ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the implications of a loss of social trust for risk management and risk communication. It use social trust to refer to the expectations people have about institutions and the agents acting on their behalf to manage risks associated with complex socio-technical systems riddled with uncertainties and debates about trade-offs. The chapter begins with a brief overview of social trust and confidence, including definitions, how it is built, and how it is destroyed or lost. It introduces a number of puzzling conundrum tensions raised by efforts to build and maintain social trust while simultaneously making progress on pressing risk governance problems. Fernald illustrates that trust and distrust can exist together and that social distrust can serve an important social and political function, including in risk communication and risk management. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how conundrums of social trust enter into and shape risk management approaches.
