Scientific and engineering improvement of environmental risk management - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 391

Those extreme cases are only well known when environmental risk is overruled not
only by economic aspects but by other issues, termed as “political.'' Decisions in the
course of environmental management draw heavily on social and economic parame-
ters. These parameters are measurable and the methodology for the integration and
quantification of socio-economic and environmental factors is being developed (see
also Chapter 10)
Globalization in environmental management may keep the acceptable risk level
low globally, even if higher risk levels were accepted regionally or locally in view of
socio-economic factors. Environmental management concepts are put together from
environmental and socio-economic risk assessment. Different types of environmental
and socio-economic risk and benefit assessment methodologies are available, depend-
ing on the nature of the problem, aim of the assessment, and the time frame and
spatial scale of the environmental problem. Spatial scale and impact of the problem
to be managed can be local, regional or global, meaning nine different combinations
in the methodologies (see also Chapter 9 in this Volume about the risk management
of point and diffuse contaminant sources). The time scale can be short-, medium- and
long-term,and it is impossible to tackle all of them because of the large number and
complexity of the different combinations. That is why the assessment of environmental
impacts starts with scoping , i.e., the preliminary identification of the important issues,
and eliminating those that are of little concern. The pitfall of scoping is that it is done
when the results of risk and impact assessment are not yet known; thus scoping itself
should be a tiered and iterative step.
Time scale causes differences in methodologies and in the outcome of the assess-
ment made to support the decision. Many of environmental managerial failures are
caused by the short-term evaluation of a long-lasting impact, sacrificing the environ-
ment in the long term in return for a short-term socio-economic benefit. Short-term
risk significantly differs from the long-term risk and the monetizable socio-economic
components are significantly different to nonmonetizable ones, including long-term
environmental health.
The high risks from a human perspective of e.g., volcanic activities, earthquakes,
tsunamis and storms can hardly be influenced due to lack of knowledge and tools.
Some other environmental risks being on the verge of human influence such as global
warming, ozone depletion and acidification may become manageable with increasing
knowledge as well as developing globally efficient management tools such as policies
and standardization.
5.2 Eco-efficiency and sustainability in environmental risk
management and decision making
Eco-efficiency and sustainability as detailed in Chapter 7 in this Volume became basic
concepts in ERM in the last 10-15 years. It is difficult to determine whether business
and ecosystem can live in harmony, but the first step in this direction has been taken: the
identification of the environmental, economic and social indicators and their valuation
(e.g. monetization). The monetized environmental, social and health values can be
aggregated then with the existing quantitative economic measures.
There are some methodologies for “measuring'' the ecological footprint of tech-
nologies and products such as generic and area-specific environmental risk assessment,