holistic approach is another process, which enables to understand the interaction between the policy and the social cultural, political, and economic environment (Marsden and Peter, 1990). Although some progress has been made on these processes at smaller scale evaluation, the evaluation of policy perspective has not yet been integrated fully into the monitoring and evaluation system. While there is a belief that NGOs can contribute to a greater extent to the holistic approaches and qualitative analysis of policy (Marsden and Peter, 1990), the approaches so far have made little impact on the governments of developing countries (Valadez and Bamberger, 1997). For these various reasons, the methodological system for policy evaluation has not been systematized and developed as a conventional analysis method.

6.21 ANTHROPOGENIC EVALUATION

Anthropogenic influence is considered as one of the real problems of sustainable management; therefore, systematic assessment of it is important for policy evaluation. Anthropogenic influence on the forest resource system can be based on the population (determines the size of consumption/influence), affluence/income (determines the level of consumption/influence), and technology (determines the rate of consumption/influence). On the basis of these influences, efforts have been made by population biologists, ecologists, and environmental scientists (Holdren and Ehrlich, 1974) to establish the relationship between human welfare (income) and environmental impact and put forward the proposition of the well-known IPAT model. The model postulates that environmental impact (I) is the product of population (P), per capita affluence (A), and technology (T). This model discusses the principal factors of anthropocentric influences, known as “driving forces” of environmental change (Ehrlich and Ehrlich, 1990; Ehrlich and Holdren, 1971; Holdren and Ehrlich, 1974). The model assumes that:

1.Population is usually considered as the key driving force along with its economic activity, technology, political and economic institutions, and attitudes and beliefs (Dietz and Rosa, 1994; Mather and Needle, 2000).

2.A number of adjustments to the population are possible, such as level of education, gender, skill, and those treatments can be used as the orientation perspective of the evaluation discussion.

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3.Little effort has been made to discipline the model since its inception two decades ago (Dietz and Rosa, 1994).

In particular, social scientists and geographers generally have ignored the model while biologists, ecologists, and other environmental scientists generally considered that the proposition is almost true, therefore, have not been motivated to test it rigorously. It can also be argued that the IPAT model can be taken as a plausible means for bridging the difference between social and biological sciences on the historical and contemporary problem of environmental sustainability. Thus, the ultimate aim is to generate more disciplined study but less debate on policy evaluation which is not necessarily grounded on empirical research.

Much of the debate about population, affluence, and technology on the environment can be structured by the IPAT model and it can be widely adopted in environmental evaluation of policy but the model has also some plausible limitations. The main among these is that it does not provide an adequate framework for disengaging the various driving forces of anthropogenic environmental changes. As a consequence, the IPAT model guides the effort of evaluation toward a cumulative theory of empirical findings (findings are combined effect of all the factors). If it is possible to sketch alternative ways of conceptualizing the driving forces of the anthropogenic changes, and to look at some additional forces other than population, income, and technology, it may be possible to propose a reliable change in the model rendering it more amenable to empirical separation (so that a single factor can be emphasized in the prediction of environmental sustainability). In practice, evaluation like participant evaluation, sector growth evaluation, and impact evaluation may be the component of the IPAT model.

6.22 INFLUENCE OF OTHER POLICIES

From the views discussed in the above paragraphs and according to much of the literature (Thiele and Wiebelt, 1993b), the causes of resource degradation can be correlated with a bunch of policies rather than a single policy. Thiele and Wiebelt (1993b) considered the theoretical framework for quantitative estimation of likely consequences of policies to reduce resource degradation. The evaluation of resource use

thus needs to be approached in a holistic view. Two approaches can be suggested:

1.Bringing the policies, which are causal of resource degradation under a comprehensive macroeconomic model, maximizing the economic benefit, in favor of which Bôjo et al. (1990), Bolton (1989), and Devaranjan (1990) discussed in their works.

2.Looking at the bunch of policies under a modular environmental approach, maximizing the environmental benefit.

In practice, the main target of the policies is either the national fiscal management or the environmental management. But an optimum incorporation of both the issues within a policy is important for sustainability. However, this is a special case to look at influence of a bunch of policies, thus accommodation of such optimization is not important for the purpose of this book. Nevertheless, the proposition of assessing the influence of other policies leads us to evaluate the linkage of policies.