Building Science for Environmental Protection in the 21st Century - Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead - page 131

The framework and assessment and management approach are built on
traditional principles of vision, objectives, goals, and metrics. The goals of sus-
tainability analysis are to expand decision consideration to include multiple sus-
tainability options and their social, environmental, and economic consequences;
to include the intergenerational effects of consequences in addition to more im-
mediate ones; and to involve a broad array of stakeholders. Many of these con-
cepts intersect with the solutions-oriented approaches discussed in this section,
including the expansive scope and stakeholder involvement that will be dis-
cussed in the health impact assessment (HIA) paragraph below, the use of be-
havioral science and economics to consider an array of impacts, and the use of
life-cycle thinking to avoid creating upstream and downstream problems. The
framework and approach lay out a series of steps that should be taken in evaluat-
ing sustainability implications of a particular decision. The evaluation tools to be
used will depend on the nature and needs of the particular decision. Although
this framework is new and does not have a particular “toolbox” or analytic tech-
nique, it provides a set of steps that can be taken in synthesizing information
from varied sources and fields into a coherent sustainability decision.
Solutions-Oriented Approaches
There has been an increasing emphasis among advisory committees and in
EPA on moving away from characterizing problems and toward determining and
evaluating solutions. For example, Science and Decisions: Advancing Risk As-
sessment (NRC 2009) emphasized that risk assessment should be used to dis-
criminate among risk-management options, not as an end in itself, and this sug-
gests a framework within which alternative options are considered upfront. A
recent NRC report (NRC 2011b) gave recommendations about HIA as a solu-
tions-oriented policy tool to introduce health considerations into numerous pol-
icy decisions that could have direct or indirect health implications. HIA, as de-
fined 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). Both approaches ex-
plicitly emphasize conducting analyses that help discriminate among policy op-
tions and that use planning and scoping to devise analyses that are of an appro-
priate level of sophistication given the decision context. Although it includes
approaches beyond risk assessment and has a scope that often extends beyond
EPA's mandate, HIA has many attributes that are well-aligned with the future
needs of EPA. For example, HIA incorporates systems thinking and encourages
development of broad conceptual models to avoid unanticipated risk tradeoffs,
which is a valuable approach to incorporate into numerous analytic tools. HIA
also endorses the use of both quantitative and qualitative information to inform
decisions, and it explicitly considers equity issues and vulnerable populations
that may not be captured within benefit-cost analyses or related tools.