Introduction to Ecological Risk Assessment - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 602

13.5.6 Political Awareness

Obviously, the significance of the soil ecosystem as a protection target with regard
to contaminated sites is much more difficult to comprehend than the significance of
human health or of groundwater quality. However, both protection and recovery of
the soil ecosystem are crucial from the two different perspectives described above,
that is, Biodiversity (Section 13.4.2 ) and Ecosystem Services (Section 13.4.3 ). The
combination of the important role of soil life and the public lack of appreciation of
this make intensive communication a priority in order to justify ecological protec-
tion and, for the political agenda, the costs involved for the tax payer. Insight into
the important functions that are crucial for society, that is, the Ecosystem Services,
and into the amazingly complex way in which organisms perform these functions,
might lead to promotion of ecological protection as a political priority in several
countries that do not yet include this protection target in Risk Assessment and Risk
Management.
Recent developments in soil and water policy, substantiated in the EU Water
Framework Directive (EC 2000 ) and a preliminary Soil Framework Directive (EC
2006 ), are aimed at a more integral system approach. This approach targets 'Good
Ecological Status' for water and 'sustainable use of ecological processes' for soil,
in short, stable, optimally developed and well-functioning ecosystems. Data for the
desired ecological quality need:

• to be derived for site-specific situations;

• to be integrated with generalized aims using broadly accepted criteria;

• to enable integral assessment of the total environmental stress on the ecosystems.

The initial descriptions of ecological quality, based on species compositions,
were made for aquatic ecosystems: the 'RIVPACS approach' (Wright 2000 ). This
approach compared actual and optimal species compositions, but did not take into
account the interactions between different species, and between species and abiotic
components of the ecosystem. A similar approach has been proposed and developed
as SIVPACS (SOILPACS), its terrestrial counterpart (Spurgeon et al. 1996 ). This
approach has now been backed up, in the Netherlands, by data obtained from the
ecological monitoring of soil (Rutgers et al. 2008 ).
All plants, animals and microbes, and all soil, water and air within an ecosystem,
interact with each other. This results in combined abiotic and biotic processes (life-
support functions, LSFs), comprising element cycling (mainly carbon and nitrogen),
production of oxygen, preservation of clean water, and degradation of organic mat-
ter and organic contaminants. Governments increasingly realize that society depends
on properly functioning ecosystem processes (Ecosystem Services) in order to sur-
vive. They are concerned with obtaining a scientific foundation for legislation that
is based on the assessment and ranking of different types of environmental stress
and ecosystem functioning (Beck et al. 2005 ).
With regard to the position of ecological protection on the political agenda,
communication between the scientific community (e.g., the eco(toxico)logists) and