role, and that perceptual preferences are considered alongside expert
analysis. This is important as it cannot be assumed that water risk
experts are neutral, disinterested protectors of the public good. Selfevidently
they are not; at the crudest level maintaining jobs, budgets or
research grants and the aggrandisement of bureaucracies will all influence
decision-making. Indeed Jasonoff (1982) and others have argued
that a scientifically expert elite is neither qualified nor politically legitimated
to impose risks and risk management policies on the general
public.
Risk Mitigation As An Economic Good
“Many past failures in water resources management are attributable to
the fact that water has been – and is still – viewed as a free good”
(GWP. TAC 2000 p. 18). This applies with just as much force to risk
management, where it has been relatively rare to view risk mitigation
as an economic good which can be subject to market discipline. There
is no doubt that the demand to “consume” safety will outstrip the
capacity of the sector to deliver it unless mechanisms exist to make
consumers aware of the provision costs involved.
However, while it is easy to identify free safety provision as a problem,
employing market forces to determine the appropriate level of safety
provision and the distribution of hazards and risk mitigation costs is
itself problematic, not the least because lack of markets and market
failures are so prevalent within the water sector.
Governments would need to create markets and “correct” failures
before market mechanisms will produce an optimal allocation of risk
and safety and optimal investments in increasing supplies of safety. In
practice there will be many cases within the water sector where the
costs involved in attempting to correct the market failures will far
exceed the benefits involved.
While market failure problems will undoubtedly place limitations on
the use of conventional market tools, such as pricing or permit trading,
in the allocation of many water related risks, this does not mean that
economic good concepts have no practical relevance. The distinction
made by GWP TAC (2000) between value and charging is relevant he