Mission and objective
The International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) is an independent organisation whose purpose is to help the understanding and management of emerging global risks that have impacts on human health and safety, the environment, the economy and society at large. IRGC’s work includes developing concepts of risk governance, anticipating major risk issues and providing risk governance policy recommendations for key decision makers.
IRGC focuses on emerging, systemic risks for which governance deficits exist and aims to provide recommendations for how policy makers can correct them. IRGC believes that improvements in risk governance are essential if optimal risk-related decisions are to be made and to maximize public trust in the processes and structures by which they are made.
Many of these risks are complex, uncertain, or even ambiguous. In most cases, the potential benefits and negative side-effects interconnect.
IRGC’s goal is to facilitate a better understanding of risks and their scientific, political, social, and economic contexts and of how to manage them. IRGC considers that it is important to bring the principles of integrated risk governance of important emerging systemic risks to the highest levels of decision making. It believes that by combining forces governments, academia, industry, and international and large non-governmental organizations can together develop and implement the best options for governing global risks through coordinated and coherent policy making, regulation, research agendas and communication.
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