THE DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF GUIDELINES FOR ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA

摘要

The ecological risk assessment (ERA) process of the US EPA was summarised and evaluated for South African conditions. The objective was to facilitate a common understanding, on-going debate and increasing application of ERA in South Africa. Many of the individual steps in the process have been interpreted and/or reworded to improve communication of the concepts. Although the basic principles were retained, a few changes were suggested. The changes relate specifically to agreeing on management objectives, the development and evaluation of hypotheses, and the collection, collation and evaluation of information. The derived process has been documented as Guidelines for ERA in South Africa. In addition to the rationale and process for the development of the guidelines, case studies, based on the newly developed guidelines, are presented. The studies apply the ERA methodology to an industrial effluent, a sustainable harvesting case and an evaluation of marine pollution. The objectives were to assess and quantify effects and evaluate management options, in the context of regulatory requirements and in support of pro-active management. The studies deal specifically with the use of various data sources (lines of evidence) to evaluate hypotheses in support of management decisions. The paper highlights the availability of data, infrastructure and capacity in developing countries, and propose strategies to overcome them.