Particularly, the influences of forest land use on the environment make this inevitable. However, a policy involves issues and motives for social benefits. Thus, evaluation of a resource (forest) policy significantly involves the issues of resources as well as their relationship to the ecological, environmental, and economic systems. Although the term “environmental sustainability” embraces the sustainability issues of all the contingent branches of environment, the interest of this book is to investigate how environmental sustainability can be oriented in resource policy.

4.4 CONSIDERATION OF COMPONENT PECULIARITIES

The nature and importance of system peculiarities may be different for different components of policies. The sequential arrangement of policy evaluation largely depends on the evaluation of components. At the same time, components of a policy system may have spatial variation. If a policy is evaluated without emphasizing components, then it is likely that the spatial variations would be overlooked. Spatial differentiation involves the variation in the importance of ethical values of resources depending on the socioeconomic condition of different places. The sequential variation depends on the component of the policy system. Therefore, policy evaluation needs to look at the system components and ethical components in their sequential and spatial distribution. Figure 4.1 shows the dimension of social, physical, and environmental components related to sustainability assessment of resource and environmental policy in their sequential and spatial relationships.

Figure 4.1 shows that sustainability issues can be considered under three broad definitions of environment: physical environment, geographical environment, and ecological environment. These environmental connotations are so closely interrelated that discussion on any one of them in addressing the sustainability issues of environment will touch the other two. Indeed, sustainability of one separated component is not possible; it includes all the components of a system (Fox, 1996). On the one hand, sustainability of an environmental system contributes to the resource sustainability; on the other hand, resources contribute toward the sustainability of environment. Their mutual relationship of sustainability as maintained through the interaction of their component network in space, as shown in Fig. 4.1, reveals that policy and sustainability are the bridges. If the network evaluation of components

Policy

Fig. 4.1 Considerations of policy sustainability involving resource and environmental dimension.

is found congenial, one can say that the sustainability of policy is achievable. In practice, policies are designed to correct the mismatch among network components. Although sustainability assessment of a policy admits the evaluation of all three aspects of the relationship between resource and environment as decreed through Fig. 4.1, within the limited scope of this book we will look into the social aspects only.

The status of societies and nations differs from each other in various ways. Although some societies could have some regional similarity in culture, tradition, economy, resources, and living condition, they are largely affected by geoenvironment in which they live (Ojima et al., 1994). There might be regional differences in the technological capacity and wealth that can affect the policy climate and resource use pattern. Such affects may become prominent through status of trade, negotiation, and conflicts of interest. Therefore, the elements of changes are embedded in the socioeconomic and environmental build-up of the society, prioritization of need-base preference of the people, the dynamics of which often dictate how a resource is used and will be used within a region. Thereby, evaluation of resource policy requires understanding of environmental, economic, political, demographic, and other social conditions and how their influences have been considered in the policy measures.

Policy analysis option

Fig. 4.2 Forms and factors of sustainability considerations.

Policy works in society regulating the relationship of society to the resources and the environment, whereas sustenance of resources and environment are regulated in their own space by nature and timescale. Thus, the sustainability of a policy is a balance of behavior of society to the ability of natural sustenance of resources and environment. If there are imbalances, there could be some hazard or risk. There could be many factors involved in bringing such imbalances into the limelight of evaluation. Figure 4.2 summarizes the different types of factors and the evaluation pattern required to corresponding types of assessment.

From the interaction of components in Fig. 4.1, environmental sustainability can be conceptualized as life sustainability (e.g., diversity and health) and resource sustainability (e.g., soil and water) of Fig. 4.2. Fig. 4.2 demonstrates that unsustainability in life and resources may occur due to voluntary or involuntary factors. Although one may argue that unsustainability cannot be voluntary at all, but there could be some voluntary factors produced from ignorance or personal interest. However, involuntary factors may have their origin in the past where present system has little control on any environmental catastrophe originated from the factors of the past. Under the circumstances, evaluation of policy steps in and after implementation is more

58 Sustainability Assessment

likely to bring accurate result on sustainability. As a result, an inherent component of policy is that it has to be flexible for correction from feedback analysis.

As this book focuses on sustainability assessment of policies of resource systems, the aspects of evaluation will remain limited to within few options. If the factors of unsustainability are voluntary, e.g., for some reasons of personal gain of ruling authorities, policy makers can do little, because it is not the fault of policy itself. Most often, particularly in developing countries, policy makers cannot avoid voluntary factors due to pressure created by people in power. Thus, most policies consider involuntary factors to prescribe a minimum corrective action such as learning from the historic factors, cultural reasons, or probability analysis for undetected factor, e.g., increase of demand. Often policy skill of presenting involuntary factors may create pressure for controlling voluntary factors. Thus, the evaluation of a policy targets certain operational processes to display the interplay of voluntary and involuntary factors in sustainability. Chapter 5 delineates some of the operational processes of resource policy (e.g., forest land use) as a research target for policy evaluation.