Tools for Sustainability Assessment

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mostly deal with the suitability of the decision aids. Use of tools helps in identifying options in the context of decision by identifying, specifying, and assessing relevant issues and information. However, choosing tools needs some balancing because speedy evaluation needs to be balanced against the objectives of broad participation, or the objectives of full detailed information need to be weighed against the objective of containing the costs of the assessment process. In the specific case of forest land use, the outcome of environmental values of policy decision is the quick process, but people’s attitudes and preferences toward the natural resources resulting from such a decision can be incorporated for detailed policy evaluation. In this instance, questions may be asked about the tools for determining environmental values of a decision. Some of such valuation tools are:

•economic markets,

•ecological relationships,

•expressed-preference surveys, and

•small group elicitation.

Economic market analysis is a cost-based evaluation and ecological relationship can be considered as a moral-based evaluation. However, it is difficult to separate the moral, ethical, and economic elements incorporated in the concept of environmental values. Individuals hold many values such as, scientific, cultural, esthetic, religious, recreational, economic, and other environmental values. Environmental values comprise attitudes and preferences toward all aspects of natural resources. These values are derived from direct and indirect use of natural resources (Gregory, 1998). Therefore, the analysis of value is mostly subjective, up to the requirement of the policy and the society.

The consideration of policy factors depends on the people who are engaged in the evaluation. For example, to the technical experts, policy evaluation is a profession; they will try to choose more accurate tools, thus may deal with a factor at a time. To the administrative consumer, policy evaluation is an aid to decision making thus more attention may be given to legal factors. Politicians may be interested in political and social factors, and to the ordinary people, policy evaluation can be a bureaucratic waste because they are interested on the personal economic interest level only. Serving all the groups by policy evaluation may be difficult. But there are certain models (tools of policy evaluation) which make the policy evaluation simple and acceptable to all

the groups. According to Byrd (1980), the characteristics of such tools are:

The model should be simple, robust, and easy to control. The model should not give absurd answers.

The model should be adaptive. As policy decisions are not static, policy evaluation should be adaptive to the new situations.

The model should be complete on important issues. There are issues in policy where measuring parameter is difficult. Those issues need to be accommodated within the policy analysis so that subjective consideration of those issues can be avoided.

The model should be easy to communicate. This character has relationship with the characteristics in number 1 and 2.

As a result of these need assessments in policy evaluation, a policy analyst is supposed to be guided to a new form of assessment tools which should be more simple, less sophisticated, and highly oriented to user groups. The goals of the models should be insight not the numbers. This type of modification in the policy evaluation model can be termed as “humanization” of policy evaluation.

There are different tools for evaluation of social aspects of policy. The tools are used to assess how different policy factors have been considered to meet social aspirations. There are no exhaustive lists of such tools. The following list gives some of those tools that can be used for evaluating different factors of policy. Each of the tools merits different strategies and statistical approaches for assessment of policy factors, the detailed discussion of which are beyond the scope of this book. We are mentioning some of those tools applicable for the specific evaluation of policy factors:

1.Mapping policy context: Mapping the policy context means identifying key factors that may influence the policy process. The tools are usually arranged to answer the following questions:

(a)How could a policy influence the political context?

(b)How do the policy makers perceive the problem?

(c)Would there be any political interest in changing the policy?

(d)Is there enough evidence to take specific policy prescription?

(e)Who are the key organizations and individuals with access to policy makers?

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(f)What are the agenda where external actors/donors are involved?

(g)Are there existing networks to use?

The above questions have queries on both factors and actors of policy. For answer those questions, the following tools can be used:

(a)policy driver assessment,

(b)power analysis,

(c)strengths and weaknesses analysis,

(d)opportunity analysis,

(e)threats analysis,

(f)influence mapping, and

(g)force field analysis.

2.Identifying key stakeholders: Identifying the key influential stakeholders and target audiences involves determining what are their positions and interests in relation to the policy objective. Some can be very interested and aligned and can be considered natural allies for change. Other can be interested, though not yet aligned, and can yet be brought into the fold of reformers so they do not present obstacles. The possible tools for identifying stakeholders are:

(a)alignment, interest, and influence matrix analysis,

(b)stakeholder analysis,

(c)influence mapping,

(d)social network analysis, and

(e)force field analysis.

3.Identifying desired behavioral changes: Identifying desired behavioral changes entails describing precisely the current behavior and the behavior that is needed, if the key influential stakeholders are to contribute to achieve sustainability of the desired policy. It also calls for shortand medium-term step-changes that can be monitored to ensure that the priority of policy is moving in the right direction:

(a)progress markers,

(b)opportunities and threats timeline, and

(c)policy objectives analysis.

4.Strategy development: Strategy development entails spelling out milestone changes in the policy regime. The probable tools that can be used are:

(a)force field analysis,

(b)communication analysis for strategies,

(c)analysis of advocacy campaigns,