3.1: Integrated Environmental Assessment

To develop, publish and communicate a cutting-edge report in 2010 on the state and outlook for the environment of Europe and establish a long-term strategy with our networks and partners to coordinate future global, regional, thematic and sectoral assessments and reports.

Other Information:

Analysis - The EEA is mandated 'to publish a report on the state of, trends in and the prospects for the environment every five years, supplemented byindicator reports focusing upon specific issues' (Article 2 of EEA Establishing Regulation). The next state and outlook of the environment report is due in 2010. The EEA 5-year flagship reports provide a strategic stocktaking and forward-looking assessment of environmental issues within the context of sustainability in the EU Member States, candidate and potential candidate countries. The reports contribute to strategic environment-related policy‑making at the European level, the evaluation of EU environmental action programmes and strategies and to future agenda setting. The SOER 2010 will be well placed to contribute to the evaluation of the 6th Environment Action Programme and the relevant parts of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy to provide a perspective on any subsequent programme through its forward look trends and projections and at emerging issues. Recognising the wide interest in the SOER 2010, differentiated products and multimedia will be designed to suit the different audiences, including assessments on thematic issues and at country levels. A new improved perspective on assessments will be put in place at the beginning of the new strategy to enable the EEA to deliver on its main five-year reporting mandate and respond to these multiple requests coherently, effectively and efficiently. Action - We will achieve our objective by: • coordinating inputs from across the thematic activities, SEIS and the core sets of indicators in Europe (including those managed by Eurostat) to produce a thematic indicator-based integrated environmental assessment of the environmental trends and outlooks in Europe; • running a country-focused process for developing country analyses and a scorecard and on this basis develop a learning-oriented comparative assessment of country level state of action, situations and responses; • improving communication and dissemination of the assessment via multi-media, user-friendly, multilingual information; • producing a forward-looking cross-cutting integrated assessment of environmental issues which will look at how, in a sustainability perspective, the interaction between environmental issues and European and global socio-economic developments may develop under different plausible scenarios and how they could impact on Europe, its neighbours and other parts of the world; • developing a long-term strategy for integrated environmental assessments in the region covering the ongoing 5-year reporting cycle and other regional, global and issue orientated assessment needs.

Indicator(s):

Indicator:1

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