|
OneStop | Directories | Search U of M |
 |
||
Research Themes: (A) Evaluating effectiveness of regulation using retrospective analysisThe goal in ERA of exotic species and new genotypes is to allow introductions that benefit society and pose little or no risk of environmental or economic harm, and to exclude introductions posing high risk. Yet policy and regulation vary considerably across groups of species and genotypes and among countries. Although some international treaties are beginning to standardize approaches, most notably the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (for GEOs), and the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement, the US oversight system remains a patchwork of approaches. Exotic species ERA is often based on qualitative expert opinion. ERAs are not even conducted for horticultural plants, aquarium trade, and pets. GEO ERA relies on case-specific assessments, whereas biological control ERA considers only qualitative interpretation of host range assessments. Characteristics that effective policies have in common can be used to evaluate policies and regulation for ERA. These characteristics include clarity of intent, validity of inferences of cause and effect, and adequacy of resources to implement the policy and ensure compliance. Students will have the opportunity to advance understanding of these characteristics and others that lead to effective ERA regulation and policy formation. They may ask: how have prior policy design and implementation contributed to improvement in ERA across sectors? Have the regulatory systems strengthened decision-making? Have they been effective in excluding invasives? To what extent did they allow introductions that later became invasive? We propose retrospective analyses to assess, for cases of past introductions with a well-documented history of spread, whether the application of contemporary regulations would have correctly excluded harmful organisms and allowed benign organisms. Are there policies and regulations that would be more effective than contemporary ones (Table 1)? Are such policies and regulations practical and acceptable? Did science succeed in informing the cause-effect linkages in the policy? Did regulatory systems discriminate among taxa that were invasive at the time of introduction and those that later became invasive? Should different taxa be regulated differently or can policies and regulations be unified? An interdisciplinary team of IGERT faculty and students will apply the relevant regulations to diverse, well-documented cases of deliberate and accidental introductions over the last century or longer. The breadth of our expertise allows us to compare different organismal groups, pathways of deliberate and accidental introduction, and to conduct economic analysis of alternative policies.  The analyses must include cases that exemplify the toughest challenges to decision- making. For instance, following some introductions, long lag times preceded population explosions and consequent harm, as in the cases of the Brazilian pepper tree in Florida, mitten crabs in England, purple loosestrife in N. America, and a wood-boring terrestrial isopod in California. In some cases, the boom was followed by a steep decline of the invader. For instance, recent evidence in Lake Victoria suggests that the Nile perch, implicated in the demise of numerous endemic fish species, is now declining, while certain native species are partially recovering.
|
||
ISG IGERT
·
College of Food, Agricultural and
Natural Resource Sciences |