Public Environmental Expenditure Reviews (PEER) are playing a major role in providing feedback to governments and other stakeholders on the status of environment and natural resources related spend and initiatives undertaken in a country. Mainstreaming of environment is taking place at a rapid speed across the world and PEER studies are increasingly finding a rightful place as a monitoring or reform tool for broad environment and development objectives. This paper advocates the value of undertaking preliminary analysis and scoping as a prerequisite for a detailed PEER based on the observations of the authors who recentlycollaborated in carrying out a scoping study in Botswana.