Designing Effective Assessments: The Role of Participation, Science and Governance, and Focus

Report of a workshop co-organized by the European Environment Agency and the Global Environmental Assessment Project, 1-3 March, Copenhagen, Denmark. Research and Assessment Systems for Sustainability Program Discussion Paper 2001-16

Abstract

From 1-3 March 2001, a group of 30 practitioners and scholars met in Copenhagen to discuss how environmental assessments can be conducted more effectively. The workshop, entitled "Designing Effective Assessments: The Role of Participation, Science and Governance, and Focus," was co-organized by the Global Environmental Assessment Project and the European Environment Agency, with contributions from the European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment (EFIEA). In order to explore what lessons those designing environmental assessments might learn from the experiences of others, workshop participants examined three case studies, and discussed in working groups the issues of participation (who is involved in assessment processes), science and governance (how assessments are conducted, particularly with respect to the interactions between scientific experts and policy makers), and focus (what is within, or excluded from, the assessment''s scope). This report presents and discusses in detail the discussions of the working groups and the synthesis session on the third day of the workshop, which presented reports from working groups and reactions from practitioners on the three themes. This paper was also published by the European Environment Agency as Environmental Issue Report No. 26.