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Working Group on Ecological Risk Assessment

In conjunction with the NICOLE workshop in Cagliari December 1-2, 2005 the Steering Group, SG, decided to install within NICOLE working groups, WG, to address legislative and policy-oriented issues that need forward action and for which there is active support from both ISG and SPG members. One of the originally proposed topics for a WG is Ecological Risk Assessment, ERA. The WG has subsequently, in particular in conjunction with the Carcassonne workshop, evolved strongly showing that there is a great interest for the topic among NICOLE members. The Working Group currently consists of 20 members.

The NICOLE WG on ERA is aimed at following up the conclusions from the NICOLE Stockholm Workshop in 2005 and to produce a proposal for a NICOLE position/action plan for the ERA topic. ERA is an area that is still under development compared to other to other areas of risk assessment. Issues that need to be resolved, in order to clarify the role of ERA, include, e.g.:

· What is an acceptable level of disturbance to the eco system?

· What are the criteria that enable one to define when an assessment shows that there is no problem?

· How do we in general use the results of an ERA?

This would involve addressing, e.g.

· Review of available ERA approaches, tools, models and datasets

· Exchange of experiences about practical applications of ERA

· To establish a proposed overall technical viewpoint and policy oriented position and action plan for NICOLE concerning ERA

At the conclusion of the Stockholm workshop a list of prioritised or ranked issues related to ERA was produced. The issues were sorted under the headings:

· Legislation/regulation;

· Data needs; and

· Modelling/assessment methods.

This list can be found at (link).

Background

The acceptance of risk-based land management of contaminated land (RBLM) was an early priority of NICOLE. The advantages of RBLM are that it is systematic and objective, it provides a consistent basis for dealing with issues such as uncertainties and decision making and it leads to solutions that are appropriate to the risks posed by contamination. The assessment of these risks has previously focused primarily on risks to human health and water, and it is only recently that ecological risk assessment has begun to become a more regular part of contaminated land management. In countries which have, or are in the process of establishing, ERA frameworks, a number of common principles are already apparent, such as the use of a tiered approach and a “weight of evidence.

A major problem in carrying out ecological risk assessment is a paucity of technical data and an inadequate consideration of existing information by some models. Consequently, there are significant uncertainties in the execution of ERA as well as in its role.

A question implied by ERA is: can we do anything with its findings, i.e. how do we manage ecological risks? The idea of “ecological risk management” would seem to be a natural consequence of the use of ERA, but has scarcely begun as a discipline. It has been argued that any requirements for ecological risk management should be proportional, taking into account the geographical and urban context of a site and the ongoing land use.

The context of many contaminated sites is that they are located in industrial or urban areas, both of which are already highly disturbed from an ecological point of view. Hence, if the implication of ecological risk assessment is that there is a problem arising from a contaminated site that needs to be put right, the next question is what is the desired end-point of the “putting right” actions? Even if it could be determined what the original status of an ecosystem was, is it appropriate to expend resources to restore an ecosystem that does not exist elsewhere in the site’s local environment?