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Strategic risk appraisal (SRA) has been applied to compare diverse policy level risks to and from the environment in England and Wales. Its application has relied on expert-informed assessments of the potential consequences from residual risks that attract policy attention at the national scale. Here we compare consequence assessments, across environmental, economic and social impact categories that draw on ‘expert’- and ‘literature-based’ analyses of the evidence for 12 public risks appraised by Government. For environmental consequences there is reasonable agreement between the two sources of assessment, with expert-informed assessments providing a narrower dispersion of impact severity and with median values similar in scale to those produced by an analysis of the literature. The situation is more complex for economic consequences, with a greater spread in the median values, less consistency between the two assessment types and a shift toward higher severity values across the risk portfolio. For social consequences, the spread of severity values is greater still, with no consistent trend between the severities of impact expressed by the two types of assessment. For the latter, the findings suggest the need for a fuller representation of socioeconomic expertise in SRA and the workshops that inform SRA output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Concentrations of nutrient nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) are elevated in rivers across large areas of Europe (European Nitrogen Assessment (ENA), Sutton et al., 2011). Environmental policies have been implemented over the past 20years with the aim of reducing nitrogen inputs to surface waters. However, environmental and ecological status is still below set targets (ENA, Sutton et al., 2011). Identification of patterns in long-term change for nutrient trends in hydrological catchments in England & Wales is required to assess impacts of nutrient management policy and provide better evidence for future policy. Such information could provide essential evidence for supporting policy by combining information from the wider catchment, rather than relying on the analysis of data from individual sites. Surface water quality is subject to considerable spatial and short-period temporal variability, reflecting variability in loading and dilution. This makes it difficult to determine temporal trends at individual monitoring sites with relatively sparse sampling. Here we apply spatiotemporal statistical additive models for both nitrogen and phosphorus in river networks across England & Wales to investigate the overall pattern of nutrient concentrations in these river surface waters over the past 20–40years. Concentrations of Orthophosphate (OP) have generally decreased over time for many of the Large Hydrological Areas with a seasonal pattern highlighting one peak in the summer months. Over the past ten years, Total Oxidised Nitrogen (Nitrate+Nitrite, TON) concentrations have generally been slowly decreasing or fairly constant. However, prior to 2000, concentrations were generally on an upward trend. The seasonal pattern highlights one trough in the summer months. The highest levels for OP and TON broadly occur in the same general areas across England & Wales. On average, over time, the lowest values are evident in the north-west and south-west (particularly for OP) and highest values are evident in the Midlands, Anglian and Southern regions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Internationally, pressure is being exerted on governments and regulators to develop modern forms of regulation that deliver more for less, and in better ways. We discuss the ways in which one large regulator, the Environment Agency for England and Wales, has responded to such pressures by implementing risk-based approaches to regulation. After exploring the context for key elements of risk-based environmental regulation, we consider the evolving influence of such approaches. We discuss the impacts against the UK Government''s principles for better regulation and the key criteria for policy evaluation, before considering some of the challenges: the need to i) understand the best practice and promote consistency in risk-based regulation; ii) develop reliable, responsive forms of risk assessment and monitoring; iii) build capacities for responsive risk regulation; iv) evaluate the influence of different regulatory styles; and v) better understand the potential role of the private sector. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]