Some variations in approach may well be justified if governments have
responded to the public who “dread” some forms of potential harm
much more than others. Still other variations may be economically and
socially rational if the costs of regulating the hazard exceed the benefits
or if regulating one hazard simply creates other potential risks. It
would be less easy to justify risk management variations if they arose
simply from lack of any meaningful, systematic analysis or because
particular stakeholders (including professionals) have had the power to
impose their own risk preferences on others or to gain risk mitigation
or risk shifting benefits at the expense of others. This would appear to
be the case in the water sector. There has been little cross-sectoral
debate about appropriate decision principles for different forms of risk
and yet the adoption of the various principles has critical implications
for the costs of risk mitigation and its distribution.