Session C-3

Title:                            Application of integrated assessment tools

Session organisers:   Marijke Kuiper (Agric. Economic Research Institute, Wageningen UR, the Netherlands) and Jacques Wery  (INRA, France)

Keynote speaker:        Jacques Wery (INRA, France)

Scope of session:  The aim of this session is to take stock of the achievements in using integrated assessment tools at regional, national, European and global level to support policy-making, focusing on agricultural and environmental policies. The key note will reflect on existing integrated assessment tools and identify the main challenges ahead (scientific as well as use in policy-making). Using several examples as illustrations the following topics will be addressed:

- The objectives and questions addressed in applications of integrated assessment tools:  are they aiming for (ex-ante) policy advice or ex-post assessment or addressing specific scientific questions ?

- The kind of methodologies used and the relationships between these: quantitative modeling (stand-alone or model-chains) versus other approaches (e.g. a more qualitative approach);

- Involvement of stakeholders in the study: which kind of stakeholders (policy-makers, producers,  consumers) and how deeply involved in the assessment (e.g. from informational meetings to participating in the assessment)?

- Major scientific challenges: what are the main challenges for an integrated assessment from a scientific point of view ? What are the major problems to overcome and what does it add compared to a mono-disciplinary assessment (e.g. different paradigms of disciplines, feed-back relations, scaling, new insights from an integrated assessment)?

- Major challenges for policy impact: how and how much do policy-makers need to be involved in order for the assessment to be used, does involvement of policy-makers affect the way in which the analysis is done ?

- Major challenges for sustainability of the methodology used: can the tools for the integrated assessment survive beyond a one-off application, is this related to the extent to which different disciplines are needed to maintain and use the methodology, what about the incentives for scientists to be involved in this kind of assessments (incentives in terms of publication/career opportunities) ?