Findings and Recommendations - Science For Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead - page 189

in the ToxCast program to apply innovative toxicity testing tools to the design of
green chemicals.
 Explicitly examine the effects of new regulatory and nonregulatory
programs on innovation while ascertaining environmental and economic effects.
This “innovation impact assessment” could, in part, inform the economic
evaluation as a structure that encourages technologic innovation that may lead to
long-term cost reductions. The assessment could also function as a stand-alone
activity to evaluate how regulations could encourage or discourage innovation in
a number of activities and sectors. It could help to identify what research and
technical support and incentives are necessary to encourage innovation that re-
duces environmental and health effects while stimulating economic benefits.
STRENGTHENING SCIENCE IN A TIME OF TIGHT BUDGETS
This report has stressed the importance of sustaining and strengthening
EPA's present programs of scientific research, applications, and data collection
while identifying and pursuing a wide array of new scientific opportunities and
challenges. Both are needed to address the complexity of modern problems and
both are essential to the agency if it is to continue to provide scientific leader-
ship and high-quality science-based regulation in the years to come.
Specific recommendations related to agency budgets are outside the scope
of this study, but the committee feels compelled to note, as did the report Sci-
ence Advisory Board Comments on the President's Requested FY2013 Research
Budget (EPA SAB 2012b), that since 2004, the budget for ORD has declined
28.5% in real-dollar terms (gross domestic product-indexed dollars). The reduc-
tions have been even greater in a number of specific fields, such as ecosystem
research and pollution prevention.
Finding: If EPA is to provide scientific leadership and high-quality science-
based regulation in the coming decades, it will need adequate resources to do so.
Some of this committee's recommendations, if followed, will allow EPA to ad-
dress its scientific needs with greater efficiency. But the agency cannot continue
to provide leadership, pursue many new needs and opportunities, and lay the
foundation for ensuring future health and environmental safety unless the long-
term budgetary trend is reversed.
Recommendation 7: The committee recommends EPA create a process to
set priorities for improving the quality of its scientific endeavors over the
coming decades. This process should recognize the inevitably limited re-
sources while clearly articulating the level of resources required for the
agency to continue to ensure the future health and safety of humans and
ecosystems.