Example minimum goal statement for freshwater pesticide loads

For exam­ple, a key chal­lenge may be that water pol­lu­tion by pes­ti­cides is caus­ing declines in endan­gered amphib­ian pop­u­la­tions and dri­ving high drink­ing water treat­ment costs. Pre­vi­ous research may have iden­ti­fied a pes­ti­cide con­t­a­m­i­na­tion thresh­old below which the tar­get amphib­ian species are no longer affect­ed (say that thresh­old is 25 ppt of pes­ti­cides). Sep­a­rate­ly, water treat­ment costs usu­al­ly fol­low a step func­tion, where treat­ment costs do not decline lin­ear­ly with con­t­a­m­i­nant con­cen­tra­tions, but rather are dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduced below a con­cen­tra­tion thresh­old (say the treat­ment cost thresh­old is 50 ppt). A min­i­mum goal state­ment for this key chal­lenge could be to reduce pes­ti­cide con­cen­tra­tions to 25ppt or below in key amphib­ian breed­ing areas and to 50ppt at drink­ing water with­draw­al points. This min­i­mum goal state­ment indi­cates that strate­gies that do not low­er pes­ti­cide con­cen­tra­tions to at least these lev­els in these loca­tions will not cre­ate sus­tain­able sys­temic changes in the key chal­lenge. Strat­e­gy map­ping may reveal that some strate­gies will reduce pes­ti­cide con­cen­tra­tions even fur­ther, infor­ma­tion that will inform the cre­ation of the final objec­tive state­ment in lat­er steps. But any strat­e­gy that is not pro­ject­ed to at least achieve the min­i­mum goal(s) will be deemed insufficient.