Science for Environmental Protection The Road Ahead (2012) / Chapter Skim
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4 Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century
4 Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century
Pages 107-160
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From page 107... ...
The nation has made great progress in addressing environmental challenges and improving environmental quality in the 40 years since the first Earth Day. As a regulatory agency, EPA applies many of its resources to implementing complex regulatory statutes, including substantial commitments of scientific and technical resources to environmental monitoring, applied health and environmental science and engineering, risk assessment, benefit–cost analysis, and other activities that form the foundation of regulatory actions.
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From page 108... ...
Specifically, the chapter lays out a path for EPA to retain and expand its leadership in science and engineering by establishing a 21st century framework that embraces systems thinking to produce science to inform decisions. That path includes staying at the leading edge by engaging in science that anticipates, innovates, is long term, and is collaborative; using enhanced systems-analysis tools and expertise; and using synthesis research to support decisions.
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From page 109... ...
. To successfully inform future environmental protection decisions in an increasingly complex world, systems thinking must, at a minimum, include consideration of cumulative effects of multiple stressors, evaluation of a wide range of alternatives to the activity of concern, analysis of the upstream and downstream life-cycle implications of current and alternative activities, involvement of a broad range of stakeholders in decisions (particularly where uncertainty is significant)
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From page 110... ...
into its decision process from the outset. STAYING AT THE LEADING EDGE OF SCIENCE EPA can maintain its global position in environmental protection by staying at the leading edge of science and engineering research.
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From page 111... ...
It also supports decision-making and ensures that leading-edge science is developed and applied to inform assessments of the system-wide implications of alternatives for key policy decisions.
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From page 112... ...
NACEPT also identified corresponding organizational needs for EPA to meet existing and emerging environmental challenges, including improving its ability to use technology more effectively, to transfer technology for commercial uses, and to enhance communication in and outside the agency. The committee concurs with the advisory council's observations that although EPA has demonstrated the ability to create and implement solutions to new challenges in some cases, emerging challenges need to be approached in a more integrated and multidisciplinary way.
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From page 113... ...
, the agency does not appear to have a systematic and integrated process for anticipating emerging issues. The example of engineered nanomaterials (discussed below and described in Chapter 3)
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From page 114... ...
, materials, and products, it will need to commit to this effort beyond its regulatory role. Many new chemicals and technologies hold considerable potential to improve environmental quality, and it may prove useful for EPA to take some specific steps to anticipate and manage new technologies that emerge from the private sector.
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From page 115... ...
Anticipating Emerging Challenges, Scientific Tools, and Scientific Approaches In recent years, EPA has had to make decisions on several headlinegrabbing environmental issues with underdeveloped scientific and technical information or short timelines to gather critical new information, for example, during natural disasters. EPA will always need the capacity to respond quickly to surprises, in part by maintaining a strong cadre of technical staff who are firmly grounded in the fundamentals of their disciplines and able to adapt and respond as new situations arise.
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From page 116... ...
, with time and modest resources, would be able to interact with other federal agencies, academe, and industry to identify emerging issues and bring the newest scientific approaches into EPA. Science That Innovates Given EPA's mission and stature as the leading government environmental science and engineering organization, it is imperative that it innovate and support innovation elsewhere in technologies, scientific methods, approaches, tools, and policy instruments.
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From page 117... ...
Understanding desired outcomes goes well beyond simply talking to customers; it includes putting oneself in the clients' shoes to separate what they say they want from what they want. A common mistake in trying to innovate is to substitute desired producer outcomes for desired customer outcomes.
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From page 118... ...
It is essential for EPA to identify and focus on desired outcomes rather than being tied to established processes, procedures, or routines; a fundamental lesson from research on business innovation is that the process is best served by a focus on outcomes. The simplest measures of success are advances toward goals like cleaner air or safer drinking water, which are most often guided by legislation.
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From page 119... ...
Since the passage of the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990, EPA has worked closely with providers of the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership and state pollutionprevention technical assistance providers to support innovative adoption of the act. Such models as the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Program provide examples of how an agency like EPA can leverage resources to support innovation.
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From page 120... ...
As EPA is already discovering, using incentives can be a successful way to drive innovation for mission-related topics. Leveraging Environmental Protection Agency Actions to Promote Private-Sector Innovation Both intentional and unintentional actions by EPA can affect the willingness of the private sector to invest in research and development.
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From page 121... ...
For example, the "categorical pretreatment standards" for industrial wastewater discharges locked into place standards based on technologies that were available at the time of promulgation, whereas the "best available control technology" requirements of the Clean Air Act are a "rolling" standard, expressed as performance-based emissions limits that can advance as technology improves. Economic research on innovation and environmental regulation finds that flexible policy instruments that provide rewards for continual environmental improvement and cost reduction tend to promote innovation whereas policies that mandate a specific behavior can deter innovation (Popp et al.
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From page 122... ...
Clearly identifying signals could be accomplished by seeking to identify the key desired outcomes of EPA's regulatory programs and communicate the desired outcomes clearly to the private and public sector. The committee has identified several ways in which EPA could address this recommendation: Establish and periodically update an agency-wide innovation strategy that outlines key desired outcomes, processes for supporting innovation, and opportunities for collaboration.
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From page 123... ...
Furthermore, the NRC Committee on Incorporating Sustainability in the US Environmental Protection Agency (NRC 2011a) found that most indicators chosen by EPA are inadequate for exploring the relationship between economic conditions and ecosystem pressure and did not measure such important elements as environmental justice.
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From page 124... ...
Do not let indicator development be driven by availability of data. Aware of this trap, the Heinz Center (2002)
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From page 125... ...
Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century 125 BOX 4-1 Continued Develop indicators that are robust and reliable. A robust indicator is relatively insensitive to expected sources of disturbance and yields reliable and useful numbers in the face of inevitable external perturbations.
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From page 126... ...
With the exception of some air and water monitoring programs, there are few long-term monitoring programs, let alone programs that are systematic and rigorous. The paucity of data has made it difficult or impossible to identify key trends related to problems and improvements in environmental quality.
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From page 127... ...
Science That Is Collaborative EPA is a world leader in producing and using science for informed environmental protection, but many other public and private parties in the United States and around the world are also making important contributions in environmental sciences and engineering. Many other parties are working outside the conventional environmental science and engineering space but may have technologies, methods, or data streams that could prove valuable for environmental protection.
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From page 128... ...
But the mechanism falls short of what is needed to organize and conduct sustained and successful collaborative efforts, especially in the face of increasing budget constraints and emerging environmental and public health challenges. Furthermore, agencies operate under different, sometimes conflicting statutes, and have varied standards of evidence and scientific needs, which can lead to additional barriers to collaboration.
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From page 129... ...
Its involvement in international collaboration is not simply one of supporting developing nations but learning from both developed and developing nations about the most innovative technologies and approaches for environmental protection. For example, EPA is a leading partner in the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air, to which almost 600 partner organizations from over 120 countries are contributing their expertise and resources to reduce exposure to combustion products of fuels used in household cooking and heating (The Partnership for Clean Indoor Air 2012)
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From page 130... ...
. Creating such scientific exchange zones involves Allowing learning of the languages of multiple disciplines (for example, social science, physical science, water science, risk science, and decision science)
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From page 131... ...
Indeed, for the 2009 Toxic Release Inventory, EPA released preliminary data to the public to utilize crowdsourcing as a means for improving and refining the data. The public rightto-know dimension of TRI provided an early example of using informational approaches to encourage environmental change, and also spurred the development of sites like MapEcos.org and Scorecard.org, which provide visual Webbased interfaces that enable citizens to see toxic emissions data and more in one place.
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From page 132... ...
Another broader example, which cuts across all aspects of improving EPA science, is the issue of hydraulic fracturing of shale for natural gas (or hydrofracking)
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From page 133... ...
The development and operation of hydrofracking facilities can affect surface and ground water, soil, air quality, and greenhouse gas emissions. More broadly, the availability of growing quantities of eco nomically-competitive natural gas can influence industry choices in response to EPA air quality regulations and other rule makings (for example, utility de cisions to replace coal-fired electric generating facilities with combined-cycle natural gas in response to EPA emissions rules)
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From page 134... ...
At the same time, understanding the potential biologic and ecologic effects of the large number of chemicals being used in hydrofracking requires relatively rapid action, necessitating a decision on the applicability and utility of tools (potentially including life-cycle assessment, health impact assessment, and high-throughput screening) and techniques to evaluate chemical mixtures.
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From page 135... ...
Social, economic, behavioral, and decision sciences. Synthesis research.
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From page 136... ...
. Nonetheless, even without undertaking a formal quantitative LCA, complex systems-level challenges require that the agency at least apply "life-cycle BOX 4-3 The Need for and Challenges of Life-Cycle Assessment: The Biofuels Case The need for and challenges of LCA are seen in the case of biofuels.
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From page 137... ...
Nonetheless, although much of the emphasis of previous NRC reports has been on cumulative risk assessment for human health effects, it is possible that insights and approaches from ecosystem-based cumulative impact analyses (required under the National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA]
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From page 138... ...
The broad challenge before the agency will involve developing tools and approaches to characterize cumulative effects in complex systems and harnessing insights from multistressor analyses without paralyzing decisions because of analytic complexities or missing data. Social, Economic, Behavioral, and Decision Sciences Systems thinking involves acknowledgment, up front, that environmental conditions are substantially determined by the individual and collective interactions that humans have with environmental processes.
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From page 139... ...
For EPA, social, economic, behavioral, and decision science skills can enhance several types of activities that support decisions, including regulatory impact assessments mandated by Executive Order 12866 and others, estimates of economic and social benefits and costs associated with alternative courses of action, and valuation of health benefits and ecosystem services to inform benefit–cost analysis. EPA has made some strides in improving its efforts in this re
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From page 140... ...
Updating and Enhancing Estimates of Environmental Benefits Among the social, economic, behavioral, and decision sciences, only economics is generally mandated in EPA. Regulatory impact assessments to determine the benefits and costs of environmental regulation are mandated by various
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From page 141... ...
The leading example is Section 812 of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which requires EPA to develop periodic reports to Congress that estimate the economic benefits and costs of provisions of the act; program offices are responsible for regulatory impact assessments in their fields. EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics offers a centralized source of technical expertise for economic assessments in the agency.
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From page 142... ...
Assessing and addressing gaps in the environmental-benefits estimates should have high priority and can be tackled through research designs that produce statistically representative samples for EPA regulatory impact assessments (for the importance of standardization and sampling strategies for water see, for example, Bruins and Heberling 2004; Van Houtven et al. 2007; Weber 2010)
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From page 143... ...
The agency could make more use of deliberately designed synthesis research activities to promote multidisciplinary collaborations and accelerate progress toward integrated sustainability science. One example is the recent creation by the US Geological Survey of the John Wesley Powell Center for Analysis and Synthesis (The Powell Center 2012)
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From page 144... ...
. Given its corpus of researchers in both environmental and health sciences, the agency is well positioned to pursue synthesis research that brings together environmental science and public-health science data and perspectives.
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From page 145... ...
HIA, as defined by the NRC Committee on Health Impact Assessment (2011b) , is consistent with the risk-based decision-making framework proposed by Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk Assessment (NRC 2009)
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From page 146... ...
146 FIGURE 4-2 A framework for sustainable decisions at the US Environmental Protection Agency. Source: NRC 2011a.
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From page 147... ...
They also provide opportunities to evaluate the reduction of multiple risks rather than simply focusing on controlling a single hazard, potentially leveraging the methods and approaches within cumulative risk assessment. Finally, if agencies' actions promote restriction of a particular activity, there is a responsibility to understand alternatives and support a path that is environmentally sound, technically feasible, and economically viable and that does not create new risks of its own.
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From page 148... ...
. The NEPA environmental impact statement approach, supplemented by new approaches to health impact assessment, provides a way of integrating scientific information from multiple sources into decisions that focus on evaluating prevention options.
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From page 149... ...
. Benefit– cost analysis is useful and sometimes mandated for regulatory impact assessments, but its value is limited in dealing with complex issues in which economic efficiency is only one of many important objectives for environmental decisionmakers and their stakeholders.
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From page 150... ...
Multiobjective optimization in support of environmental-management decisions is especially compelling given the emerging paradigm of managing for multiple ecosystem services and consideration of cumulative risks for human health. Tradeoffs and complementarities can exist between alternative services and between other relevant performance metrics (for example, public and private costs and distribution outcomes by location or income class)
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From page 151... ...
OVERARCHING RECOMMENDATION The committee has described the important emerging environmental issues and complex challenges in Chapter 2 and the many types of emerging scientific information, tools, techniques, and technologies in Chapter 3 and Appendixes C and D It is clear that if EPA is to meet those challenges and to make the greatest possible use of the new scientific tools, its problems will need to be approached from a systems perspective.
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From page 152... ...
In supporting environmental science and engineering for the 21st century, EPA will need to continue to evolve from an agency that focuses on using science to characterize risks so that it can respond to problems to an agency that applies science holistically to characterize both problems and solutions at the earliest point possible. Finding: Environmental problems are increasingly interconnected.
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From page 153... ...
Predicting economic and societal responses at various points in the decision-making process is necessary to achieve desirable environmental and societal outcomes. For these reasons, developing mechanisms to integrate social, economic, behavioral, and decision sciences would lead to more comprehensive environmental-management decisions.
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From page 154... ...
Prepared for American Petroleum Institute and America's Natural Gas Alliance, Washington, DC, by Batelle, Lexington, MA. June 2012 [online]
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From page 155... ...
Chesapeake Bay Program Office, Region 3, Annapolis, MD; Office of Regional Counsel, Region 3, Phila delphia, PA, Division of Environmental Planning and Protection, Region 2, New York, and Office of Water, Office of Air and Radiation, Office of General Coun sel, Office of the Administrator, US Environmental Protection Agency, Washing ton, DC [online]
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From page 156... ...
. EPA NACEPT (US Environmental Protection Agency National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology)
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From page 157... ...
2002. Environmental policy and technologi cal change.
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From page 158... ...
2011b. Improving Health in the United States: The Role of Health Impact Assessment.
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From page 159... ...
2009. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emis sions: Health implications of short-lived greenhouse pollutants.
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From page 160... ...
Amsterdam: Elsevier. The Partnership for Clean Indoor Air.
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