Full Movement Beyond Control and Environmental Governance : Taking Silent Risk Seriously

This article inputs into a research project on the law's approach to geophysical phenomena of full movement – full movement that is produced by man but which man is unable to control. The concept of full movement beyond control can be illustrated in several domains. The more specific areas of environmental protection and sustainable development highlight two significant examples: the movement of greenhouse gas and the movement of waste. The hypothesis proposed here is that there exists a silent risk of full movement beyond control. Even as a discernible and potentially measurable phenomenon, the risk of full and beyond control is commonly denied or underestimated. Its treatment is generally based on the illusion that, since it is man who created the movement, he will always have the ability to regain control of it. This flawed approach to the risk explains many of the difficulties encountered in environmental governance matters, particularly in the area of sustainable development and especially when such difficulties motivate the rule of law. Using the idea of silent risk may also be useful for granting full movement beyond control the transversal and inclusive place it warrants