Quantifying regulatory limits for multiple stressors in an open and transparent way

Area of Science:

• Environmental science
• Ecotoxicology
• Conservation biology

Background:

• Global biodiversity faces numerous environmental stressors.
• Environmental policies struggle to regulate multiple stressors due to interdependent outcomes and imperfect knowledge.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a regulatory framework for environmental policies that accounts for multistressor contingencies and uncertainty.
• To facilitate policy implementation and stakeholder anticipation of potential outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Developed an approach to quantify stressor limits incorporating multistressor contingencies.
• Combined ecological and ecotoxicological models using a 30-year New Zealand invertebrate dataset.
• Treated multistressor contingencies as uncertainty in predicting biodiversity loss.

Main Results:

• Quantified stressor limits by accounting for contingencies and uncertainty.
• Presented regulatory limits as bands reflecting optimistic and pessimistic outcomes.
• Demonstrated that a transparent approach does not necessarily lead to lenient limits.

Conclusions:

• The developed framework transparently accounts for uncertainty in environmental policy.
• The approach allows for stakeholder consensus in refining regulatory limits.
• This method enhances the realistic anticipation of policy outcomes for biodiversity conservation.