- Bioenergy
- Critical Infrastructures
- Influenza Pandemic
Read more about this topic: International Risk Governance Council
Famous quotes containing the words focus and, focus, work and/or programme:
“Why is it so difficult—so degradingly difficult—to bring the notion of Time into mental focus and keep it there for inspection? What an effort, what fumbling, what irritating fatigue!”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women.... When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)
“Irish was a man of parts even if some of them didn’t work too well.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“In the case of all other sciences, arts, skills, and crafts, everyone is convinced that a complex and laborious programme of learning and practice is necessary for competence. Yet when it comes to philosophy, there seems to be a currently prevailing prejudice to the effect that, although not everyone who has eyes and fingers, and is given leather and last, is at once in a position to make shoes, everyone nevertheless immediately understands how to philosophize.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)