The Development and Application of Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessment in South Africa

Abstract

The ecological risk assessment (ERA) process of the US EPA was summarised and evaluated for South African conditions. The objective was to facilitate a common understanding, on-going debate and increasing application of ERA in South Africa. Many of the individual steps in the process have been interpreted and/or reworded to improve communication of the concepts. Although the basic principles were retained, a few changes were suggested. The changes relate specifically to agreeing on management objectives, the development and evaluation of hypotheses, and the collection, collation and evaluation of information. The derived process has been documented as Guidelines for ERA in South Africa.