growth, economic change, social change, political and legal perspectives, administrative reform, constitutional reform, urban planning, evolution of policy planning, contemporary planning systems, hierarchy and functions of plans, national and regional coordination, public participation, public rights to dispute, NGO involvement, and fiscal policy. Evaluation of some of these factors can be considered for sustainability assessment with other policy criteria as well. A few of the factors such as citizen’s rights and urban planning may not be specifically meant for resource policy but have strong linkages with resource bases such as policies on land use. However, there are factors within the suggested list, such as contexts of administration, evolution of policy planning and hierarchy, which are important for sustainability assessment of policies.

6.14 EVALUATION OF IMPLEMENTATION

In addition to the context of a policy frameworks and scope, Mather (1986) has pointed out that certain other criteria should also be included for a sound resource policy; those are:

1.priority setting—e.g., economic (affected by land ownership pattern), social (employment or environmental),

2.education,

3.cultural factors, and

4.per capita income or expenses.

These criteria are notable for planning in agricultural and forest resource sectors. Particularly, the issues of priority setting are very

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important in the cases of developing countries because often the priorities set in writing are not reflected in implementation. The other factors like education, culture, and income are ancillary to priority setting. These are important criteria for successful policy implementation as well. Thereby, the total sustainability of policy is much dependent on those secondary social elements.

6.15 INSTRUMENT EVALUATION

Application of appropriate policy instruments largely determines the policy success. That is why environmental economists, Pearce (1990) and Repetto (1988), suggested policy intervention and financial compensation to prevent the rain forest destruction. Muzondo et al. (1990) and Nunnenkamp (1992) discussed alternative policies and a financial compensation scheme for that purpose. Binswanger (1989) and Mahar (1989b) have quantified some of the direct instrument effects (such as land tax and subsidy) on the rain forests, particularly rain forests of the Amazon, in a particular framework. Application of some of these instruments was in vogue in the resource policies of forest land use. Thus, it is important to consider the suitability of instruments used for policy implementation.

6.16 STRUCTURAL EVALUATION

The effectiveness of application of policy instruments largely depends on the structure of administration for policy implementation. Khuraibet (1990) suggested that decision-making in policy formulation could be evaluated by answering the questions:

1.Who has the power in the society to make a decision?

2.How are decisions taken?

Usually decision-making models explain how government makes decisions with regard to planning environmental or economic concerns. The theme of the models is the selection of one from many alternatives. Within a government such decisions can be taken in two ways:

1.rational actor model, and

2.organizational process model.

In the first one, government acts as a unitary body and investigates the alternatives of policy suggestions and selects the most rational alternative. In the organizational process model, government asks all its departments or ministries about a particular problem and ultimately a decision is taken with the support of the majority of organizations. But in the political bargaining, a different approach can be taken in decision-making. Instead of specialized bodies, in political bargaining the decisions are taken by players within the government who have the ability and credibility to persuade government to take certain decisions on the subjects under debate. Thus, the nature of policy depends on the structural components of a policy.

6.17 CAUSE EVALUATION

The causes of resource use criteria and environmental degradation depend on factors like ownership and policy purpose. The criteria, factors, instruments, and mode of policy implementation vary from nation to nation and from time to time. Conversely, the outcome of the same policy may be different in a different space at a different time. Using the Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, Thiele and Wiebelt (1993a) extended a forestry submodel along the line of Dee (1991), which may allow examination of conventional forest policy instruments, e.g., resource taxes, to secure criteria like property rights, selective logging regimes, and the setting up of national parks. Criteria that the model captures from the implication of environmental and economic policy instruments for resource use patterns seem to be important because the question of whether the resources should be harvested or left as protected or cleared entirely for production of other resources is primarily a question of resource use pattern. If the common guideline for sustainability can be incorporated within the policy, then a selection of alternatives can be targeted on the basis of economic criteria only.

6.18 COST EVALUATION

Policy decisions can be evaluated by IRR or cost benefit efficiency (Khuraibet, 1990). But they require some economic valuation of the decision. Under the United Nations approach, it is considered that issues of basic human rights, such as drinking water, primary health, and basic education, do not require economic justification. The

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situation of environmental sustainability is also not always measurable in economic terms. An environmentally sound policy promotes indigenous capacity and peoples’ participation in the policy process and awakens consciousness. There is no standard way for measuring these variables. Beneficiary assessment on the decision may be one technique of policy evaluation but such evaluation is often targeted to lower income group, whereas there is a possibility that the lions’ share of the benefits of resource policy accrue to the dominant groups. However, if costs are considered as a calibrator of the scale of forestry operation, environmental status may be understandable by comparing the cost of investments at different time. If the costs are known, the cost calibration can also be used for the evaluation of past policies.

6.19 IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Environmental impact assessment may be another process of policy evaluation for the environment. The impact evaluation may be possible by counting the opinions of the affected people or participants, thus the impact assessment of the policy has been termed as social evaluation of policy (Valadez and Bamberger, 1997) and is widely used by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for program analysis. Such evaluation is convenient to conduct before the implementation of the policy looking at how different groups within the society will be affected by a single or a few decision of policy; however, a policy may have many decisions and policy level impacts may affect a whole nation. Under the circumstances, it will be difficult to assess the policy impact based on the opinion survey at national level. Further, application of this process is also not possible for assessing the policies of the distant past after which many incidents must have happened or the participants are absent from the society.

6.20 QUANTITATIVE APPROACH

Considerable progress has been made on the qualitative approach of policy evaluation but long-standing disputes between the advocates of qualitative approaches and quantitative approaches have not been resolved. However, quantification as a rapid assessment processes is now getting priority for its cost-effectiveness and it is most responsive to the sociocultural environment (Kumar, 1993). For example, rapid rural appraisal has drawn the interest of many project proponents. The