Lecture series in Ecology and Environmental Research WS 2011/12

Ex-ante impact assessment for policy making in land use and agriculture

The policy making community articulates an emerging demand for scientific support to the decision making process. Providing this evidence in a useful and timely manner is an emerging challenge for researchers. Ex-ante impact assessment provides the legal basis to fuel scientific evidence into the policy process. For researchers, impact assessment is a means to structure the analysis of human-environment interactions. For policy makers, impact assessment is a means to better target policy decisions towards sustainable development. The integration of both requires a mutual understanding of the respective objectives and operational restrictions within the scientific and policy-making domains.

This presentation gives insight into the jurisdictional process of policy impact assessment and how research based methods and tools can best feed into. An analytical framework and application examples for land use impact assessment is described that makes use of the concept of landscape multifunctionality. Regarding the success of scientific support to policy impact assessment, three aspects are outlined: the co-design of the assessment study between policy makers and researchers; the integration of quantitative analysis with participatory valuation methods; and the robustness and transparency of the analytical methods.

Eingeladen durch John Tenhunen

• Announcement (pdf)