Objectives and Aims
The specific objectives (SO) of MARCHES are:
1. To provide an updated set of exposure-response functions relevant for European conditions representing the main morbidity and mortality health outcomes associated with breathing polluted air and drinking nitrate-polluted water based on WHO recommendations and recent systematic health impact assessments (HIA) reviews of the medical and scientific literature.
2. To contribute towards a consistent framework of metrics for economic valuation of morbidity and mortality valuations, including life-years with disabilities (reflecting a quality-of-life aspect), pertinent to environmental stressors in general and to air pollution and nitrate-polluted drinking water specifically.
3. To explore further on the possible linkages and consistency between on one hand the health burdens we can quantify and quality of life indicators and on the other hand more subjective measures of psycho-social well-being and health.
4. For the purposes of socio-economic analyses and impact assessments, to provide novel and differentiated estimates of the unit prices related to air pollution (€ per kg emission) for more than 10 sectors of the economy in all EU Member States, EFTA and west Balkan countries.
5. For the purposes of socio-economic analyses and impact assessments, to pilot and demonstrate a novel methodology for impact pathway analysis with state-of-the-art process-based hydrological modeling to derive catchment-specific unit prices related to drinking water nitrates pollution from fertilizers (differentiated on chemical and organic).
6. To demonstrate with case studies in five EU Member States (Denmark, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Spain and Sweden) and one associated country (Kosovo) how unit prices of environmental stressors can be applied in socioeconomic/cost-benefit analyses of the costs of action and non-action, focusing on scenarios that are pertinent to decision-makers according to national circumstances and priorities based on the active involvement of public authorities in the individual regions/countries.