A integrated approach to the responsible development of nanotechnologies includes Occupational, Health, Environment, Safety, Ethics, Legal and Societal issues. Characterized by the management of the uncertainties, emerging risk governance takes into account four fields of activity:

• risk research programs as risk assessment and Life Cycle Analysis researches in order to define as soon as possible hazard and exposure knowledge for production, use and recycling phases,
• dealing with uncertainties, implementation of very short term effect actions is required: such as Risk Management Systems (RMS) applying for example the precautionary principle by limiting exposure to potentially dangerous engineered nanoparticles and nano-objects,
• definitions of regulations, standards and code of conduct are also required. Mandatory or voluntary measures, stakeholder’s implication, accountability of scientists and industrials have to be discussed,
• risk communication road map taking into account societal or ethical issues by means of public dialogue in order to reconcile diverging interests e.g. employee vs. employer, consumer vs. producer, citizen vs. politic and industrial interest.

Some National organizations manage this specific governance: ANR (“Agence nationale de la recherche”), NNI (“National nanotechnlogy initiative”), STOA (“Science and technology options assessment”)…

This section has been developed with the support of two European FP7 programs: iNTegRisk and NanoCode.