Discussion and Recommendation

is important for policy evaluation. The monitoring function is shown as the antenna. The diagram also signifies that people are more close to the policy process than the monitoring process. Development as a social process and degradation as an environmental process are represented by the wings, the strength of which will show the sustainability (analogous to flight capability) of a policy. Also they signify that a pair of balanced wings may give optimum result, as is the case in flight better than that of unbalanced stronger wings. Thus, for sustainability, a balanced consideration of both the processes should be involved in the policy process. Both of them are associated with the factors, some are closer to government functions and some of which are closer to peoples’ function. The flying mode of butterfly indicates the dynamic nature of policy. Therefore, certain specific criteria may need to be expressed before evaluating the balancing actions of a policy for sustainability.

13.2 RECOMMENDATION

From the discussion, it reveals that assessment of sustainability of resource and environmental policy may be possible in one of the four ways:

1.analyzing the existing situation and future speculation,

2.comparing past to the present after implementation of the policy,

3.comparing among the countries with similar policy, and

4.comparing with a standard situation.

An evaluation on the basis of a single way may not be enough for serving the purposes of assessment of sustainability as outlined in the introduction, particularly for resource policies having long-term effects and impacts which are not easily reversible. Therefore, more than one way of policy evaluation needs to be considered for analyzing the sustainability in relation to resource, environment, and society. Application of different ways of policy evaluation techniques can be successful if conglomerated for an objective evaluation of resource policy for making a clear understanding of relationship between resource environment and sustainability is possible. The relationship between the environment and the resources can be grouped into following four classes:

1.primary source of raw materials,

2.space for waste accumulation and storage,

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3.assimilation and regeneration capability for chemically or biologically active wastes, and

4.determinant of environmental quality.

When resource is related to land use, all the four classes of correlates stated above directly relate the resource and the environment and hence it is expected that the evaluation of resource policy should be based on the weights of all types of correlates. In each class of correlates, there may be several factors involved, some of which may be common in all classes of correlates, as long as land use based resource is concerned. As the environmental phenomena of land use involve social processes, a policy is expected to deal with factors that remain active over a certain period of time.

The factors may work independently or interactively or both in the complex of socioenvironmental phenomena. Assessing a consequential evaluation of those interactive factors is quite complex without knowing all the involved factors, their scale and the direction of effects on the environment. However, examples of influences and the cohesive action of such factors that occurred in one society may help to provide a clarification of happenings in another society that may occur due to a similar complexes of factors. Within the same society, the happenings in present socioenvironmental complexes of land use may be explained with the happenings of the past. Depending on such themes, evaluation of land use based resource policy is possible, which may be used as a common directive for planning future actions of sustainable management.

To integrate the discourse of the above theme (temporal) into policy evaluation, the process of story lines followed by some authors (Hajer, 1995) may be pursued for explaining environmental issues, which eventually lead into the history. Such histories bring the past sociopolitical issues producing story lines of environment and ecology. Essentially the observation of Harvey (1993) emphasized that:

Ecological arguments are never socially neutral any more than socio-political arguments are ecologically neutral.

Therefore, a chain of explanation can be given to justify how changes in the environmental phenomena and peoples attitude have happened. Following the examples given by Bryant (1998), resource and environmental degradation can be explained in the way shown in Fig. 13.2.

Fig. 13.2 Chain of evaluation for environmental planning and sustainability of forest resource. Adapted from Bryant (1998).

The explanation starts from the physical changes in the resource (Box A) and their associated economic symptoms (Box B). Linking those to specific land use practices (Box C) as well as individual and collective decision-making processes (Boxes D and E), logical build up on wider contextual forces of state policy (Box F), and globalization process (Boxes G and H) may be possible. At each point of the chain of explanation, the ambiguities and complexities associated with understanding and then linking socioenvironmental, political, and economic processes can be emphasized. Thus, addressing environmental sustainability in a policy is a multidimensional task that can potentially induce confusion among the scientists and the policy makers.

In the above discussion, the containment, requirement, and methods of policy evaluation have been presented in a broad spectrum. Often the relevant salient points of those evaluation prospects can be covered in the study of sustainability assessment to avoid complexity and volume of evaluation works. The following steps can be followed for the limited scope of evaluation:

1.Discussing the resource relevant tradition, culture, cohesion, integration, and dissociation of the society.

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2.Discussing the present concept, utilization, stocking, state, and distribution of resource.

3.Comparing the past state of a resource to present state outlining policy approaches.

4.Evaluating in the light of examples from the policy approaches of other countries.

5.Evaluating the role of global organization, convention, negotiation.

6.Evaluating peoples response and participation.

7.Evaluating the role of present socioeconomic situation and speculating on the future of sustainability.

8.Discussing the actor influences.

9.Assessing the adequacy of legal and social systems.

Both quantitative and qualitative assessments can be used, wherever their applicability is possible. Validated secondary data, mainly compiled by UN organizations and the statistical bureau of related countries can also be used for quantitative assessment; because, it is often difficult to collect nation-wide information within the limit of the cost and planning. Also for historical information, reliance can be placed on secondary evidences. For qualitative information, evidences of secondary sources can be referred accommodating the practical and social experiences of the researcher as part of the society.

The factors and processes presented in this book show that consideration of all the elements of policy climate in a single policy sustainability assessment is difficult and very complex. Most sustainability assessment considers a few elements relevant to the purpose of policy evaluation. Unlike our proposition in the introduction section, MacRae (1980) has treated policy evaluation as the way to choose the best policy from among a set of alternatives with the aid of reasons and evidences. A consideration of the following elements may identify a best policy from the set of policies:

•importance of problems,

•criteria for choice,

•alternative models and decisions,

•political feasibility.

These are sequences that can be adopted when sustainability paradigm is not in its full force. However, the evaluation of policies still considers the social and economical elements described in earlier