Joost Lahr about changes in environmental risk assessment & future ecological challenges
What are your role-specific tasks within the project?
“I am coordinator at RIVM and responsible for the RIVM part of the project. We take part in WP1, stakeholder engagement, coordinated by my colleague Mark Montforts, and WP2, case studies. In the latter, we perform case study 6 on atmospheric deposition of pesticides in nature conservation areas.”
How do you envision the project’s outcomes influencing your field of work or research area?
“We at RIVM are involved in environmental risk assessment and methodology development for it. For this, we work for the Dutch government and international organizations. We have seen that the way in which environmental risk assessment is performed is shifting towards a system-based approach. Here, I think, SYBERAC is at the forefront of this movement.”
“I hope that, with the case studies and stakeholder engagement, we can demonstrate that this new way of environmental risk assessment and this new way of working can produce meaningful results at higher levels of complexity than before.”
How can the case studies contribute to the development of more sustainable practices?
“The case studies can offer a contribution by identifying gaps in the current risk assessments and by connecting themes from different parts of the assessment process. Until now many methods have been developed, but they are fragmented and not always connected to one another.”
“Furthermore, unaligned regulatory frameworks, such as those governing pesticides and water quality standards for example, lead to conflicting outcomes, making it difficult to effectively intervene and achieve long-term environmental compliance.”
“I think our case studies and our project can contribute to showing these links and developing methods that work for linking, for example, terrestrial and aquatic risk assessments.”
“Performing risk assessments across multiple protection goals simultaneously, rather than in isolation, creates a more sustainable approach by avoiding trade-offs and ensuring ecosystem interconnections are considered. Hence, a landscape-level risk assessment that integrates multiple protection goals, such as soil and water, is more sustainable as it connects ecosystem components.”
Joost Lahr (RIVM)
“The way in which environmental risk assessment is performed is shifting.”
How has your understanding of ecological risks evolved during your career?
“When I studied in the 80ies, I studied environmental sciences. And then there was this whole new field about toxicants and their connection to ecological processes and species in the environment that I found very interesting, which was later called ecotoxicology.”
“At the time, we were merely investigating what the effects of pollutants were on species, on biodiversity and on ecosystems. Later, after my studies and during my work in Africa and research on the effects of pesticides on aquatic organisms, I could see that there were many methods developed for more formal risk assessment procedures that were used for the authorisation of products on the market. I think that was a very big change, going from discovery to application.”
What will be the most critical areas of research in soil and water quality for future ecological challenges?
“The most critical area of future research is about cumulative effects of substances. Right now we always evaluate substance by substance but in the environment they occur together. That is already an important area of research but it's also the challenge now how to incorporate this in regulatory risk assessment.”
“We also need changes beyond research, for example, at the policy level. As we want to do holistic risk assessment, we also need holistic protection goals. These should come from society and politicians to ensure that we do not look at it as a separate issue.”
“We tend to think in environmental compartments, but they’re all connected.”
