All potential areas of social and environmental impact are being addressed by EU research, claims report
The European Commission has published a report assessing the social and environmental aspects of European research. Its authors concede the difficulty in monitoring such qualitative impacts, but are nonetheless confident of the fact that all major areas of potential impact are being addressed, and that a number of success stories have arisen. The EU's research programmes have devoted an increasing amount of attention to socio-economic and environmental objectives, and yet the assessment of social and environmental impacts is 'a rather unexplored 'terrain',' according to the report. The authors attribute this to the difficulty of assessing environmental and social performances with a standardised set of quantitative variables. 'Such difficulties can be explained both by the intrinsic nature of environment and, even more, social values, where quality and perception play a major role, and by the relatively recent awareness of their importance, which accounts for the so far insufficient development of an appropriate measurement framework,' states the report. The areas of social impact addressed by the report range from human rights and economic cohesion to public health and safety and security. Environmental impact areas include water quality, climate change, noise and cultural heritage. The report notes how advances in technology have led to fears of a breach in human rights. Life sciences, nanotechnologies, and advanced information technologies have all raised ethical issues. The EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) for research is addressing such questions by including a mandatory section on ethical issues in the evaluation process. Recent EU funded projects have also started to focus on these areas. Projects have also addressed issues such as the dynamics of social change in Europe, and the relationship between family structure and the labour market. Public health and safety has benefited from standards and protocols that have been established during EU funded research projects. The report states that making a direct link between the research and policy changes is problematic, 'mainly because of the absence of a systematic monitoring instrument, and the fact that communication between researchers and policy-makers takes place primarily through informal channels'. Research contributions to improving human health have however come from a variety of disciplinary areas, including the development of new information technologies, water resource management, energy and environmental sciences. A key area for assessment in terms of environmental impact is climate change. EU projects have contributed to knowledge on the phenomenon, as well as to solutions, from an array of fields. Notable is the results of the DILIGHT project - a low-cost/high-performance ductile cast iron for lightweight design of automotive components. The iron makes possible a total weight reduction of 120,000 tonnes per year, and a fuel consumption reduction of 0.6 litres per 100km. The report calls for more to be done to assess social and environmental impacts in the future, preferably through the establishment of a monitoring and evaluation framework. 'Although ambitious, such an objective is achievable, provided that the necessary resources are earmarked to this end,' the report states.