Within its mission to improve global risk governance, IRGC focuses on emerging and re-emerging risks. Our express intention is to help decision-makers, particularly governments, to anticipate and understand them and the risk governance options before they become urgent policy priorities. Our work is therefore deliberately agenda-setting in nature.
Our strategy is proactive. We identify the risks we will address and design projects which generate appropriate risk governance recommendations. These are communicated to policymakers at an early stage in the evolution of policy.
Our core process comprises:
Identifying potential risk issues at the earliest possible time.
Understanding the issue and the associated risks as well as the institutions and risk governance structures and processes that are currently in place for assessing and managing the risks.
Identifying governance gaps which appear to hinder the efficacy of the existing risk governance structures and processes.
Making recommendations for overcoming these gaps.
Everything we do is rooted in the principles of good governance, so we are:
Open, and share our recommendations freely.
Accountable: all of our recommendations are scrutinised via a robust round of peer review before publication.
Collaborative: this lies at the heart of our approach. No one sector has all the answers, so integrated working is vital.
Our independence is of crucial importance. It allows us to think freely in choosing the subjects on which to focus, in selecting experts and partner organisations with whom to collaborate, and in designing the governance recommendations which we believe are appropriate to dealing with the risks we address.
IRGC operates as an independent think-tank and can help bridge the gaps
between science, technological development, policymakers and the public. As
a flexible organisation with multidisciplinary expertise, IRGC is well equipped
to do this in comparison to some other risk-related institutions, whose single
sectoral, disciplinary and/or geographic emphasis makes it difficult for them to undertake such a broad mandate. IRGC acts as a catalyst for improvements in the design and implementation of risk governance strategies that can be effective in today’s challenging governance environment.
The IRGC Network
IRGC is organised as a network consisting of affiliates, partners and branches and coordinated by the IRGC Secretariat. Thanks to the cooperation and knowledge transfer that occurs amongst network members, this structure allows IRGC to address the diversity of cultures and contexts, to maximise its impact in terms of geographic outreach, to deal with diverse audiences, and to increase its economic efficiency.
Every network member is an active contributor to IRGC’s work, whether via the provision of funding, expertise and research work, or a combination of these. In return, members benefit from access to the entire network and the significant pool of knowledge and useful contacts this represents. They also have the opportunity to attend events (such as international workshops and conferences) organised within the IRGC network, and to influence the further development of IRGC’s activities.
Members include academic and scientific institutions that are active in the realm of risk governance (affiliates); governments, intergovernmental organisations and private sector companies (partners); and regional or national groupings of public, private and scientific or academic institutions working on risk governance related matters (branches).
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