A New Gaze for Impact Assessment Practices in the European Union

Current approaches to the economic evaluations of environmental and health policies may suffer from excessive reliance on a standard neoclassic economic toolbox that neglects alternative economic schools. This may prematurely limit the spectrum of available policy options. Here we show how the inclusion of neglected currents of thought such as non-Ricardian economics, feminist-economics, bioeconomics and a set of qualitative-quantitative methods from post-normal science leads to richer perspectives for a more inclusive uses of quantitative evidence, and opens the analysis to more possible futures. We also present some case studies in the energy, water, health and climate domains that hammer the point in a practical context for a more policy-oriented audience. We situate our analysis in the context of recent calls in the EU for the inclusion of more perspectives from the social sciences and the humanities in environmental assessment works.