172 Sustainability Assessment

policy intervention. Time-series analysis provides useful information particularly about delayed effects. Policy evaluation is also concerned with the government functions/actions/condition under which they should be taken as implemented. Condition for their efficiency, the implementation ability, and the possible establishment of structure will also facilitate the proper choice and implementation of policies. In relating to sustainability evaluation of policies the following government functions may be considered:

1.direct monetary transactions including tax and subsidies,

2.production and delivery of goods,

3.delivery of service,

4.regulation,

5.monitoring and enforcement,

6.persuasion and socialization, and

7.metapolicy.

These government functions have multiple roles and objectives subsumed within the idea of improving quality of life experienced by different communities (Daniere and Takahashi, 1997). These objectives include the provision of public goods, arbitration of community conflicts, and adoption of policies promoting social welfare. At the same time, government has an ethical obligation to respect the community and cultural values which the society represents and leads. Thus, the improvement of sustainability is facilitated by government actions particularly augmented by the policy purpose. In that case, there is no doubt that a sustainability assessment of the policy may differ for scientific, professional, political, administrative, and personal reasons depending on the purpose for which the policy has been evaluated; however, sustainability assessment for society should not differ much on an individualistic view and should overcome such difficulties.

13.3 IMPORTANCE

From the discussion above, it is understandable that a policy can be evaluated for many reasons. However, the importance of sustainability assessment of a policy has remained greater than other forms of evaluation to avoid several chronic problems of power structure. They are:

Usually the attention of people and policy makers is attracted toward economic policies than other policies that might not

economically significant but have more contribution to sustainability. So sustainability assessment distributes the attention of people and power over all policies.

Sustainable development acts as a flagship to society whereas policy making is largely driven by social crises. Sustainability assessment may assist in converting policies to prevent crises as well as to continue progress.

Policy failures lead the frequent changes in political leadership, but the root causes of these failures are associated with sus-

tainability issues that often policy proponents forget to address. Sustainability assessment may prevent such unexpected changes.

The effects of policies championed by a particular ministry are undermined by strategies employed by another ministry deliberately or otherwise. Elimination of such discrimination would be possible through revealing sustainability potentials of each of the policies and their interrelationship.

Often in developing countries, policies are formulated and compromised to secure the support of politically powerful groups at the expense of long-term public interests that are underrepresented in the political system; because, sustainability assessment put attention to hidden agenda and emphasize peoples benefit, such bias may be avoided in policy formulation.

The purposes of integration of sustainability assessment objectives with policy evaluation are the following:

To balance essential aspects of sustainable development in policy making. Different policy options may rank very differently based on differential objectives, and the integration of the objectives ensure that the selected policy action is acceptable with regard to each of the objectives.

To identify remedial strategies as a part of policy package. Based on all objectives it may not be possible to identify policy options that can produce satisfactory outcomes, but it might be feasible to provide remedial measures to overcome deficiencies in the selected policies.

To articulate trade-off among different objectives. Given the conflicts among different objectives policy makers may have to choose among tools with unavoidable trade-off. Integration of policy

174 Sustainability Assessment

objectives better inform the decision makers and the public by articulating the trade-off.

To identify innovative policies by exploring the synergies among different objectives.

Adding more objectives to policy making may not necessarily constrain policy choices. For example, adding the consideration of environmental protection may point to new policy choices which are superior to the original ones because of the synergies among different objectives. The case of sustainability also has synergic integrity, adored and supported by present society to reduce risk and to save the existence of humanity.

SUMMARY

The world is facing a host of environmental and social challenges that are affecting the sustainability of both resource and environment and threatening the existence of human. These include climate transformation, land degradation, air and water pollution, resource depletion, poverty, and hunger. Unsustainable patterns of consumption and production including inefficient use of resources act as significant contributor to these challenges. Policy-makers are increasingly urged to incorporate considerations of sustainable development in their policy decisions. Many governments have developed and implemented projects, programs, and policy measures aiming at improving the impacts of unsustainable production and consumption. However, the majority of measures have been ad hoc, resulting in outcomes that are often not only disconnected from socioenvironmental policies but also in some cases work at odds with them. The central point to these problems is perhaps lack of enough attention paid to sustainability assessment of policy before implementing them.

Sustainability assessment informs managers for taking appropriate policy decision for sustainable development. This is done through evaluating the environmental, social, and economic impacts of policies. The key innovation of sustainability assessment is the emphasis it places on integration of policy objectives with other key social components of sustainable development, such as economic development and poverty reduction. While policy evaluation is primarily concerned with ex-post analysis typically undertaken after the policy change, more attention is increasingly given to ex-ante assessments which are conducted before policy change. The strength of such ex-ante assessments is to provide policy-makers forward looking information allowing them to develop a coherent and integrated set of policy decision. Such ex-ante assessment is important for strategic planning and sustainable policy implementation. The development of sustainability assessment recognizes that pursuing sustainable resource and environmental initiatives without careful considerations to ex-ante development imperatives run the risk of alienating policy agenda from the mainstream decision-makers.

176 Summary

Ex-ante assessment of resource policies is very important for environmental sustainability. Conservative resource use, controlling human attitudes toward resource usage, and positive participation of stakeholders guarantee sustainability. Policies though attempt to formulate allocation and access to resources, they cannot assure sustainability due to dynamic changing of anthropocentric interest and demand. Resources usually claim more than generation time to complete a cycle. Policy actions of today reflect the consequences on resources after a generation when corrections become impossible. Therefore, sustainability assessment, particularly relating the resource and environmental policies is important before implementation as well as on continuous basis along with implementation. Accordingly, incorporation of dynamism in policy actions is also very important to avoid future problems. This study discusses about the elements, factors, and considerations required to maintain dynamism through evaluation of policies and implementing instruments for sustainability. The integration of policies with resource, society, administration, politics, formulation, stakeholders, and players are so vast that dealing with all the aspects have not been possible in a single text. However, a comprehensive overview has been reflected in this publication.

The anthropocentric transformation of resource and environment is in essence of crises of policy implementation. Often very good policies end up in exhaustion of resources and degradation of environment due to nonevaluative undertakings in implementation and perhaps lack of undertaking the dynamics of social system into policy consideration. This study emphasizes on themes that are crucial for analytical problem and also of the integrated understanding of sustainability embedded in policy activity and social domains. Initially, the discussion is focused on the dynamics of policy process, formation, and implementation with their progression of social modernization in general. Influences and imperatives of global trends, trade, treaties, market, and economy on policy processes are also drawn for a wider validity of social modernization. Gradually, the discussion has been developed on elements and factors need to be considered for evaluation of performance of policy implementation for sustainability assessment. This document also explains the coverage, cognition, and criteria of classification to reflect on calculating the indicators associated with resource

Summary 177

and environmental policies. They elaborate on the meaning and interpretation of the concept of social and sustainable situation. It is expected that the elaboration introduced in this text would be useful for introducing a new approach for better understating of policy impacts on sustainability.