International audit committee coming to PBL

Between 12 and 16 November 2012, PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency will receive an international audit committee of scientists, led by Ms Lea Kauppi, Director General of SYKE, the Finnish Environment Institute. The committee is to judge the quality of PBL products and services, and to possibly make recommendations regarding the way PBL carries out its function of intermediary between policy and research. The audit is being held at the request of the PBL Advisory Committee, which oversees the quality of the work and working methods of PBL as well as the societal relevance of its publications.

The audit committee is expected to interview especially researchers and policymakers, including the Secretary General of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment, the ministry under which PBL operates, as well as several Directors General of ministerial departments for which PBL works, such as at the Ministries of Infrastructure and the Environment, Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation, and Foreign Affairs. In addition, interviews are planned with representatives of the two other Dutch assessment agencies, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis and the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP), and with directors of research institutes with which PBL collaborates.

PBL’s general management and staff members of course also will be interviewed, as well as the members of the PBL Advisory Committee. The audit committee’s final report is expected to be published in February of 2013, together with the response from the PBL Advisory Committee and PBL general management.

In preparation for the international audit, PBL conducted a self-evaluation, the results from which have been laid down in the ‘PBL Self-evaluation Report May 2008 – May 2012’. This report will serve as input for the audit committee.

The international audit committee consists of the following members:

Ms Lea Kauppi (chair), Director General of the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) & Associate Professor of Limnology and Land Use Impacts, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Mr Leen Hordijk, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Systems Analysis, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands & Principal Advisor & Head of Modelling Taskforce, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium
Ms Judith Innes, Professor Emerita of City & Regional Planning, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States
Ms Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, United States
Mr Pushpam Kumar, Chief of the Ecosystem Services Economics Unit, United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya & Reader in Environmental Economics, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom
Mr Wolfgang Lutz, Professor of Applied Statistics, WU - Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna & Leader of the World Population Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria
Mr Richard Moss, Senior Staff Scientist with the PNNL Joint Global Change Research Institute at the University of Maryland & Visiting Senior Research Scientist at Maryland’s Earth Systems Science Interdisciplinary Center, College Park, MD, United States
Mr Jeroen van den Bergh, professor at the University of Barcelona (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Spain & Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics at the VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands