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6.5.1 Understanding policy effects and policy effectiveness Module

Included in the policy instrument scan as described in this module is an analysis of policy effectiveness. 5
Before talking about policy effectiveness, we define what is meant by policy effects.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) notes that the effects of policy responses imply causality
between policy and driver, pressure, state or impact. The intended and unintended effects can be
determined based on scientific and social observation and analysis. Such an analysis as described by the
EEA should be judgment free. Abu Dhabi, UAE

Determining the effect of an individual policy on a driver, pressure or an environmental state can
be challenging because of the complexity of the causal chain of drivers and pressures for a range of
environmental, social and economic issues. It is often easier and more accurate to attribute the change
in a driver, pressure or an environmental state to a mix of policies, given that attribution is so difficult to

establish for a single policy (refer to Figure 26a).

That being said, analysing the effect of an individual policy or a small set of policies on a specific issue is
not impossible. Figure 26b shows the effect of several policies on the area of our previous case study
Tubli Bay, whereas Figure 26c shows the effect of several ground water legislation and enforcement in

Bahrain on the ground water abstraction and groundwater salinity. Tracking those policies and actions
with the actual change in the area of the bay in the first case study and with salinity of groundwater in
the second one indicated that those policies have no effect on the two problems.

Different from policy effect, the EEA describes policy effectiveness as going beyond analysing effects,
and judges how the actual effect measures up to the policy objective. This is a performance assessment
of the policy.

In order to carry out an analysis of policy effectiveness it is necessary to identify performance criteria.

In an ideal case, performance criteria and the requirement for a performance assessment are built into
policies, and the criteria are easily associated with routinely monitored indicators and cited targets. If
this is the case, assessment is relatively straightforward, assuming that both the indicators and criteria
appropriately represent the effects of the particular policy.

Often, policies are designed either without clearly defined and specific performance criteria, or with
criteria that are not necessarily related to environmental performance. This is often so for economic
policies related to taxation, trade or investment. Although these may have very significant links to
environmental issues—in fact they may be the key drivers of environmental change—their built-in
evaluation criteria are usually limited to economic performance. This makes their evaluation particularly
challenging from an environmental and sustainable development perspective.

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