EU Water Framework Directive and Stockholm Convention Can we reach the targets for priority substances and persistent organic pollutants?

Background, aim and scope  

Water is a renewable resource and acceptable quality is important for human health, ecological and economic reasons, but human activity can cause great damage to the natural aquatic environment. Managing the water cycle in a sustainable way is the key to protect natural resources and human health. On a global level, the microbiological contamination of water sources is a major problem in connection with poverty and the United Nations Millennium Development Declaration is an important initiative to handle this problem. In terms of environmental health, persistent organic pollutants (POPs) circulate globally; as they travel long distances, they are found in remote areas far from their original source of application and can cause damage wherever they move to. On a global scale, United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) issued the Stockholm Convention to reduce POPs; in the European Union (EU), one intention of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) is to reach the good chemical status of waters; beside these regulations, there are other directives in support of these goals. The aim of this paper is to discuss whether the Stockholm Convention and the WFD allows meeting the targets of protection of human and environmental health, which are established in the different directives and how could we approach the targets.     

The Costs of Meeting the Environmental Objectives for the Baltic Sea: A Review of the Literature

The environmental targets of the recently agreed Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP) targets are likely associated with a considerable cost, which motivates a search for low-cost policies. The following review shows there is a substantial literature on cost-efficient nutrient reduction strategies, including suggestions regarding low-cost abatement, but actual policies at international and national scale tend to be considerably more expensive due to lack of instruments that ensure a cost-efficient allocation of abatement across countries and sectors. Economic research on the costs of reducing hazardous substances and oil spill damages in the Baltic Sea is not available, but lessons from the international literature suggest that resources could be used more efficiently if appropriate analysis is undertaken. Common to these pollution problems is the need to ensure that all countries in the region are provided with positive incentives to implement international agreements.     

The internalisation of environmental costs: implementing the Polluter Pays principle in the European Union

This paper frames the problem of implementing 'the polluter pays' in the European Union as a social-political process in which conflicts emerge and must be resolved between competing interests, between people holding different value systems and different principles of judgement, and also between different representations of future states and different visions of the world. 'The polluter pays' is a principle for internalising external costs and assigning liability. Its application may seem to entail a need for monetary valuation of damages. This allows environmental impacts and protection questions to be formulated as optimal resource use problems through the extension of traditional cost-benefit analysis techniques. However, reasons such as uncertainty, distributional concerns, and diversity of ethical positions make monetary valuation difficult or inappropriate. Decision support techniques are then sought that do not depend exclusively on monetisation, such as multicriteria and deliberative methods. The process of 'internalisation' of environmental damages is thus expressed through broad societal adjustments. Procedures need to be found that are socially legitimate and effective in the sense that the stakeholders can accept it as dealing adequately with their concerns. This is a collective 'internalisation': we are all polluters; we all pay – shouldering the clean up burdens, the institutional adjustments, the worries and the risks – in more or less unequal shares. The burden distribution will inevitably be a matter of controversy.     

Aquaculture expansion in Brazilian freshwaters against the Aichi Biodiversity Targets

The Convention on Biological Diversity proposed the Aichi Biodiversity Targets to improve conservation policies and to balance economic development, social welfare, and the maintenance of biodiversity/ecosystem services. Brazil is a signatory of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and is the most diverse country in terms of freshwater fish, but its national policies have supported the development of unsustainable commercial and ornamental aquaculture, which has led to serious disturbances to inland ecosystems and natural resources. We analyzed the development of Brazilian aquaculture to show how current aquaculture expansion conflicts with all 20 Aichi Targets. This case suggests that Brazil and many other megadiverse developing countries will not meet international conservation targets, stressing the need for new strategies, such as the environmental management system, to improve biodiversity conservation.     

Paying for International Environmental Public Goods

Supply of international environmental public goods must meet certain conditions to be socially efficient, and several reasons explain why they are currently undersupplied. Diagnosis of the public goods failure associated with particular ecosystem services is critical to the development of the appropriate international response. There are two categories of international environmental public goods that are most likely to be undersupplied. One has an additive supply technology and the other has a weakest link supply technology. The degree to which the collective response should be targeted depends on the importance of supply from any one country. In principle, the solution for the undersupply lies in payments designed to compensate local providers for the additional costs they incur in meeting global demand. Targeted support may take the form of direct investment in supply (the Global Environment Facility model) or of payments for the benefits of supply (the Payments for Ecosystem Services model).     

Persistence and runoff losses of 3 herbicides and chlorpyrifos from a corn field in the Lake Balaton watershed of Hungary

Corn is intensively cultivated in western Hungary in the basin of Lake Balaton, one of the most important water resources in eastern Europe. Pesticide runoff was measured in 1996 and 1997 from a typical corn field near Zalaegerszeg, Hungary, which drains into the Zala River, an important water source of Lake Balaton. Three herbicides, namely atrazine, acetochlor, and propizochlor, and the insecticide chlorpyrifos were applied to bare soil in a field with 5% slope and soil and runoff water pesticide concentrations were monitored. In 1997, a rainfall-runoff simulation experiment was conducted on a small sub-plot in order to measure pesticide runoff under reasonable worst-case conditions. Under natural rainfall almost all losses occurred in a large runoff event in 1996 one month after application in which 3% of atrazine and 1% of acetochlor was transported off the field. Propizochlor and chlorpyrifos losses in the same event were much lower: 0.2% and <0.01%, respectively, because of these chemicals' shorter persistence times in near-surface soil. The rainfall simulation produced only trace amounts of losses even though 4.1 cm was applied in 2 hours; the soil was extremely dry and only 0.2 cm runoff occurred containing less than 0.01% of all chemicals applied. The results suggest that intensive use of corn herbicides, which have been found to result in widespread contamination of water resources elsewhere, may be expected to have the same impact in the Balaton watershed depending on the amounts and intensities used in the basin.     

试论环境侵害损害赔偿中的行政调解

论述了环境侵害损害赔偿中应用行政调解的特点、效力等问题，具有一定的现实意义。     

Life Cycle Analyses and Resource Assessments

Prof. Ulgiati stresses that we should always use an ecosystem view when transforming energy from one form to another. Sustainable growth and development of both environmental and human-dominated systems require optimum use of available resources for maximum power output. We have to adapt to the laws of nature because nature has to take care of all the waste products we produce. The presentation addresses a much needed shift away from linear production and consumption pattern, toward reorganization of economies and lifestyle that takes complexity—of resources, of the environment and of the economy—into proper account. The best way to reach maximum yield from the different kinds of biomass is to use biorefineries. Biorefinery is defined as the sustainable processing of biomass into a spectrum of marketable products like heat, power, fuels, chemicals, food, feed, and materials. However, biomass from agricultural land must be used for the production of food and not fuel. Prof. Voss focuses on the sustainability of energy supply chains and energy systems. Life cycle analyses (LCA) provides the conceptual framework for a comprehensive comparative evaluation of energy supply options with regard to their resource requirements as well as the health and environmental impact. Full scope LCA considers not only the emissions from plant operation, construction, and decommissioning but also the environmental burdens and resource requirements associated with the entire lifetime of all relevant upstream and downstream processes within the energy chain. This article describes the results of LCA analyses for state-of-the-art heating and electricity systems as well as of advanced future systems. Total costs are used as a measure for the overall resource consumption.     

Ecosystems,Ecological Restoration,and Economics: Does Habitat or Resource Equivalency Analysis Mean Other Economic Valuation Methods Are Not Needed?

Coastal and other area resources such as tidal wetlands, seagrasses, coral reefs, wetlands, and other ecosystems are often harmed by environmental damage that might be inflicted by human actions, or could occur from natural hazards such as hurricanes. Society may wish to restore resources to offset the harm, or receive compensation if this is not possible, but faces difficult choices among potential compensation projects. The optimal amount of restoration efforts can be determined by non-market valuation methods, service-to-service, or resource-to-resource approaches such as habitat equivalency analysis (HEA). HEA scales injured resources and lost services on a one-to-one trade-off basis. Here, we present the main differences between the HEA approach and other non-market valuation approaches. Particular focus is on the role of the social discount rate, which appears in the HEA equation and underlies calculations of the present value of future damages. We argue that while HEA involves elements of economic analysis, the assumption of a one-to-one trade-off between lost and restored services sometimes does not hold, and then other non-market economic valuation approaches may help in restoration scaling or in damage determination.     

The sustainable management and protection of forests: analysis of the current position globally

The loss of forest area globally due to change of land use, the importance of forests in the conservation of biodiversity and in carbon and other biogeochemical cycles, together with the threat to forests from pollution and from the impacts of climate change, place forestry policy and practice at the center of global environmental and sustainability strategy. Forests provide important economic, environmental, social, and cultural benefits, so that in forestry, as in other areas of environmental policy and management, there are tensions between economic development and environmental protection. In this article we review the current information on global forest cover and condition, examine the international processes that relate to forest protection and to sustainable forest management, and look at the main forest certification schemes. We consider the link between the international processes and certification schemes and also their combined effectiveness. We conclude that in some regions of the world neither mechanism is achieving forest protection, while in others local or regional implementation is occurring and is having a significant impact. Choice of certification scheme and implementation of management standards are often influenced by a consideration of the associated costs, and there are some major issues over the monitoring of agreed actions and of the criteria and indicators of sustainability. There are currently a number of initiatives seeking to improve the operation of the international forestry framework (e.g., The Montreal Process, the Ministerial Convention of the Protection of Forests in Europe and European Union actions in Europe, the African Timber Organisation and International Tropical Timber Organisation initiative for African tropical forest, and the development of a worldwide voluntary agreement on forestry in the United Nations Forum on Forests). We suggest that there is a need to improve the connections between scientific understanding, policy development, and forestry practice, and also the cooperation between the various international initiatives and processes, so that the international framework is more effective and its influence is extended geographically.     

Liability Theories in Contaminated Groundwater Litigation

Disputes regarding contaminated sites have given rise to an explosion of federal and state court litigation. Congress enacted the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 ("RCRA"), 42 U.S.C. §§6901 et seq. , as a contemplated "cradle to grave" regulatory scheme for solid waste, and passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act ("CERCLA"), 42 U.S.C. §§9601 et seq. , to address the investigation and remediation of contaminated sites. RCRA and CERCLA each contemplate a strict, joint and several regulatory liability scheme to address sites that have required billions of dollars to investigate and remediate, and which will require additional billions in order to complete the job. Federal and state law cases involving groundwater contamination cases have presented special challenges to litigants and the Courts. Determining the source of groundwater contamination is often a matter of technical dispute, particularly in the case of commingled plumes or older plumes where original point source locations can no longer be located or where there has been a significant amount of contaminant degradation over time. Contaminated plumes derived in whole or in part from potential continuing sources can present difficult remedy selection issues and uncertainty regarding future cost obligations. While a variety of federal and state law theories of liability are available to address groundwater contamination, each presents certain benefits and limitations. For example, CERCLA claims can cover a wide spectrum of potentially responsible parties and are based on strict liability; however, CERCLA excludes petroleum from the scope of its liability scheme and limits recovery to necessary response costs consistent with the National Contingency Plan. RCRA claims can include petroleum contamination, but cannot seek recovery of past costs. Common law theories such as nuisance, trespass and negligence can permit recovery of a broader scope of potential damages and provide for joint and several liability, but they are not based on notions of strict liability and sometimes present difficult statute of limitations problems. This article identifies federal and California state law liability theories addressing responsibility for groundwater contamination, and reviews the elements of liability, potential limitations on available relief, and recent case law developments under these theories.     

Striking the balance: Challenges and perspectives for the protected areas network in northeastern European Russia

Increasing anthropogenic pressure on the largest remaining tracts of old-growth boreal forest in Europe necessitates additional conservation of ecosystems and biodiversity in northeastern European Russia. In a regional network comprising 8 % of the Nenets Autonomous District and 13.5 % of the Komi Republic, 248 areas have varying protected statuses as state nature reserves (zapovedniks), national parks, reserves/sanctuaries (zakazniks), or natural monuments. Due to increased natural resource extraction in this relatively pristine area, designation of additional protected areas is critical for the protection of key ecological sites. The history of ecological preservation in these regions is herein described, and recent recommendations for incorporating additional ecologically representative areas into the regional network are presented. If the protected area network can be expanded, the overall environmental stability in these globally significant ecosystems may remain intact, and can help Russia meet the 2020 Aichi conservation targets, as set forth by the Convention of Biological Diversity.     

Can’t See the (Bamboo) Forest for the Trees: Examining Bamboo’s Fit Within International Forestry Institutions

Over the centuries, governments and international agencies have developed a wide range of institutions to manage timber resources and conserve values provided by treed lands. Concerns regarding the sustainable supply of timber have provided opportunities for the development of substitute resources; however, bamboo and other non-timber forest resources have not been a part of the development of these institutions. Bamboo is a unique Non-Timber Forest Product, as it is often classified as forest or timber, and therefore must adhere to the same regulations as timber. Given the recent global expansion of bamboo, it is timely to examine the interplay between bamboo and the traditional institutions of forest governance. This paper aims to contribute to debates regarding cognitive institutional constraints on the development of substitute natural resources using bamboo as a case study, with specific focus on the applicability of Forest Stewardship Council certification, timber legality verification and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation to bamboos.     

Inventory and substance flow analysis of polybrominated diphenyl ethers in the Nigerian transport sector—end-of-life vehicles policy and management

Recently, certain polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) have been listed as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the Stockholm Convention. In this study, a preliminary material and substance flow analysis of commercial pentabromodiphenyl ether (c-PentaBDE) was conducted for motor vehicles—a major use sector for POP-PBDE in polyurethane (PUR) foam—for Nigeria. The methodology of the Stockholm Convention PBDE inventory guidance was used for the calculation of c-PentaBDE. Material/substance flow analysis was conducted applying the STAN software. The time frame for this analysis was 1980–2010, considering that this was the period when POP-PBDE-containing vehicles were largely imported into Nigeria.It is estimated that the approximately 19 million passenger cars imported from 1980 to 2010 contained ca. 270 t of POP-PBDEs in ca. 401,000 t of PUR foam. A major share of cars from the USA and only a small share of cars from Europe and Asia were impacted. This simplified material and substance flow of PUR foams and POP-PBDEs in motor vehicles demonstrated the potential for environmental/human contamination and pollution of recycling/reuse for Nigeria and other developing countries.The study developed the first preliminary inventory of end-of-life vehicles for Nigeria, following which the environment ministry has taken up the important issue of end-of-life vehicles management. Considering that a range of other pollutants are contained in vehicles (e.g. heavy metals, flame retardants, PCBs, chlorofluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons and waste oil), this initiated activity should finally lead to an integrated management of pollutants and resources from the transport sector.     

BAT and BEP as instruments for reducing emissions of unintentionally produced POPs and development of guidelines under the stockholm convention

The 6th Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC 6), under the Stockholm Convention on POPs, gave an expert group the mandate to develop guidelines for the application and implementation of best available techniques (BAT) and best environmental practices (BEP) for the prevention and reduction of unintentionally produced and emitted POPs, including polychlorinated dibenzodioxins/-furans (PCDD/Fs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and hexachlorobenzene (HCB). Measures to reduce or eliminate the release of these POPs to the environment can be found in Article 5 of the Convention. BAT and BEP are already being applied as emission reduction instruments in a number of industrialised countries and are elements of other major international treaties, e.g. the UN ECE Protocol on POPs and the Marine Convention's OSPAR and HELCOM, and of the EU Directive for Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC Directive). Existing concepts are presented and compared with the requirements of the Stockholm Convention. Consequences, perspectives and questions for the future intersessional work of the above-mentioned Expert Group are discussed.     

The Tools of Environmental Litigation Support: How Environmental Litigation Support Teams Employ a Unique Set of Skills and Tools to Improve the Outcome and Reduce the Cost of Legal Disputes

While the primary goal of environmental investigations is to assess and clean up contaminated properties, significant efforts are also directed towards resolving various matters in legal dispute. Opposing parties often disagree about the cause and timing of contamination and the associated liability and costs for meeting regulatory site closure requirements. Environmental experts are often needed to help resolve such legal disputes with expertise in hydrogeology, toxicology, microbiology, chemistry, engineering, and process safety. These experts, or teams of experts, provide technical approaches to determine the liability and cost apportionment amongst the various potentially responsible parties. Fate and transport models, environmental forensics, and risk assessment help to answer the issues in dispute. Skillful communication of these technical findings is needed to present conclusions to audiences that do not necessarily have technical backgrounds.     

Effectiveness of Marine Protected Areas in Managing the Drivers of Ecosystem Change: A Case of Mnazi Bay Marine Park, Tanzania

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are being promoted in Tanzania to mitigate the drivers of ecosystem change such as overfishing and other anthropogenic impacts on marine resources. The effectiveness of MPAs in managing those drivers was assessed in three ecological zones, seafront, mangrove, and riverine of Mnazi Bay Marine Park, using Participatory Community Analysis techniques, questionnaire survey, checklist and fishery resource assessment methods. Eleven major drivers of ecosystem change were identified. Resource dependence had a major effect in all ecological zones of the park. The results indicated that the park’s legislations/regulations, management procedures, and conservation efforts are reasonably effective in managing its resources. The positive signs accrued from conservation efforts have been realized by the communities in terms of increased catch/income, awareness and compliance. However, some natural and anthropogenic drivers continued to threaten the park’s sustainability. Furthermore, implementation of resource use and benefit sharing mechanisms still remained a considerable challenge to be addressed.     

Coalbed methane produced water in China: status and environmental issues

As one of the unconventional natural gas family members, coalbed methane (CBM) receives great attention throughout the world. The major associated problem of CBM production is the management of produced water. In the USA, Canada, and Australia, much research has been done on the effects and management of coalbed methane produced water (CMPW). However, in China, the environmental effects of CMPW were overlooked. The quantity and the quality of CMPW both vary enormously between coal basins or stratigraphic units in China. The unit produced water volume of CBM wells in China ranges from 10 to 271,280 L/well/day, and the concentration of total dissolved solids (TDS) ranges from 691 to 93,898 mg/L. Most pH values of CMPW are more than 7.0, showing the alkaline feature, and the Na-HCO₃ and Na-HCO₃-Cl are typical types of CMPW in China. Treatment and utilization of CMPW in China lag far behind the USA and Australia, and CMPW is mainly managed by surface impoundments and evaporation. Currently, the core environmental issues associated with CMPW in China are that the potential environmental problems of CMPW have not been given enough attention, and relevant regulations as well as environmental impact assessment (EIA) guidelines for CMPW are still lacking. Other potential issues in China includes (1) water quality monitoring issues for CMPW with special components in special areas, (2) groundwater level decline issues associated with the dewatering process, and (3) potential environmental issues of groundwater pollution associated with hydraulic fracturing.     

Could environmental regulations improve the quality of export products? Evidence from China’s implementation of pollutant discharge fee

This study investigates the effect of Chinese environmental regulations on the quality of export products. As the main way for the government to protect the environment, environmental regulations have greatly influenced the production behavior of enterprises. Based on the data of China’s pollutant discharge fee implementation and industrial enterprise-pollution panel data, we find that the government’s environmental regulations have significantly improved the quality of export products, and this conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. Further analysis shows that the increase in the quality of export products originating from the regulated areas could be attributed to promoting enterprise innovation and reducing resource misallocation. The results in this study provide evidence that the Chinese government could coordinate economic and environmental protection in the new era.

     

Can corals be harvested sustainably?

The international trade in corals has been identified as a potential cause of localized depletion of coral populations in the major coral-exporting countries. The international coral trade is regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) agreement, which requires that export of corals is not detrimental to the species. The primary coral importing regions (USA and Europe) have threatened to limit or ban coral imports unless sustainable practices can be demonstrated. The spatial and temporal scale at which sustainability is defined is important in evaluating sustainability, e.g. at geological, regional or local scales. Other major issues are: the ecology of the target species; management options including provision of no-take areas; and the potential for coral culture. Implementation of practices that enhance ecological sustainability in the coral harvest fishery is possible, but may be difficult in some developing countries because of limited natural-resource management capacity.