Disproportionate costs in the EU Water Framework Directive—How to justify less stringent environmental objectives

The ambitious objective pursued by the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) is good status for all European waters. However, “less stringent environmental objectives” are permissible if the costs of achieving good status are disproportionately high. This exemption, if abused, carries the risk of watering down the ambitions of the Directive. Currently, no transparent, well-established, universally applicable method for routinely testing disproportionality exists throughout Europe. In this paper, such a method is developed for surface water bodies. The core idea is to determine a water body-specific disproportionality threshold which is then compared to the projected costs of achieving “good status/potential”. For the sake of practicability, the benchmark for disproportionality is estimated on the basis of prior expenditure on water quality enhancement. The paper argues that the proposed method combines both possible interpretations of (dis-)proportionality—affordability and cost-benefit considerations. Due to the method’s moderate data requirements it can be used readily in most German federal states and is transferable in principle to other EU Member States. The method was tested empirically for a river in the German federal state of Rhineland–Palatinate.     

危险废物豁免(排除)的管理体系研究

危险废物豁免(排除)是指按照一定的程序和豁免原则将一部分产生量小、分散、危害性低的危险废物从现有的危险废物管理体系中豁免或排除出来.系统分析了国外危险废物豁免(排除)管理体系研究现状和发展趋势,结合中国国情提出建立中国危险废物豁免(排除)管理体系的理论、方法、程序及相关原则,对尽快建立中国危险废物管理体系具有一定的借鉴意义.