Cooperation and common rules

To improve the environment, countries need to cooperate and adopt a common set of rules. Since 1983, the UNECE Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution has applied, requiring cuts in emissions of sulphur, nitrogen oxides and other pollutants in Europe andNorth America .

The convention has helped, but emissions are still too high. Acidification and nutrient over-enrichment of soil and water have by no means been eliminated in the most sensitive areas. For this reason, the protocols to the convention and several EC directives are to be renegotiated, beginning in 2005. Those negotiations need to enjoy broad international support. To ensure that they succeed, solid scientific evidence is also required, since the international negotiating process is based to a large degree on models which allow environmental and health effects to be assessed in relation to measures and the costs of implementing them.

Simulations and models
‘These days we have handy tools that tell us what we can expect to happen over the next ten years or so. They show that we need to achieve deep cuts in emissions of acidifying, eutrophying and ozone-forming air pollutants, if further harm to ourselves and our environment is to be avoided,´ says Christer Ågren at the Swedish NGO Secretariat on Acid Rain, a non-governmental body run by five Swedish environmental and nature conservation organizations: the Swedish Youth Association for Environmental Studies and Conservation, Friends of the Earth Sweden, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, the Swedish Anglers´ Association and WWF Sweden.

The tools in question are computer simulations and models. Large amounts of data are fed in, such as fuel consumption figures by sector and country. Information on different ways of reducing emissions, for example more efficient abatement technology, is then added, to provide country-by-country estimates of both costs and effects.

‘The clearer and better underpinned these results are, the more confidence politicians will have in them, making it easier to achieve agreement on legislation and action to control environmental impacts,´ Ågren explains. This is where ASTA comes in.

‘The programme has done a lot of good things, but in particular it has laid a firmer scientific foundation for our environmental objectives and helped to provide better analytical tools for the political decision-making process.´

One problem in getting different countries to work together to tackle transboundary pollution is finding a basis for decision making that is common to all - and which will be accepted in every country. As an example, Christer Ågren mentions the Mediterranean states´ hesitation about the environmental targets set for ground-level ozone (see box, p. 29). They have claimed that the threshold values are unfairly determined, since plants take up ozone to different degrees, depending on whether they grow in a dry or a damp climate.

‘Here ASTA has helped to create scientifically based tools to assess more fairly how plants are affected by ozone - which in turn has enabled Mediterranean governments to gain wider acceptance for the common environmental goals.´

Results turned into policies
This research programme is one of the few which very tangibly helps to translate research results into policies - without dragging politics into research.
     ‘ASTA is creating better and more sustainable tools for politicians, enabling them in turn to reach more broadly supported and more sustainable political decisions.´
     And such tools are definitely needed.
     ‘There´s a clear link between science and political decisions on environmental issues. With firm and unambiguous scientific ground to stand on, it´s easier for policy makers to arrive at decisions. Otherwise there´s a risk that they will be ignored,´ says Ågren.

Clear decision support data may, for example, be a matter of showing that, for a country with many old, inefficient and dirty coal-fired power stations, it makes better sense to close them down and invest in new, more efficient and cleaner energy systems than to retrofit abatement equipment.

‘After all, it´s the sum total of effects weighed against costs that politicians base their decisions on.´

And the need for a wider range of clear research results in support of decision making is confirmed by people at the very heart of EU environmental policy development.

‘Increasingly, proposals in the environmental field are expected to provide unambiguous evidence of different effects, whether it be economic effects or expected benefits. Will it pay? What will the social consequences be? All these questions require more scientific evidence,´ says André Zuber at the European Commission´s Environment Directorate-General.

Important for decision making
As part of his job, Zuber drafts environmental goals, proposals and policies in the area of air quality, for instance in the framework of the Clean Air For Europe (CAFE) programme. He mentions that the EU´s Sixth Environment Action Programme requires all decisions to be based on facts and knowledge, i.e. on scientific data. In his view, therefore, ASTA has a very important part to play in supplying reliable data for the modelling systems that are used in elaborating environmental objectives and policies.

‘I myself only see the programme´s contribution in an indirect way - through the results of its analyses - but without them it would be difficult for us to do our job.´

André Zuber emphasizes how important EU environment policy is for the member states.

‘In Sweden you perhaps don´t appreciate its significance, since your country already has highly developed national legislation in this area. But many other states don´t have any environmental laws of their own, and rely entirely on the ones adopted by the EU.´

Zuber also notes that ASTA is pressing for an EU meeting with the aim of broadening the use of research results in policy development.

‘We need to bring data on environmental effects into the equation - such as how the environment recovers, what health effects different measures can be expected to have, and so on.´

But ASTA´s results are not only of international relevance. Swedish government agencies, too, are benefiting from the programme, like the National Board of Forestry, the Energy Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency.

‘To achieve our national objectives, we need access to European field data and models. ASTA provides us with those things. For certain pollutants that are carried across our borders by winds, such as ozone, estimates can only be made using European-scale models,´ says Titus Kyrklund at the Environmental Protection Agency.

The information supplied by the programme then forms a basis for work in many different areas, such as establishing guidelines on how individual local authorities can meet their limit values.

This is ASTA
The principal aim of ASTA - International and National Abatement Strategies for Transboundary Air Pollution - is to produce international scientific data on environmental effects, costs of measures and atmospheric processes. The programme is looking at several areas: acidification, the impact of nitrogen on forest ecosystems, the effects of ground-level ozone on vegetation, and long-range transport of particulates.

Other aims are to enhance and consolidate Swedish expertise for use in international negotiations, and to achieve a better understanding of how science and politics interact. Integrated analyses of abatement strategies are being performed in support of the negotiating process.

The results of ASTA have two clear areas of application: international negotiations to tackle transboundary air pollution, and national activities, e.g. to implement Sweden´s environmental objectives. They are intended to be of relevance both to the EU´s Clean Air For Europe programme and to efforts under the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. The national part of the programme is concerned with supplying basic data to sectoral agencies such as the National Board of Forestry, the Energy Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency. It is also providing the Environmental Objectives Council with data for future revisions of the national environmental goals. The timetable for ASTA activities is determined by the negotiating process, data being delivered on an ongoing basis throughout the life of the programme.