Small size - large impact - Nanowerk

Institutes
Christopher Bunting
is General Secretary of the
International Risk Governing
Council, IRGC, Switzerland
Opposite:
Chromatin in the leaf cell nucleus
10 -7
100 nanometers
“People are interested in the
nanoscale (which we define to be
from 100nm down to the size of
atoms ) because it is at this scale
that the properties of materials
can be very different from those
at a larger scale.”
The Royal Society
“By tailoring the structure
of materials at the nanoscale,
it is possible to engineer novel
materials that have entirely new
properties. With only a reduction
in size and no change in substance,
fundamental characteristics such
as electrical conductivity, colour,
strength, and melting point –
the properties we usually consider
constant for a given material –
can all change.”
VDI Technologiezentrum
12
The International Risk
Governance Council (IRGC)
Christopher Bunting
I would like to begin by thanking Swiss Re, both for their invitation to participate in
this excellent conference and for their many other contributions to IRGC, which include
hosting – in this very building – the Round Table meeting in early 2002 at which the key
decisions were made regarding the mission, activities and organisation of what became,
at its foundation in June 2003, the International Risk Governance Council.
I have been asked to address three issues in a short time. These are: firstly, to inform
you of IRGC and its purpose; secondly, to summarise why we are interested in
nanotechnology; and, thirdly, to say something of what we intend to do.
IRGC’s foundation has its origins in the 1999 Forum Engelberg. Delegates attending
that year’s conference agreed on the need to create a new, independent organisation
that could make a significant and unique contribution to alleviating many of the
problems faced by those responsible for risk-related decision making. These problems
included the increasing pace of technological change (linked with the sheer pace of
scientific discovery), the changing nature of many of the new and changing traditional
risks, and many changes to how the responsibility for risk governance is allocated.
In the years between 1999 and the present day, considerable thought and effort was
contributed by individuals and institutions from governments, business, academia
and the NGO sector, from many countries, so that the new organisation’s mission and
organisational structure would be appropriate to its delivery of a valid and valued
contribution to risk-related decision making.
Our aims are to improve the capability of governments, business and other
organisations to handle traditional changing and emerging human-induced risk and
uncertainty/ambiguity in a more efficient, fair, balanced and anticipatory way. We do
this by adding a global view to disciplinary, national and sectorial approaches. We
undertake projects and arrange conferences through which we compile knowledge that
45