Policy and decision-makers

It is becoming very clear that environmental toxicology is a field of study that reacts to and, hopefully, foresees the needs of policy and decision makers in managing ecosystems. The interaction between the science, decision makers, and the general public has become extremely important in setting public policy. We attempt to address the significance of this in Chapter 1. 

The theme and slogan of the Transport Research Arena held in Paris (TRA2014) were respectively Transport Solutions From Research to Deployment and Innovate Mobility, Mobilise Irmovation . Top researchers and engineers, as well as private and pubhc policy and decision-makers, were mobilized to identify and take the relevant steps to implement iruiovative solutions in transport. All surface modes were included, including walking and cycling, as well as cross modal aspects. 

Within risk management scientists, experts, stakeholders and decision-makers interact to address fundamental questions such as what type and how much data should be required before a particular risk is judged as intolerable and when and to what extent measures to reduce exposures are required. It is evident that these questions include both scientific and policy-related aspects. One specific illustration of these science-policy interactions can be seen in the discussions and various opinions expressed among experts, stakeholders and decision-makers in connection with the current review of the REACH criteria for PBT/vPvB substances where e.g. environmental NGOs such as WWF (Reineke 2008) as well as the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA 2008) argue that the criteria need to be adjusted so that also non-standard scientific information such as monitoring data should be considered if relevant and available. 

According to the Chair, Helmut Greim, the higher up in the hierarchy - and, thus, the farther away from direct contact with the scientific community - the less informed bureaucrats and decision-makers seem to be. Greim also emphasised the need for improved communication, specifically to avoid policy makers misinterpreting scientific advice. 

Pharmacoeconomics is a nascent discipline which has not yet provided clinicians and budget managers with the level of information necessary for confident decision-making. This is particularly true in psychiatry where the dearth of acceptable, reliably measurable clinical end points makes pharmacoeconomic evaluation even more complex and open to debate. Nonetheless, the data reviewed in this book, when placed alongside clinical data, do provide a framework for decision-making which is better informed and more realistic than any exclusively clinical assessment could be. Economic evaluations in all major mental illnesses, while some way from conclusive, are certainly providing valuable guidance to decision-makers both at policy level and in the clinic. 

In response to increasing scientific evidence that human activities are contributing significantly to global climate change [1], decision makers are devoting considerable attention to public policies to reduce GHG emissions and thereby prevent or reduce such change. 

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