First REP-LECOTOX Workshop--ecotoxicogenomics: the challenge of integrating genomics/proteomics/metabolomics into aquatic and terrestrial ecotoxicology

摘要

Environmental protection in Serbia has been standing rather low on the agenda of policy and decision makers for many years now, due to numerous historic and social-economic factors. The outdated environmental legislation and poor implementation, insufficient waste water treatment, ineffective environmental monitoring programmes, limited human resources and absence of knowledge on risk assessment of hazardous substances have characterised water protection and management sector for years. Such under-prioritisation of serious environmental problems led to water pollution and sediments contamination in Serbian inland waters. Yet, ecotoxicological research, which should have been seen as a helping hand for the competent authorities, has been ignored for years and therefore remained isolated and restricted to small-scale laboratory and field monitoring, i.e. studies without or with very limited impact on environmental policy in general. Serbian scientific community has struggled, under extremely difficult conditions, to keep up with trends and progress in international research and development, by learning, adopting and applying ecotoxicological methods in locally relevant studies, which resulted with a certain number of publications, but more importantly, in valuable data easily applicable in water management and policy, once the relevant EU regulations, proper implementation strategies and environmental policy in general are fully transposed and incorporated into the Serbian legal system.