ABSTRACT
Environmental assessments have evolved from individual literature review papers, through single organization assessments, to structured and regular representative assessments. Assessments are very diverse. On forests, the Global Forest Resource Assessment of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) uses completed questionnaires from member countries and expert consultations and feeds into the ongoing FAO work. The more structured, formalized, regular assessments assess the available global knowledge, structure the information into usable knowledge, point to knowledge conflicts and gaps, and prepare simple summaries for policymakers. Environmental assessments are produced by joint expert participation and analysis of the existing issue-specific science with policy implications. It may include collation and analysis of data and responses to specific questions. It can, but mostly does not, include original research. However, it triggers original research subsequently published in journals and referred to in the assessments.
