December 2015: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a guide for policy makers for selecting and implementing appropriate environmental assessment frameworks. The brochure, titled ‘An Introduction to Environmental Assessment,’ gives an overview of available frameworks, including those most commonly used by UNEP, provides guidance on selecting appropriate frameworks, introduces common terms and concepts and provides illustrative examples.

The brochure lays out the most common objectives and motivations for conducting environmental assessments, and suggests key questions to consider in planning and assessment, including scale, targeted ecosystems, objective, time frame, legislative or regulatory requirements, target audience, and policies or decisions to be informed by the assessment.

The subsequent section describes the typical elements of process and design of global assessments aiming to inform decision making under multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), followed by a set of fact sheets describing the following assessment frameworks: Integrated Environmental Assessment; Ecosystem Assessment; Risk Assessment; Vulnerability Assessment; Post-crisis Environmental Assessment; Environmental Valuation; Thematic Assessments; Environmental Impact Assessment; and Strategic Environmental Assessment. [Publication: An Introduction to Environmental Assessment]