Joint FRAM and ECHA workshop: Valuing environmental bads: a dialogue between ecotoxicologists and environmental economists on the valuation of environmental impacts of chemicals
Monetary estimates of environmental effects of chemical pollution are scant and rarely figure in regulatory decision-making on chemicals. To discuss how environmental impacts of chemicals can be valued and used in decision-making FRAM and ECHA invited ten ecotoxicologists and ten environmental economists to a workshop in connection to the SETAC conference on May 28th.
Key issues discussed were:
- A collaboration between environmental economists and ecotoxicologists can generate more robust and salient data for regulatory decision-making than what each discipline can produce separately.
- While ecotoxicologists focus on estimating “no effect levels” economists value damages. These and other conceptual differences are important to understand in order to create bridges between the two disciplines.
- The surveys used by economists for environmental valuation can benefit from further input from ecotoxicologists.
- More work needed to move from valuing the effects of one single chemical to pollution from chemical mixtures more broadly.
- Developing a joint multi country survey could be one of several possible next steps.
Link to ECHA, the European Chemicals Agency
Link to SETAC Europe 29th Annual Meeting 2019 in Helsinki