Multilateral governance of technological risks; editors’ overview 1

Abstract

Many technological risks transcend national borders and need to be managed in a supranational and multilateral fashion. Climate change risks and the solutions proposed for dealing with it, for instance, create risks that could only be managed multilaterally. Nuclear risks—both risk associated with nuclear accidents and nuclear materials—are also essentially multilateral. This is why there is an elaborate set of international institutions, regulations, guidelines and con-ventions in place to ensure the safety and security of millions of tons of radioactive material (both fuel and waste) and a vast number of nuclear facilities and to minimize the hazards in case of incidents. Much of what is currently in place in the global nuclear safety regime is an acknowledgement of the transboundary character of nuclear risks and they were a response to major nuclear accidents, particularly Chernobyl accident (Taebi and Mayer 2017). The need for a multilateral approach to risk governance does not only arise when conse-quences of technological risks are cross-boundary (such as in a nuclear accident) or rather globally by definition (such as climate change), but also when the (potential) risk itself is created in activities that are inherently international; think of civil aviation (Mackenzie 2010) or the use of GMO in agriculture or risks associated with AI applications. International collaborations are also indispensable for managing or reducing certain risks such as in water pollutions, risks associated with Antimicrobial Resistance. it commonly waste which