Risk-reducing goals: ideals and abilities when managing complex environmental risks

Abstract

Social decision-making involving risks ideally results in obligations to avoid expected harms or keep them within acceptable limits. Ambitious goals aimed at avoiding or greatly reducing risks might not be feasible, forcing the acceptance of higher degrees of risk (i.e. unrealistic levels of risk reduction are revised to comport with beliefs regarding abilities). In this paper, the philosophical principle ‘ought implies can’ is applied to the management of complex risks, exemplified by the risks associated with climate change. In its common interpretation, the principle states that we cannot expect an agent to perform something that lies beyond his or her abilities. However, it is here argued that this principle requires setting thresholds for legitimate claims of inabilities that justify the waiving of normative demands. This paper discuss three claims: (1) that caution is required before revising a risk-reducing goal that is perhaps exceedingly ambitious; (2) that claims on abilities are not only descriptive, but also value-laden; and (3) that the function of a goal has to be clarified before risk-reducing goals are revised. Risk-reducing goals that initially seem unrealistic arguably serve performance-enhancing purposes in risk management. Neglecting such goals could lead to choosing less desirable, but certainly feasible, risk-reducing goals.

Keywords:

• risk
• goal-setting
• reconsidering goals
• ‘ought implies can’
• feasibility
• environmental risk

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank the two anonymous referees for valuable comments. He would also like to thank Jessica Nihlén Fahlquist, Sven Ove Hansson and Per Wikman Svahn for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Notes

1. Consequentialist reasoning is sometimes referred to as ‘the Standard Approach’ of risk management and aims to minimize disutility, often translated to monetary values (cf. Hansson 2007a; Hermansson 2005). Several objections exist to such models, the most relevant here being the uncertainties of assessments of consequences, and assigning accurate monetary values to all consequences (for an overview, see Hansson 2007b).

2. These are primarily anthropocentric frameworks, but other accounts are possible in environmental policies, such as biocentric and ecocentric approaches (cf. Stenmark 2002). Such theories broaden the sphere of consideration to take in decision-making.

3. The ‘problem of paralysis’ is a problem related to the rights-oriented approach, insofar as ‘every action carries with it some risk, however small, of serious harm to others, and so assigning individuals the right not to be subjected to risk, without their consent, is an impossible position’ (Hayenhjelm and Wolff 2011, e26). This right ‘has to be overridden in quite a few cases, in order to make social life at all possible’ (Hansson 2007a, 659).

4. There is a similar principle, ‘as low as reasonably achievable’. Primarily, the distinction between achievable and practical concerns the difference between states of affairs that are, by some known mean, achievable, whereas practicable includes costs and benefits (cf. Jones-Lee and Aven 2011, 877).