Introduction

Abstract

Agriculture and rural areas face rapid changes in response to agreements to liberalize international trade, the introduction of novel agro-technologies, and climate change. Food production also faces new perspectives as a consequence of competition between food, feed and fuel. Efficient agricultural and environmental policies are needed to support a sustainable development of agriculture in Europe and elsewhere. Increasingly proposed policies go through an assessment procedure before decision making. The European Commission, for instance, has introduced mandatory Impact Assessment regulations since 2003, that aim to reveal strengths and weaknesses of policy proposals. The research community aims at developing relevant tools that can provide better information for performing such impact assessments. Integrated assessment and modelling has been proposed as a key approach to enhance management of complex systems and provide objective information on policy options for the decision makers. Integrated assessment and modelling (IAM) combines the assessment of biophysical, economic, social aspects of a system using computerized tools and aims at involving stakeholders in the assessment. By using models relatively cheap experimentation and quantification of different policy alternatives is possible. Results from IAM complement other sources of information in the participatory Impact Assessment process, which, for instance in the European Union, may take ∼2 years. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.