MCC aims to improve environmental assessments

Researchers of the institute develop proposals for making global environmental assessments more effective in light of new challenges.

[Translate to EN:] Foto: Photocase/Ofelo

23.10.2014

In their capacity as experts on scientific assessment-making, researchers of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) were invited this week to the high-level “Global Intergovernmental and Multi-Stakeholder Consultation on the Sixth Global Environment Outlook“ of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). During this extensive consultation (21–23 October, Berlin), they discussed with more than one hundred governmental representatives, stakeholders and other experts from 102 countries the scope and process of the next large-scale environmental assessment to be conducted by UNEP.

The researchers from the MCC working group “Assessments and Scientific Policy Advice” provided scientific inputs based on the ongoing research project on “The Future of Global Environmental Assessment Making“ (FOGEAM). This project was initiated in 2013 jointly by MCC and UNEP in order to learn from previous global environmental assessments, such as those of the IPCC and UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook, to improve future assessments. The MCC researchers involved are Martin Kowarsch (coordinator, manager), Christian Flachsland (manager) as well as the PhD researchers Jennifer Garard and Pauline Riousset.

“A strategic revision of objectives and means for global environmental assessments is necessary,” explains Martin Kowarsch, co-head of the MCC working group. “If these assessments indeed increasingly focus on the analysis of policy options, this not only creates new opportunities but also challenges. The contents become more and more complex. Statements on potential policy paths face deep uncertainty and build on different normative assumptions. In addition, there is a lack of high-quality scientific publications providing policy analysis on which an assessment could be built upon.”

In light of these challenges, Christian Flachsland, the other co-head of the MCC working group, lists  the key questions on which this MCC research project focuses: “What kind of impact can global environmental assessments have on policy discourses? How can assessments inform policymakers about viable pathways in view of uncertainty and risks without being policy-prescriptive? Which methodological and organizational issues have to be resolved to successfully conduct such ambitious policy assessments? How can the perspectives and the knowledge of stakeholders be more effectively integrated in assessments? How to deal with disputed normative assumptions in assessments?”

Contact details and further information about the FOGEAM project are available at http://www.mcc-berlin.net/forschung/kooperationen/unep.html.