Towards biodiversity-relevant chemical risk assessment: insights from SETAC Europe 2025

A special session entitled “ Biodiversity and chemical hazard/risk assessment: regulatory frameworks, integrative approaches and research for a sustainable future ” was held at the SETAC Europe 2025 Annual Meeting. The session explored how environmental risk assessment (ERA) of chemicals can better support biodiversity protection, drawing on presentations, panel discussions and a live survey of over 100 participants. While existing prospective ERAs were recognised as providing a foundational framework for regulatory decision-making, the discussions highlighted persistent limitations in ecological realism. Key concerns included limited taxonomic coverage, insufficient consideration of indirect effects, and lack of integration of chemical mixtures and multiple stressors, alongside ongoing difficulties in translating laboratory findings into meaningful biodiversity-relevant outcomes in real-world ecosystems. Participants identified 105 barriers and proposed 95 solutions, leading to a set of strategic recommendations. Recommendations emerging from the discussions call for: (1) operationalising biodiversity protection goals into measurable endpoints aligned across policy frameworks; (2) increasing ecological realism and predictive capacity through modelling and integrative approaches; (3) embedding routine assessment of chemical mixtures and multiple stressors; (4) strengthening links between ERA and environmental monitoring (covering biota biodiversity, and chemicals), supported by findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) data infrastructures; and (5) improving governance and implementation to enable preventive and protective actions. Together, these priorities outline a pathway for advancing biodiversity-focused ERA that better reflects real-world complexity and supports sustainable chemical management.