AUTHORS: Samuela Bassi – Bjorn Larsen – Mike Van Acoleyen – James Spurgeon – Manuel Lago – Alistair Hunt – Wim Van Breusegem – Leonardo Mazza – Sarah Gardner – Graham Tucker – Andrew Farmer – Patrick ten Brink – Fadi Doumani

The benefit assessment manual for policy makers was developed as a guiding document for the project ‘Analysis for European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) Countries and the Russian Federation on social and economic benefits of enhanced environmental protection.

The approach outlined in the Benefit Assessment Manual developed under this project was used for specific country benefit assessments that have been conducted for each of the countries by a team consisting of an EU expert and a national expert. Originally for internal use, the Manual has been turned into a Benefit Assessment Manual for policy makers and experts for wider dissemination and provides an understanding of the methodologies applied for the country benefit assessments.

The Manual provides step by step guidance on how to carry out an environmental benefits assessment. It focuses on five broad environmental themes: Air, Water, Waste, Nature and the cross-cutting theme of Climate Change. To standardise the assessments, the five themes were further divided into sub-themes and ‘parameters’. A methodology for the assessment of each single parameter is provided, identifying the data needs, the type of benefits to be investigated (health, economic and social benefits) and the extent of the analysis (qualitative, quantitative or monetary).