Revitalizing environmental assessment

Abstract

Those of us who have been involved in the development of ecological risk assessment are entitled to be a little self congratulatory. The framework for ecological risk assessment developed in the 1980s and 1990s has been widely adopted in the United States and elsewhere (Power and McCarty 1998; Suter 2008), has been adapted to human health risk assessment (Risk Assessment Forum 2003; Suter et al. 2003), and a recent review considered it to be a success (Dale et al. 2008). So? Does it matter? Although we are doing good risk assessments using a consistent framework, we have relatively little influence. Even when the effects are large, involve charismatic species, and are clearly related to the contaminants by extensive data and high quality models, decision makers often ignore ecological risk assessments (National Research Council 2006). We believe that every one of you who has performed more than one ecological risk assessment has experienced the frustration of seeing your work ignored while less realistic human health assessments or technological standards drive the decision. Or, equally frustrating, nothing was decided and no attempt was made to improve the situation. We believe that there are two principal reasons for this situation. First, ecological assessors have not done a good enough job of providing appropriate information to decision makers. Second, decision makers have not been appropriately concerned with ecological endpoints. Ecological assessors have been legitimately concerned with producing quality assessment documents. However, we have been much less concerned about the ultimate goal of preserving and protecting the environment by providing scientific input to good environmental management decisions. This is exactly the problem identified by the National Research Council (2006) in their review of the ecological risk assessments performed for the Coeur d'Alene Superfund site. To begin to address this problem, we have developed a theory of environmental assessment (Suter and Cormier 2008a) and a fully integrated assessment framework that puts ecological risk assessment in a wider context of assessment and decision making (Cormier and Suter 2008). In addition, we incorporated the setting of criteria and other “bright lines” into the ecological risk assessment framework, which should provide a better means to deal with cases in which decision makers simply want a defensible number (Suter and Cormier 2008b; Cormier et al. 2008). The common theme of these papers is that all environmental assessors must know how their work can best contribute to resolving a problem. This includes everyone from scientists who monitor the condition of the environment to members of a decision maker's staff who balance risks against benefits. While addressing this first problem will put us in the game, it will not make us influential until the environment is influential. For years, environmental decision makers have learned that they will be punished by the public and advocacy groups for not protecting human health, and, in most cases, they can focus on health and economic concerns without considering ecological risks. Consider the recent flap over revision of the atmospheric ozone standard in the United States. Environmental advocacy groups complained that the primary standard for human health was not low enough and complained of White House interference. None complained that the White House intervention blocked protection of crops, forests and other plant populations and communities. This relative indifference to environmental risks can be addressed professionally by educating decision makers concerning the importance of services of nature. However, it must also be addressed in our personal lives by being advocates for protecting the environment. Any organization that you belong to can be a forum for spreading the message that protecting humans will not result in protection of the environment. It is time to try again. It is time to revitalize the practice of ecological risk assessment. We know how to do good ecological assessments, now we need to show that we can consistently do assessments that matter.