The European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment

Integrated Environmental Assessment (IEA) can be loosely defined as policy-relevant, multidisciplinary research on environmental issues. Many, diverse activities in this broad field are ongoing, but the approaches lack the structure, standardization and quality control common in disciplinary research. IEA has three stages: “structuring the problem”, “analyzing the problem” and “communicating the findings and insights”. Each stage has its inherent difficulties, not least because problem definition and analysis are neither separable nor unambiguous nor unique. Difficulties are exacerbated in the first and third stages by the necessity for science and policy to work together. Difficulties are exacerbated in the second stage by the necessity of different scientific disciplines to cooperate. The European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment is an initiative to improve scientific quality and policy-relevance of IEA, by organizing two series of workshops, one looking in detail at current and desired scientific practices, the other reviewing current and establishing further applications of IEA to environmental issues in Europe.