Preventing new risks: An attempt at a global approach for the protection of people and the environment.

Summary The "new risks", which are catastrophic risks to health or the environment, of anthropic origin or, put another way, major technological risks, have their roots in the first industrial revolutions. However, they differ in several respects from traditional collective accident risks: firstly, because of their magnitude - the threat no longer simply affects groups of individuals, but entire populations or ecosystems - and secondly, because of the seriousness of their individual consequences on health and the environment. These are therefore large-scale threats that now jeopardize the survival of large communities or ecosystems, or even of humanity or the planet as a whole. "Preventing the new risks" requires thinking about the legal framework of the facts that generate them, i.e. the choices made by public or private decision-makers. It is to the conceptualization of a global and transversal system of supervision of the decision-makers, in view of the prevention of the new risks, that the present work is, consequently, dedicated. The result of a pragmatic approach, it is interwoven with proposals to fill the gaps in an understanding of new risks that is currently too often casuistic. This system has been built around two major axes: -on the one hand, the better framing of the public decision in the service of prevention, - on the other hand, the use of liability law and procedural law in the service of dissuasion and the anticipation of behaviors generating new risks.