ABSTRACT

The world clearly cares about nanotechnologies. This is evident across industry, government, and civil society sectors. Aiming to protect their investments and intellectual property, industry has pursued an exponential growth in the number of nanotechnology-based patents granted by intellectual property of˜ces (see, for example, Chen and Roco 2008; IPO 2009). Governments have poured large public-sector funding investments into research and development (R&D) of nanotechnologies and have also rolled out many public-sector initiatives over the past decade-from the launch of the United States’ highpro˜le National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) in 2000 to the European Union’s 2005 Action Plan for Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies (Lux Research 2005; European Commission 2005), as well as many others across a range of jurisdictions. Civil society, too, clearly cares about the impact of nanotechnology, with visible high-level activity evident in many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Some, such as Australia’s Friends of the Earth (FoEA)

CONTENTS

12.1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 261 12.2 Regulatory Purpose: How Governments and Other Actors

Regulate and through What Mechanisms ............................................. 263 12.2.1 Reconceptualizing Regulation ..................................................... 263 12.2.2 State-Based Regulation .................................................................264 12.2.3 Civil Regulation ............................................................................. 265 12.2.4 Co-Regulation ................................................................................. 266

12.3 Looking at the Debates.............................................................................. 267 12.4 Current State of Play: International Activities Aimed at

Governing Nanotechnologies .................................................................. 270 12.5 Moving Forward: How and Which International Mechanisms

May Be Best Employed for Regulating Nanotechnologies .................. 273 12.6 Conclusions ................................................................................................. 274 References ............................................................................................................. 275

and the ETC Group, have clearly been at the forefront of such efforts, and the diversity of groups, their core interests, and the range of agendas being pursued through these debates has been impressive (Miller and Scrinis 2010). The broad coalition of approximately seventy NGOs from around the world that developed and declared their commitment in 2007 to the Principles for the Oversight of Nanotechnologies and Nanomaterials is one such illustration (NanoAction 2007). The very action of such a large group of diverse NGOs joining up to make this statement of principles was, as Miller and Scrinis put it, “remarkable” (2010, 413). Such activities have helped move the phenomenon of nanotechnology out of the laboratory and into public consciousness. Many of these activities, too, have been part of a far wider set of ongoing tensions and debates around fundamental political philosophies and global inequalities, including a continued questioning of the merits of different varieties of capitalism and their winners and losers. There is also little doubt that international and national regulatory reforms-leading, for example, to the phasing out of chloro¥uorocarbons (CFCs)—have led to real environmental improvements. So, is regulation also central to the nanotechnology futures?