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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.

Photo of the participants in the workshop.

Read more in the summary report from the workshop: Economic Valuation of Environmental Amenities Negatively Affected by Chemical Exposure.