NEWS
Round-up of National Workshops
Between mid February and late March 2010, the FramingNano project consortium launched a series of one-day national workshops to provide interest groups with an introduction to the proposed FramingNano governance model. Events were held in London, Paris, Amersfoort (NL), Prague, Rome, Bern and Frankfurt. In each city there were presentations from members of the consortium, Advisory Board members, national as well as international representatives of industry, academia, civil society and government. There were numerous opportunities at each workshop for comment, questions and new ideas, both on the proposed FramingNano governance model and on governance generally.
Guidelines for a governance platform
The consortium had sought to consult as many experts as possible in 2008 and 2009. In addition to the experienced and international FramingNano Advisory Board, FAB, over 400 experts were contacted via a two-stage Delphi polling exercise. The governance model attempts to ensure that there is an on-going process of consultation and feedback between two major groups: those dealing with environmental, health and safety, EHS, issues on one hand and those dealing with ethical, legal, societal issues, ELSI, on the other hand.
Two-step model
The proposed governance model has two functional levels: a deliberative level and a decision-making level. The deliberative level (“deliberative panel”) would be able to incorporate many of the existing organisations and groups currently tackling regulatory issues surrounding the research, manufacture, and disposal of nanomaterials in a more coherent manner, and would then make recommendations to be approved at the decision-making level.
Multi-level governance: a ‘handbook’ for regulators and the regulated
The consortium was funded as part of the European Union’s Framework Programme 7, FP7, research into Science and Society. The Science and Society unit had funded four research programmes on different socio-economic aspects of nanotechnology more or less simultaneously over the past two years and a summary of all four are well-described in Understanding public debate on nanotechnologies. While the EU is the primary recipient of the FramingNano recommendations on governance, the recommendations can be viewed as forming a ‘handbook’ for regulators and the regulated at sub-national, national, European or international levels.
