Our mission
Core of our international work is to assist environment and sector ministries, environmental assessment professionals and non-governmental organisations to achieve better environmental assessment practice. By so doing, the NCEA aims to contribute to sustainable development. This should result in a better environment, better governance and less poverty in the countries with which we cooperate.
We are independent and transparent. We are not accountable in content to a governmental body or other funders. Our advisory reports are published on our website and are freely accessible.

Who we are
The Netherlands Commission for Environmental Assessment (NCEA) is an independent expert body that provides advisory services and capacity development on environmental assessment.
In the Netherlands the Commission has a legal status to act as an independent advisor since 1987, issuing non binding advice to government agencies responsible for environmental assessments.

In international cooperation, the work of NCEA consists of

advice on Terms of Reference for and reviews of environmental assessments of plans, programmes and projects.
capacity development of systems and institutions to improve the environmental assessment practice
knowledge and learning resources on environmental assessment

The international department operates under an agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This started in 1993, with a special focus on countries eligible for Dutch International Cooperation.

The NCEA’s secretariat is based in Utrecht and currently consists of approximately 10 staff members for international cooperation (of 60 in total). For advisory services, tailor made working groups of experts are installed, for the composition of which the secretariat can lean on a pool of several hundreds of experts.