Discovering and Nurturing the Wild Green Swans needed for the Green Deal

The five steps of Safe and Sustainable by Design (SSbD) as proposed in the EC JRC Framework involve:

1. Hazard assessment of the chemical/material
2. Human health and safety aspects in the chemical/material production and processing phase
3. Human health and environmental aspects in the final application phase
4. Environmental sustainability assessment
5. Social and economic sustainability assessmet

In the first related EC JRC case study evaluation report (Caldeira, C., Garmendia Aguirre, I., Tosches, D., Mancini, L., Abbate, E., Farcal, R., Lipsa, D., Rasmussen, K., Rauscher, H., Riego Sintes, J., Sala, S.; Application of the SSbD framework to case studies, JRC technical report, 2023) data issues were reported as being a major issue hampering assessment:

“A main challenge relates to lack of publicly available data in all steps of the assessment, as well as databases to act as repositories for this data. For example, for the safety aspects in Step 1 data used for classification purposes is Business Confidential Information, in Step 2 the manufacturing and processing are very company specific processes, or in Step 3 product/application specific and very often confidential information as well. For the life cycle assessment, detailed data regarding the production processes is required and it was not possible to obtain it from companies neither in general life cycle databases. Furthermore, data quality and uncertainty is important, and need to be addressed.”

From the above statement, it is clear to surmise that currently a realistic SSbD case study assessment can only be completed as an industrial one with close collaboration with a company and an agreement to work with available and needed confidential data. Furthermore, this challenge may be further compromised from lack of available data from the company’s suppliers as reflected in this statement from the above report:

“To successfully implement the SSbD framework it is key to develop a system enabling the communication along the supply chain of the information necessary to conduct the assessment.”

Furthermore, if we are to successfully pursue overall Green Deal goals such as a toxic-free environment or the protection and restoration of biodiversity, we will need to be able to conduct SSbD across multiple companies and industries and address cumulative impacts and their mitigation. Such goals will require frameworks on access to data and models that are currently partially or not available and involve significant scientific, legal and business challenges. To address such challenges will require significant innovation as proposed in the recent perspective article related to a current Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) SSbD feedback initiative by “Leo Posthuma, Michelle Bloor, Bruno Campos, Ksenia Groh, Annegaaike Leopold, Hans Sanderson, Hanna Schreiber, Christoph Schür and Paul Thomas, Green Swans countering chemical pollution, Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management — Volume 20, Number 3—pp. 888–893 (2024)”. The authors propose:

“Inspired by the Black Swan metaphor of Taleb (2007), the Green Swan metaphor has been coined by John Elkington — the sustainability expert who also introduced the triple bottom line of “People, Planet, Profit” — to define desirable solutions to unsustainable situations (Elkington, 2020). A Green Swan solution is characterized by an exponential transition pathway toward a final stage that is resilient and regenerative — we provide a potential example for the chemical context below, starting with a vision on the desired status of no impacts, and designing a plan to reach that. Such a solution serves social, environmental, and economic welfare alike, although Elkington recognizes that in realistic transition pathways, each welfare aspect may progress at differing temporal scales.? … Would the SSbD Green Swan remain grounded due to missing data, or could it fly by means of innovative combinations of science-based data collection and modern modeling efforts? … we are certain that the collective brain power of today’s environmental scientists can and indeed should be brought into play to generate and operationalize Green Swan ideas that can counter the adverse impacts of chemical pollution by inverting identified risks to opportunities in a sustainable economy.”

Such Green Swans will require significant innovation and collaboration as we are pursuing on projects such as RISK-HUNT3R ONTOX PrecisionTox and SSbD4CheM , and additionally mobilising major creative forces of industrial, societal and economic development and change, developing new solutions for a SaferWorldbyDesign , formulated within a multi-stakeholder model, but with a strong practical market creation and adoption approach, driven by newly formulated but effective business cases. There are many other projects and programs such as European Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC) that will benefit bidirectionally from interactions with other projects, industry, policy makers and regulators. There is also a significant contribution to be made from the interaction of fields such as #lifecycleanalysis and #sustainability assessment interacting with #riskassessment #socialsciences and #economics.

What could be key ingredients to discover and nurture these Green Swans? I make some initial suggestions here:

1. The Green Swans need to be Wild ones like the ones W.B. Yeats wrote about at Coole - this is not a case for just incremental innovation. We need also to find those scattered nine-and-fifty swans wheeling in great broken rings and bring them together.

2. We can and should align and integrate our new developments in New Approach Methods supporting Health and Risk Assessment within the SSbD framework.

3. We need iterative tiered strategies implemented in workflows across disciplines integrating in a “master workflow”.

4. We should integrate all current relevant and user knowledge resources into an open interoperable knowledge infrastructure supporting workflows, data, models and decision making tools. Current #AI methods can potentially provide valuable assistance.

5. We should collaborate intensively across projects and programs and optimise development and use of resources.

6. Industry involvement is absolutely critical for implementation success which we can test out with industry-driven case studies.

7. We should mobilise and recruit all the best science developments in support of generating needed evidence.

8. This is a long term investment needing both significant public and private investment, including considerations of new mechanisms for alignment, knowledge transfer, acceleration of returns and development of new economic models.

9. It will help to identify some young green swans that provide quick wins.

10. The Green Swans needed to be embraced and treasured by society.

When we succeed to create these Green Swans maybe we can share together W.B. Yeat’s observations on meeting his nine-and-fifty swans as we watch our creations take flight!

“But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;

Among what rushes will they build,

By what lake's edge or pool

Delight men's eyes when I awake some day

To find they have flown away?”