Ecosystem management

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem_management

 

Mangroves are an integral part of ecosystems.

Ecosystem management is a process that aims to conserve major ecological services and restore natural resources while meeting the socioeconomic, political, and cultural needs of current and future generations.

The principal objective of ecosystem management is the efficient maintenance and ethical use of natural resources. It is a multifaceted and holistic approach which requires a significant change in how the natural and human environments are identified.

Several approaches to effective ecosystem management engage conservation efforts at both local and landscape levels and involve: adaptive management, natural resource management, strategic management, and command and control management.

Formulations

A variety of definitions exist: Robert T. Lackey defined ecosystem management as "the application of ecological and social information, options, and constraints to achieve desired social benefits within a defined geographic area and over a specified period."  F. Stuart Chapin and coauthors define it as "the application of ecological science to resource management to promote long-term sustainability of ecosystems and the delivery of essential ecosystem goods and services," while Norman Christensen and coauthors defined it as "management driven by explicit goals, executed by policies, protocols, and practices, and made adaptable by monitoring and research based on our best understanding of the ecological interactions and processes necessary to sustain ecosystem structure and function." Peter Brussard and colleagues defined it as "managing areas at various scales in such a way that ecosystem services and biological resources are preserved while appropriate human use and options for livelihood are sustained".

The definitions of ecosystem management are typically vague. Several core principles define and bound the concept and provide operational meaning:

1. ecosystem management reflects a stage in the continuing evolution of social values and priorities; it is neither a beginning nor an end;
2. ecosystem management is place-based and the boundaries of the place must be clearly and formally defined;
3. ecosystem management should maintain ecosystems in the appropriate condition to achieve desired social benefits;
4. ecosystem management should take advantage of the ability of ecosystems to respond to a variety of natural and man-made stressors, but all ecosystems have limited ability to accommodate stressors and maintain a desired state;
5. ecosystem management may or may not result in emphasis on biological diversity;
6. the term sustainability, if used at all in ecosystem management, should be clearly defined—specifically, the time frame of concern, the benefits and costs of concern, and the relative priority of the benefits and costs; and
7. scientific information is important for effective ecosystem management, but is only one element in a decision-making process that is fundamentally one of public and private choice.

A fundamental principle is the long-term sustainability of the production of goods and services by the ecosystem; "intergenerational sustainability [is] a precondition for management, not an afterthought". It also requires clear goals with respect to future trajectories and behaviors of the system being managed. Other important requirements include a sound ecological understanding of the system, including connectedness, ecological dynamics and the context in which the system is embedded. An understanding of the role of humans as components of the ecosystems and the use of adaptive management is also important. While ecosystem management can be used as part of a plan for wilderness conservation, it can also be used in intensively managed ecosystems.

As a concept of natural resource management, ecosystem management remains both ambiguous and controversial, in part because some of its formulations rest on policy and scientific assertions that are contested.^[9] These assertions are important to understanding much of the conflict surrounding ecosystem management. Professional natural resource managers, typically operating from within government bureaucracies and professional organizations, often mask debate over controversial assertions by depicting ecosystem management as an evolution of past management approaches.

History

Sustainable ecosystem management was used by large parts of populations thousands of years ago. The native population in the territory of the USA before the arrival of the Europeans, barely changed the ecosystems because it preferred adapting to them rather than changing them.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are individuals or groups of people who are affected by environmental decisions and actions, but they also may have power to influence the outcomes of environmental decisions relating to ecosystem management. The complex nature of decisions made in ecosystem management, from local to international scales, requires stakeholder participation with a diversity of knowledge, perceptions, and values of nature. Stakeholders will often have different interests in ecosystem services. This means effective management of ecosystems requires a negotiation process that develops mutual trust in issues of common interest with the objective of creating mutually beneficial partnerships.

Adaptive management

Adaptive management is based on the concept that predicting future influences/disturbance to an ecosystem is limited and unclear. Therefore, the goal of adaptive management is to manage the ecosystem so it maintains the greatest amount of ecological integrity, but also to utilize management practices that have the ability to change based on new experience and insights.

Adaptive management aims to identify uncertainties in the management of an ecosystem while using hypothesis testing to further understand the system. In this regard, adaptive management encourages learning from the outcomes of previously implemented management strategies. Ecosystem managers form hypotheses about the ecosystem and its functionality and then implement different management techniques to test the hypotheses. The implemented techniques are then analyzed to evaluate any regressions or improvements in functionality of the ecosystem caused by the technique. Further analysis allows for modification of the technique until it successfully meets the ecological needs of the ecosystem. Thus, adaptive management serves as a “learning by doing” method for ecosystem management. 

Adaptive management has had mixed success in the field of ecosystem management, possibly because ecosystem managers may not be equipped with the decision-making skills needed to undertake an adaptive management methodology. Additionally, economic, social and political priorities can interfere with adaptive management decisions. For this reason, adaptive management should be a social process as well as scientific, focusing on institutional strategies while implementing experimental management techniques.

Natural resource management

The term natural resource management is frequently used when dealing with a particular resource for human use rather than managing the whole ecosystem. A main objective of natural resources management is the sustainability for future generations, which appoints ecosystem managers to balance natural resources exploitation and conservation over long-term timeframe. The balanced relationship of each resource in an ecosystem is subject to change at different spatial and temporal scales. Dimensions such as watersheds, soils, flora, and fauna need to be considered individually and on a landscape level. A variety of natural resources are utilized for food, medicine, energy and shelter.

The ecosystem management concept is based on the relationship between sustainable resource maintenance and human demand for use of natural resources. Therefore, socioeconomics factors significantly affect natural resource management. The goal of a natural resource manager is to fulfill the demand for a given resource without causing harm to the ecosystem, or jeopardizing the future of the resource. Partnerships between ecosystem managers, natural resource managers and stakeholders should be encouraged in order to promote a more sustainable use of limited natural resources. Natural resource managers must initially measure the overall integrity of the ecosystem they are involved in. If the ecosystem supporting resources is healthy, managers can decide on the ideal amount of resource extraction, while leaving enough to allow the resource to replenish itself for subsequent harvests. Historically, some natural resources have experienced limited human disturbance and therefore have been able to subsist naturally . However, some ecosystems such as forests, which typically provide considerable timber resources; have sometimes undergone successful reforestation processes and consequently have accommodated the needs of future generations. A successfully managed resource will provide for current demand while leaving enough to repopulate and provide for future demand.

Human populations have been increasing rapidly, introducing new stressors to ecosystems, such as climate change and influxes of invasive species. As a result, the demand for natural resources is unpredictable. Although ecosystem changes may occur gradually, the cumulative changes can have negative effects for humans and wildlife. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing Applications can be used to monitor and evaluate natural resources by mapping them in local and global scales. These tools will continue to be highly beneficial in natural resources management.

Strategic management

Strategic management encourages the establishment of goals that will benefit the ecosystem while keeping socioeconomic and politically relevant issues in mind. Strategic management differs from other types of ecosystem management because it keeps stakeholders involved and relies on their input to develop the best management strategy for an ecosystem. Similarly to other modes of ecosystem management, this method places a high level of importance on evaluating and reviewing any changes, progress, or negative impacts and prioritizes flexibility in adapting management protocols as a result of new information.

Landscape level conservation

Landscape level conservation is a method that considers wildlife needs at a broader landscape level scale when implementing conservation initiatives. This approach to ecosystem management involves the consideration of broad scale interconnected ecological systems that acknowledges the whole scope of an environmental problem. In a human-dominated world, weighing the landscape requirements of wildlife versus the needs of humans is a complicated matter.

Landscape level conservation is carried out in a number of ways. A wildlife corridor, for example, is a connection between otherwise isolated habitat patches that are proposed as a solution to habitat fragmentation. In some landscape level conservation approaches, a key species vulnerable to landscape alteration is identified and its habitat requirements are assessed in order to identify the best option for protecting their ecosystem. However, lining up the habitat requirements of numerous species in an ecosystem can be difficult, which is why more comprehensive approaches to further understand these variations have been considered in landscape level conservation.

Human-induced environmental degradation is an increasing problem globally, which is why landscape level ecology plays an important role in ecosystem management. Traditional conservation methods targeted at individual species need to be modified to include the maintenance of wildlife habitats through consideration of both human-induced and natural environmental factors.

Command and control management

Command and control management utilizes a linear problem solving approach where a perceived problem is solved through controlling devices such as laws, threats, contracts and/or agreements. This top-down approach is used across many disciplines and works best with problems that are relatively simple, well-defined and work in terms of cause and effect. The application of command and control management has often attempted to control nature in order to improve product extractions, establish predictability and reduce threats. Some obvious examples of command and control management actions include: the use of herbicides and pesticides to safeguard crops in order to harvest more products; the culling of predators in order to obtain larger, more reliable game species; and the safeguarding of timber supply, by suppressing forest fires.

Attempts at command and control management often backfire (a literal problem in forests that have been ‘protected’ from fire by humans and are subsequently full of fuel build-up) in ecosystems due to their inherent complexities. Consequently, there has been a transition away from command and control management due to many undesirable outcomes and a stronger focus has been placed on more holistic approaches that focus on adaptive management and finding solutions through partnerships.

Sustainable forest management

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_forest_management

Sustainable forest management is the management of forests according to the principles of sustainable development. Sustainable forest management has to keep the balance between three main pillars: ecological, economic and socio-cultural. Successfully achieving sustainable forest management will provide integrated benefits to all, ranging from safeguarding local livelihoods to protecting the biodiversity and ecosystems provided by forests, reducing rural poverty and mitigating some of the effects of climate change.

The "Forest Principles" adopted at The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 captured the general international understanding of sustainable forest management at that time. A number of sets of criteria and indicators have since been developed to evaluate the achievement of SFM at the global, regional, country and management unit level. These were all attempts to codify and provide for independent assessment of the degree to which the broader objectives of sustainable forest management are being achieved in practice. In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Non-Legally Binding Instrument on All Types of Forests. The instrument was the first of its kind, and reflected the strong international commitment to promote implementation of sustainable forest management through a new approach that brings all stakeholders together.

Definition

A definition of SFM was developed by the Ministerial Conference on the Protection of Forests in Europe (FOREST EUROPE), and has since been adopted by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It defines sustainable forest management as:

The stewardship and use of forests and forest lands in a way, and at a rate, that maintains their biodiversity, productivity, regeneration capacity, vitality and their potential to fulfill, now and in the future, relevant ecological, economic and social functions, at local, national, and global levels, and that does not cause damage to other ecosystems.

In simpler terms, the concept can be described as the attainment of balance – balance between society's increasing demands for forest products and benefits, and the preservation of forest health and diversity. This balance is critical to the survival of forests, and to the prosperity of forest-dependent communities. 

For forest managers, sustainably managing a particular forest tract means determining, in a tangible way, how to use it today to ensure similar benefits, health and productivity in the future. Forest managers must assess and integrate a wide array of sometimes conflicting factors – commercial and non-commercial values, environmental considerations, community needs, even global impact – to produce sound forest plans. In most cases, forest managers develop their forest plans in consultation with citizens, businesses, organizations and other interested parties in and around the forest tract being managed. The tools and visualization have been recently evolving for better management practices.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, at the request of Member States, developed and launched the Sustainable Forest Management Toolbox in 2014, an online collection of tools, best practices and examples of their application to support countries implementing sustainable forest management.

Because forests and societies are in constant flux, the desired outcome of sustainable forest management is not a fixed one. What constitutes a sustainably managed forest will change over time as values held by the public change.

Criteria and indicators

Deforestation of native rain forest in Rio de Janeiro City for extraction of clay for civil engineering (2009 picture). An example of non sustainable forest management.

Criteria and indicators are tools which can be used to conceptualise, evaluate and implement sustainable forest management. Criteria define and characterize the essential elements, as well as a set of conditions or processes, by which sustainable forest management may be assessed. Periodically measured indicators reveal the direction of change with respect to each criterion.

Criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management are widely used and many countries produce national reports that assess their progress toward sustainable forest management. There are nine international and regional criteria and indicators initiatives, which collectively involve more than 150 countries. Three of the more advanced initiatives are those of the Working Group on Criteria and Indicators for the Conservation and Sustainable Management of Temperate and Boreal Forests (also called the Montréal Process), Forest Europe, and the International Tropical Timber Organization. Countries who are members of the same initiative usually agree to produce reports at the same time and using the same indicators. Within countries, at the management unit level, efforts have also been directed at developing local level criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management. The Center for International Forestry Research, the International Model Forest Network and researchers at the University of British Columbia have developed a number of tools and techniques to help forest-dependent communities develop their own local level criteria and indicators. Criteria and Indicators also form the basis of third-party forest certification programs such as the Canadian Standards Association's Sustainable Forest Management Standards and the Sustainable Forestry Initiative Standard.

There appears to be growing international consensus on the key elements of sustainable forest management. Seven common thematic areas of sustainable forest management have emerged based on the criteria of the nine ongoing regional and international criteria and indicators initiatives. The seven thematic areas are:

• Extent of forest resources
• Biological diversity
• Forest health and vitality
• Productive functions and forest resources
• Protective functions of forest resources
• Socio-economic functions
• Legal, policy and institutional framework.

This consensus on common thematic areas (or criteria) effectively provides a common, implicit definition of sustainable forest management. The seven thematic areas were acknowledged by the international forest community at the fourth session of the United Nations Forum on Forests and the 16th session of the Committee on Forestry. These thematic areas have since been enshrined in the Non-Legally Binding Instrument on All Types of Forests as a reference framework for sustainable forest management to help achieve the purpose of the instrument.

On January 5, 2012, the Montréal Process, Forest Europe, the International Tropical Timber Organization, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, acknowledging the seven thematic areas, endorsed a joint statement of collaboration to improve global forest related data collection and reporting and avoiding the proliferation of monitoring requirements and associated reporting burdens.

Ecosystem approach

The Ecosystem Approach has been prominent on the agenda of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) since 1995 . The CBD definition of the Ecosystem Approach and a set of principles for its application were developed at an expert meeting in Malawi in 1995, known as the Malawi Principles. The definition, 12 principles and 5 points of "operational guidance" were adopted by the fifth Conference of Parties (COP5) in 2000. The CBD definition is as follows

The ecosystem approach is a strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way. Application of the ecosystem approach will help to reach a balance of the three objectives of the Convention. An ecosystem approach is based on the application of appropriate scientific methodologies focused on levels of biological organization, which encompasses the essential structures, processes, functions and interactions among organisms and their environment. It recognizes that humans, with their cultural diversity, are an integral component of many ecosystems.

Sustainable forest management was recognized by parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2004 (Decision VII/11 of COP7) to be a concrete means of applying the Ecosystem Approach to forest ecosystems. The two concepts, sustainable forest management and the ecosystem approach, aim at promoting conservation and management practices which are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable, and which generate and maintain benefits for both present and future generations. In Europe, the MCPFE and the Council for the Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy (PEBLDS) jointly recognized sustainable forest management to be consistent with the Ecosystem Approach in 2006.

Independent certification

Growing environmental awareness and consumer demand for more socially responsible businesses helped third-party forest certification emerge in the 1990s as a credible tool for communicating the environmental and social performance of forest operations. 

There are many potential users of certification, including: forest managers, scientists, policy makers, investors, environmental advocates, business consumers of wood and paper, and individuals.

With third-party forest certification, an independent organization develops standards of good forest management, and independent auditors issue certificates to forest operations that comply with those standards. Forest certification verifies that forests are well-managed – as defined by a particular standard – and chain-of-custody certification tracks wood and paper products from the certified forest through processing to the point of sale.

This rise of certification led to the emergence of several different systems throughout the world. As a result, there is no single accepted forest management standard worldwide, and each system takes a somewhat different approach in defining standards for sustainable forest management.

In its 2009–2010 Forest Products Annual Market Review United Nations Economic Commission for Europe/Food and Agriculture Organization stated: "Over the years, many of the issues that previously divided the (certification) systems have become much less distinct. The largest certification systems now generally have the same structural programmatic requirements."

Third-party forest certification is an important tool for those seeking to ensure that the paper and wood products they purchase and use come from forests that are well-managed and legally harvested. Incorporating third-party certification into forest product procurement practices can be a centerpiece for comprehensive wood and paper policies that include factors such as the protection of sensitive forest values, thoughtful material selection and efficient use of products.

There are more than fifty certification standards worldwide, addressing the diversity of forest types and tenures. Globally, the two largest umbrella certification programs are:

• Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)
• Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)

The area of forest certified worldwide is growing slowly. PEFC is the world's largest forest certification system, with more than two-thirds of the total global certified area certified to its Sustainability Benchmarks.

In North America, there are three certification standards endorsed by PEFC – the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, the Canadian Standards Association's Sustainable Forest Management Standard, and the American Tree Farm System. FSC has five standards in North America – one in the United States and four in Canada.

While certification is intended as a tool to enhance forest management practices throughout the world, to date most certified forestry operations are located in Europe and North America. A significant barrier for many forest managers in developing countries is that they lack the capacity to undergo a certification audit and maintain operations to a certification standard.

Forest governance

Countries participating in the UNREDD program and/or Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.

  UN-REDD participants

  Forest Carbon Partnership Facility participants

  participants in both

Although a majority of forests continue to be owned formally by government, the effectiveness of forest governance is increasingly independent of formal ownership. Since neo-liberal ideology in the 1980s and the emanation of the climate change challenges, evidence that the state is failing to effectively manage environmental resources has emerged. Under neo-liberal regimes in the developing countries, the role of the state has diminished and the market forces have increasingly taken over the dominant socio-economic role. Though the critiques of neo-liberal policies have maintained that market forces are not only inappropriate for sustaining the environment, but are in fact a major cause of environmental destruction. Hardin's tragedy of the commons (1968) has shown that the people cannot be left to do as they wish with land or environmental resources. Thus, decentralization of management offers an alternative solution to forest governance.

The shifting of natural resource management responsibilities from central to state and local governments, where this is occurring, is usually a part of broader decentralization process. According to Rondinelli and Cheema (1983), there are four distinct decentralization options: these are: (i) Privatization – the transfer of authority from the central government to non-governmental sectors otherwise known as market-based service provision, (ii) Delegation – centrally nominated local authority, (iii) Devolution – transfer of power to locally acceptable authority and (iv) Deconcentration – the redistribution of authority from the central government to field delegations of the central government. The major key to effective decentralization is increased broad-based participation in local-public decision making. In 2000, the World Bank report reveals that local government knows the needs and desires of their constituents better than the national government, while at the same time, it is easier to hold local leaders accountable. From the study of West African tropical forest, it is argued that the downwardly accountable and/or representative authorities with meaningful discretional powers are the basic institutional element of decentralization that should lead to efficiency, development and equity. This collaborates with the World Bank report in 2000 which says that decentralization should improve resource allocation, efficiency, accountability and equity "by linking the cost and benefit of local services more closely".

Many reasons point to the advocacy of decentralization of forest. (i) Integrated rural development projects often fail because they are top-down projects that did not take local people's needs and desires into account. (ii) National government sometimes have legal authority over vast forest areas that they cannot control, thus, many protected area projects result in increased biodiversity loss and greater social conflict. Within the sphere of forest management, as state earlier, the most effective option of decentralization is "devolution"-the transfer of power to locally accountable authority. However, apprehension about local governments is not unfounded. They are often short of resources, may be staffed by people with low education and are sometimes captured by local elites who promote clientelist relation rather than democratic participation. Enters and Anderson (1999) point that the result of community-based projects intended to reverse the problems of past central approaches to conservation and development have also been discouraging.

Broadly speaking, the goal of forest conservation has historically not been met when, in contrast with land use changes; driven by demand for food, fuel and profit. It is necessary to recognize and advocate for better forest governance more strongly given the importance of forest in meeting basic human needs in the future and maintaining ecosystem and biodiversity as well as addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation goal. Such advocacy must be coupled with financial incentives for government of developing countries and greater governance role for local government, civil society, private sector and NGOs on behalf of the "communities".

National Forest Funds

The development of National Forest Funds is one way to address the issue of financing sustainable forest management. National forest funds (NFFs) are dedicated financing mechanisms managed by public institutions designed to support the conservation and sustainable use of forest resources. As of 2014, there are 70 NFFs operating globally.

Forest genetic resources

Appropriate use and long-term conservation of forest genetic resources (FGR) is a part of sustainable forest management. In particular when it comes to the adaptation of forests and forest management to climate change. Genetic diversity ensures that forest trees can survive, adapt and evolve under changing environmental conditions. Genetic diversity in forests also contributes to tree vitality and to the resilience towards pests and diseases. Furthermore, FGR has a crucial role in maintaining forest biological diversity at both species and ecosystem levels.

Selecting carefully the forest reproductive material with emphasis on getting a high genetic diversity rather than aiming at producing a uniform stand of trees, is essential for sustainable use of FGR. Considering the provenance is crucial as well. For example in relation to climate change, local material may not have the genetic diversity or phenotypic plasticity to guarantee good performance under changed conditions. A different population from further away, which may have experienced selection under conditions more like those forecast for the site to be reforested, might represent a more suitable seed source.

Regional action

Russia

In 2019 after severe wildfires and public pressure the Russian government decided to take a number of measures for more effective forest management, what is considered as a big victory for the Environmental movement

Indonesia

In August 2019, a court in Indonesia stopped the construction of a dam that could heavily hurt forests and villagers in the area

United States of America

In the beginning of the year 2020 the "Save the Redwoods League" after a successful crowdfunding campaign bought " Alder Creek" a piece of land 583 acres large, with 483 big Sequoia trees including the 5th largest tree in the world. The organizations plan to make there forest thinning that is a controversial operation

Superfund

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfund

Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980

Long title	An act to provide for liability, compensation, cleanup, and emergency response for hazardous substances released into the environment and the cleanup of inactive hazardous waste disposal sites.
Acronyms (colloquial)	CERCLA
Nicknames	Superfund
Enacted by	the 96th United States Congress
Citations
Public law	P.L. 96-510
Statutes at Large	94 Stat. 2767
Codification
Titles amended	42 (Public Health)
U.S.C. sections created	42 U.S.C. § 9601 et seq.
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as "Hazardous Waste Containment Act of 1980" (H.R. 7020) by James Florio (D-NJ) on April 2, 1980 Committee consideration by House Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House Ways and Means, Senate Environment, Senate Finance Passed the House on September 23, 1980 (351–23) Passed the Senate on November 24, 1980 (78-9) with amendment House agreed to Senate amendment on December 3, 1980 (274–94) Signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on December 11, 1980
Major amendments
Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986; Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986
United States Supreme Court cases
United States v. Bestfoods, 524 U.S. 51 (1998)

The United States federal Superfund law is officially known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA). The federal Superfund program, administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is designed to investigate and clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances. Sites managed under this program are referred to as "Superfund" sites. There are 40,000 federal Superfund sites across the country, and approximately 1,600 of those sites have been listed on the National Priorities List (NPL). Sites on the NPL are considered the most highly contaminated and undergo longer-term remedial investigation and remedial action (cleanups).

The EPA seeks to identify parties responsible for hazardous substances releases to the environment (polluters) and either compel them to clean up the sites, or it may undertake the cleanup on its own using the Superfund (a trust fund) and seek to recover those costs from the responsible parties through settlements or other legal means.

Approximately 70% of Superfund cleanup activities historically have been paid for by the potentially responsible parties (PRPs), the latter reflecting the polluter pays principle. However, 30% of the time the responsible party either cannot be found or is unable to pay for the cleanup. In these circumstances, taxpayers pay for the cleanup. Through the 1980s, most of the funding came from a tax passed on to the consumers of petroleum and chemical products. However, in 1995, Congress chose not to renew this tax and the burden of the cost was shifted to tax payers. Since 2001, most of the cleanup of hazardous waste sites has been funded through taxpayers generally. Despite its name, the program has suffered from under-funding, and Superfund NPL cleanups have decreased to a mere 8 in 2014, out of over 1,200.

The EPA and state agencies use the Hazard Ranking System (HRS) to calculate a site score (ranging from 0 to 100) based on the actual or potential release of hazardous substances from a site. A score of 28.5 places a site on the National Priorities List, eligible for long-term, remedial action (i.e., cleanup) under the Superfund program. As of August 9, 2016, there were 1,328 sites listed; an additional 391 had been delisted, and 55 new sites have been proposed.

The Superfund law also authorizes federal natural resource agencies, primarily the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), states and Native American tribes to recover natural resource damages caused by hazardous substances, though most states have and most often use their own versions of a state Superfund law. CERCLA created the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

The primary goal of a Superfund cleanup is to reduce the risks to human health and human health in the environment through a combination of cleanup, engineered controls like caps and site restrictions such as groundwater use restrictions. A secondary goal is to return the site to productive use as a business, recreation or as a natural ecosystem. Identifying the intended reuse early in the cleanup often results in faster and less expensive cleanups. EPA's Superfund Redevelopment Initiative provides tools and support for site redevelopment.

History

Workers in hazmat suits check the status of a cleanup site

CERCLA was enacted by Congress in 1980 in response to the threat of hazardous waste sites, typified by the Love Canal disaster in New York, and the Valley of the Drums in Kentucky. It was recognized that funding would be difficult, since the responsible parties were not easily found, and so the Superfund was established to provide funding through a taxing mechanism on certain industries and to create a comprehensive liability framework to be able to hold a broader range of parties responsible. The initial Superfund trust fund to clean up sites where a polluter could not be identified, could not or would not pay (bankruptcy or refusal), consisted of about $1.6 billion and then increased to $8.5 billion. Initially, the framework for implementing the program came from the oil and hazardous substances National Contingency Plan.

The EPA published the first Hazard Ranking System (HRS) in 1981, and the first National Priorities List (NPL) in 1983. Implementation in early years, during the Reagan administration, was ineffective, with only 16 of the 799 Superfund sites cleaned up and only $40 million of $700 million in recoverable funds from responsible parties collected. The mismanagement of the program under Anne Gorsuch Burford, Reagan's first chosen Administrator of the agency, led to a congressional investigation and the reauthorization of the program in 1986 through an act amending CERCLA.

The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) added minimum cleanup requirements in Section 121, and required that most cleanup agreements with polluters be entered in federal court as a consent decree subject to public comment (section 122). This was to address sweetheart deals between industry and the Reagan-era EPA that Congress had discovered.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton proposed a new Superfund reform bill, Executive Order (E.O) 12898, which called for federal agencies to make achieving environmental justice a requirement by addressing low income populations and minority populations that have experienced disproportionate adverse health and environmental effects as a result of their programs, policies, and activities. The regional offices of the Environmental Protection Agency now had to apply required guidelines for its managers to take into consideration data analysis, managed public participation, and economic opportunity when considering the geography of toxic waste site remediation. Some environmentalists and industry lobbyists saw the Clinton administration’s environmental justice policy as an improvement, but the bill did not get bipartisan support. The newly elected Republican Congress made numerous unsuccessful efforts to significantly weaken the law. The Clinton Administration then adopted some industry favored reforms as policy and blocked most major changes.

Until the mid-1990s, most of the funding came from a tax on the petroleum and chemical industries, reflecting the polluter pays principle. Even though by 1995 nearly $4 billion in fees were in the Superfund, Congress chose not to reauthorize collection of these and by 2003 the Superfund was empty.

In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency used funds from the Superfund program to institute the cleanup of anthrax on Capitol Hill after the 2001 Anthrax Attacks. It was the first time the agency dealt with a biological release rather than a chemical or oil spill.

According to a 2015 U.S. Government Accountability Office report, since 2001, most of the funding for cleanups of hazardous waste sites has come from taxpayers; a state pays 10 percent of cleanup costs in general and at least 50 percent of cleanup costs if the state operated the facility responsible for contamination. By 2013 funding had decreased from $2 billion in 1999 to less than $1.1 billion (in constant dollars).

From 2000-2015, Congress allocated about $1.26 billion of general revenue to the Superfund program each year. Consequently, less than half the number of sites were cleaned up from 2001 to 2008, compared to before. The decrease continued during the Obama Administration, and since under the direction of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy Superfund cleanups decreased even more from 20 in 2009 to a mere 8 in 2014.

The preliminary 2018 Trump Administration Superfund budget would cut the program by $330 million out of its nearly $1.1 billion budget, a 30% reduction to the Environmental Protection Agency program.

Provisions

CERCLA authorizes two kinds of response actions:

1. Removal actions. These are typically short-term response actions, where actions may be taken to address releases or threatened releases requiring prompt response. Removal actions are classified as: (1) emergency; (2) time-critical; and (3) non-time critical. Removal responses are generally used to address localized risks such as abandoned drums containing hazardous substances, and contaminated surface soils posing acute risks to human health or the environment.
2. Remedial actions. These are usually long-term response actions. Remedial actions seek to permanently and significantly reduce the risks associated with releases or threats of releases of hazardous substances, and are generally larger more expensive actions. They can include measures such as using containment to prevent pollutants from migrating, and combinations of removing, treating, or neutralizing toxic substances. These actions can be conducted with federal funding only at sites listed on the EPA National Priorities List (NPL) in the United States and the territories. Remedial action by responsible parties under consent decrees or unilateral administrative orders with EPA oversight may be performed at both NPL and non-NPL sites, commonly called Superfund Alternative Sites in published EPA guidance and policy documents.

A potentially responsible party (PRP) is a possible polluter who may eventually be held liable under CERCLA for the contamination or misuse of a particular property or resource. Four classes of PRPs may be liable for contamination at a Superfund site:

1. the current owner or operator of the site;
2. the owner or operator of a site at the time that disposal of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant occurred;
3. a person who arranged for the disposal of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant at a site; and
4. a person who transported a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant to a site, who also has selected that site for the disposal of the hazardous substances, pollutants or contaminants.

The liability scheme of CERCLA changed commercial and industrial real estate, making sellers liable for contamination from past activities, meaning they can’t pass liability onto unknowing buyers without any responsibility. Buyers also have to be aware of future liabilities.

The CERCLA also required the revision of the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan 9605(a)(NCP). The NCP guides how to respond to releases and threatened releases of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants. The NCP established the National Priorities List, which appears as Appendix B to the NCP, and serves as EPA´s information and management tool. The NPL is updated periodically by federal rulemaking.

The identification of a site for the NPL is intended primarily to guide the EPA in:

• Determining which sites warrant further investigation to assess the nature and extent of risks to human health and the environment
• Identifying what CERCLA-financed remedial actions may be appropriate
• Notifying the public of sites the EPA believes warrant further investigation
• Notifying PRPs that the EPA may initiate CERCLA-financed remedial action

Including a site on the NPL does not itself require PRPs to initiate action to clean up the site, nor assign liability to any person. The NPL serves informational purposes, notifying the government and the public of those sites or releases that appear to warrant remedial actions.

The key difference between the authority to address hazardous substances and pollutants or contaminants is that the cleanup of pollutants or contaminants, which are not hazardous substances, cannot be compelled by unilateral administrative order.

Despite the name, the Superfund trust fund lacks sufficient funds to clean up even a small number of the sites on the NPL. As a result, the EPA typically negotiates consent orders with PRPs to study sites and develop cleanup alternatives, subject to EPA oversight and approval of all such activities. The EPA then issues a Proposed Plans for remedial action for a site on which it takes public comment, after which it makes a cleanup decision in a Record of Decision (ROD). RODs are typically implemented under consent decrees by PRPs or under unilateral orders if consent cannot be reached. If a party fails to comply with such an order, it may be fined up to $37,500 for each day that non-compliance continues. A party that spends money to clean up a site may sue other PRPs in a contribution action under the CERCLA. CERCLA liability has generally been judicially established as joint and several among PRPs to the government for cleanup costs (i.e., each PRP is hypothetically responsible for all costs subject to contribution), but CERCLA liability is allocable among PRPs in contribution based on comparative fault. An "orphan share" is the share of costs at a Superfund site that is attributable to a PRP that is either unidentifiable or insolvent. The EPA tries to treat all PRPs equitably and fairly. Budgetary cuts and constraints can make more equitable treatment of PRPs more difficult.

Procedures

A national map of Superfund sites. Red indicates currently on final National Priority List, yellow is proposed, green is deleted (usually meaning having been cleaned up). This map is as of October 2013.

Upon notification of a potentially hazardous waste site, the EPA conducts a Preliminary Assessment/Site Inspection (PA/SI), which involves records reviews, interviews, visual inspections, and limited field sampling. Information from the PA/SI is used by the EPA to develop a Hazard Ranking System (HRS) score to determine the CERCLA status of the site. Sites that score high enough to be listed typically proceed to a Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study (RI/FS).

The RI includes an extensive sampling program and risk assessment that defines the nature and extent of the site contamination and risks. The FS is used to develop and evaluate various remediation alternatives. The preferred alternative is presented in a Proposed Plan for public review and comment, followed by a selected alternative in a ROD. The site then enters into a Remedial Design phase and then the Remedial Action phase. Many sites include long-term monitoring. Once the Remedial Action has been completed, reviews are required every five years, whenever hazardous substances are left onsite above levels safe for unrestricted use.

• The CERCLA information system (CERCLIS) is a database maintained by the EPA and the states that lists sites where releases may have occurred, must be addressed, or have been addressed. CERCLIS consists of three inventories: the CERCLIS Removal Inventory, the CERCLIS Remedial Inventory, and the CERCLIS Enforcement Inventory.
• The Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation (SITE) program supports development of technologies for assessing and treating waste at Superfund sites. The EPA evaluates the technology and provides an assessment of its potential for future use in Superfund remediation actions. The SITE program consists of four related components: the Demonstration Program, the Emerging Technologies Program, the Monitoring and Measurement Technologies Program, and Technology Transfer activities.
• A reportable quantity (RQ) is the minimum quantity of a hazardous substance which, if released, must be reported.
• A source control action represents the construction or installation and start-up of those actions necessary to prevent the continued release of hazardous substances (primarily from a source on top of or within the ground, or in buildings or other structures) into the environment.
• A section 104(e) letter is a request by the government for information about a site. It may include general notice to a potentially responsible party that CERCLA-related action may be undertaken at a site for which the recipient may be responsible. This section also authorizes the EPA to enter facilities and obtain information relating to PRPs, hazardous substances releases, and liability, and to order access for CERCLA activities. The 104(e) letter information-gathering resembles written interrogatories in civil litigation.
• A section 106 order is a unilateral administrative order issued by EPA to PRP(s) to perform remedial actions at a Superfund site when the EPA determines there may be an imminent and substantial endangerment to the public health or welfare or the environment because of an actual or threatened release of a hazardous substance from a facility, subject to treble damages and daily fines if the order is not obeyed.
• A remedial response is a long-term action that stops or substantially reduces a release of a hazardous substance that could affect public health or the environment. The term remediation, or cleanup, is sometimes used interchangeably with the terms remedial action, removal action, response action, remedy, or corrective action.
  • A nonbinding allocation of responsibility (NBAR) is a device, established in the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act, that allows the EPA to make a nonbinding estimate of the proportional share that each of the various responsible parties at a Superfund site should pay toward the costs of cleanup.
• Relevant and appropriate requirements are those United States federal or state cleanup requirements that, while not "applicable," address problems sufficiently similar to those encountered at the CERCLA site that their use is appropriate. Requirements may be relevant and appropriate if they would be "applicable" except for jurisdictional restrictions associated with the requirement.

Implementation

Polluted Martin's Creek on the Kin-Buc Landfill Superfund site in Edison, New Jersey

As of 9 August 2016, there were 1,328 sites listed on the National Priority List; an additional 391 had been delisted, and 55 new sites were proposed.

Historically about 70 percent of Superfund cleanup activities have been paid for by potentially responsible party (PRPs). When the party either cannot be found or is unable to pay for the cleanup, the Superfund law originally paid for toxic waste cleanups through a tax on petroleum and chemical industries. The chemical and petroleum fees were intended to provide incentives to use less toxic substances. Over five years, $1.6 billion was collected, and the tax went to a trust fund for cleaning up abandoned or uncontrolled hazardous waste sites.

The last full fiscal year (FY) in which the Department of the Treasury collected the tax was 1995. At the end of FY 1996, the invested trust fund balance was $6.0 billion. This fund was exhausted by the end of FY 2003; Since that time superfund sites for which the potentially responsible parties could not pay have been paid for from the general fund appropriated by Congress.

Hazard Ranking System

The Hazard Ranking System is a scoring system used to evaluate potential relative risks to public health and the environment from releases or threatened releases of hazardous wastes at uncontrolled waste sites. Under the Superfund program, the EPA and state agencies use the HRS to calculate a site score (ranging from 0 to 100) based on the actual or potential release of hazardous substances from a site through air, surface water or groundwater. A score of 28.5 places the site on the National Priorities List, making the site eligible for long-term remedial action (i.e., cleanup) under the Superfund program.

Environmental discrimination

Federal actions to address the disproportionate health and environmental disparities that minority and low-income populations face through Executive Order (E.O) 12898 required federal agencies to make environmental justice central to their programs and policies. Superfund sites have been shown to impact minority communities the most. Despite legislation specifically designed to ensure equity in Superfund listing, marginalized populations still experience a lesser chance of successful listing and cleanup than areas with higher income levels. After the executive order had been put in place, there persisted a discrepancy between the demographics of the communities living near toxic waste sites and their listing as Superfund sites, which would otherwise grant them federally funded cleanup projects. Communities with both increased minority and low-income populations were found to have lowered their chances of site listing after the executive order, while on the other hand, increases in income led to greater chances of site listing. Of the populations living within 1 mile radius of a Superfund site, 44% of those are minorities despite only being around 37% of the nation's population. It has also been shown that the government responds slower to community demands from minority communities than from white communities. Superfund sites near white communities are reputed to have better clean-up, harsher penalties for polluters, and a larger tax-base of funding than minority communities.

Case studies in African American communities

In 1978, residents of the rural black community of Triana, Alabama were found to be contaminated with DDT and PCB, some of whom had the highest levels of DDT ever recorded in human history. The DDT was found in high levels in Indian Creek, which many residents relied on for sustenance fishing. Although this major health threat to residents of Triana was discovered in 1978, the federal government did not act until 5 years later after the mayor of Triana filed a class-action lawsuit in 1980. 

In West Dallas, Texas, a mostly African American and Latino community, a lead smelter poisoned the surrounding neighborhood, elementary school, and day cares for more than five decades. Dallas city officials were informed in 1972 that children in the proximity of the smelter were being exposed to lead contamination. The city sued the lead smelters in 1974, then reduced its lead regulations in 1976. It wasn't until 1981 that the EPA commissioned a study on the lead contamination in this neighborhood, and found the same results that had been found a decade earlier. In 1983, the surrounding day cares had to close due to the lead exposure while the lead smelter remained operating. It was later revealed that EPA Deputy Administrator John Hernandez had deliberately stalled the clean up of the lead-contaminated hot spots. It wasn't until 1993 that the site was declared a Superfund site, and at the time it was one of the largest ones. However, it was not until 2004 when the EPA completed the clean-up efforts and eliminated the lead pollutant sources from the site. 

The Afton community of Warren County, North Carolina is one of the most prominent environmental injustice cases and is often pointed to as the roots of the environmental justice movement. PCB's were illegally dumped into the community and then it eventually became a PCB landfill. Community leaders pressed the state for the site to be cleaned up for an entire decade until it was finally detoxified. However, this decontamination did not return the site to its pre-1982 conditions. There has been a call for reparations to the community which has not yet been met. 

Bayview-Hunters Point, San Francisco, a historically African American community, has faced persistent environmental discrimination due to the poor remediation efforts of the San Francisco Naval Shipyard, a federally declared Superfund site. The negligence of multiple agencies to adequately clean this site has led Bayview residents to be subject to high rates of pollution, gentrification, and has been tied to high rates of cancer, asthma, and overall higher health hazards than other regions of San Francisco.

Case studies in Native American communities

One example is the Church Rock uranium mill spill on the Navajo Nation. It was the largest radioactive spill in the US, but received a long delay in government response and cleanup after being placed as a lower priority site. Two sets of five-year clean up plans have been put in place by US Congress, but contamination from the Church Rock incident has still not been completely cleaned up. Today, uranium contamination from mining during the Cold War era remains throughout the Navajo Nation, posing health risks to the Navajo community. 

Cuts to the EPA's funding and resources would hinder the regulation and remediation of Superfund sites. This would perpetuate the exposure to health risks that adjacent communities face from proximity to the Superfund site. Delays in government response to Superfund conditions increases the exposure of health risks to proximate communities.

Accessing data

The data in the Superfund Program are available to the public.

• EPA Superfund Information Systems: Report and Product Descriptions
• EPA Superfund Information Systems: Superfund Product Order Form
• TOXMAP was a Geographic Information System (GIS) from the Division of Specialized Information Services of the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) that was deprecated on December 16, 2019. The application used maps of the United States to help users visually explore data from the EPA Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and Superfund programs. TOXMAP was a resource funded by the US Federal Government. TOXMAP's chemical and environmental health information is taken from NLM's Toxicology Data Network (TOXNET), PubMed, and other authoritative sources.

Future challenges

While the simple and relatively easy sites have been cleaned up, EPA is now addressing a residual number of difficult and massive sites such as large-area mining and sediment sites, which is tying up a significant amount of funding. Also, while the federal government has reserved funding for cleanup of federal facility sites, this cleanup going much more slowly. The delay is due to a number of reasons, including EPA’s limited ability to require performance, difficulty of dealing with Department of Energy radioactive wastes, and the sheer number of federal facility sites.