Applying a public policy lens to environmental decision making
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Presentation delivered in the opening session of the 3rd Biennial CEED Conference at the ANU, Canberra.
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Applying a public policy lens to environmental decision making
- 1. www.ceed.edu.auwww.ceed.edu.au Applying a public policy lens to environmental decision making Megan C Evans PhD Candidate Australian National University megan.evans@anu.edu.au @megcevans
- 2. www.ceed.edu.au Environmental decisions and public policy • Decisions for whom, and by whom? • Public policy: “The interaction of values, interests and resources, guided through institutions and mediated through politics” (Davis et al 1993)
- 3. www.ceed.edu.au Policy goal Policy delivery Policy “rules” Formal aim and policy intent How policy is interpreted & received How people respond Are we getting the outcomes we expect? “No net loss of biodiversity” On-ground delivery
- 4. www.ceed.edu.au Biodiversity offset policy • Substantial work on developing offset metrics (Gibbons et al. 2015; Miller et al. 2015) – EPBC Act Environmental Offsets Policy • How does this translate to policy implementation? • How do we know if the policy “works”?
- 5. www.ceed.edu.au CEED-CSIRO workshop: January 2015, ANU Economist Policymaker/NGO Economist Broker Lawyer NGO Industry Conservation scientist Lawyer Me Lawyer Political scientist Ecologist Editorial in Decision Point, August 2015: “Offsetting in the context of policy” Policymaker
- 6. www.ceed.edu.au Using a policy lens to get better environmental outcomes • Understand the policy system – the “players” and the “rules” • Identify leverage points for policy improvement (Dovers & Hussey 2013)
- 7. www.ceed.edu.au Thank-you E: megan.evans@anu.edu.au T: @megcevans W: mcevansresearch.wordpress.com
Notas del editor
- We are all here as we’re interested in making good environmental decisions. The researchers in our Centre have delivered has a lot of great science and decision support tools that help people to make good decisions. And while these tools can make a huge impact on getting good outcomes for biodiversity, we do need to remember that ultimately decisions are made by people – who despite our best efforts, are usually not rational. We need to about who are making decisions, and for whom. When we apply a public policy lens to environmental decision making, we’re thinking not only about the allocation of resources, but also people’s values, their motivations and interests. We think about the institutions – the formal and informal rules that guide policy decisions. And finally, while we may not necessarily like or agree with it, we need to consider politics. As Glyn Davis has argued, “we are unable to combine values, interests and resources in ways which are not political”.
- Now when a policy is made, there’s usually a formal aim that outlines the policy intent. Using biodiversity offsetting as an example, the overall goal is often a “No net loss of biodiversity”, and this is outlined in formal documentation. Now, how this goal is interpreted and received policymakers and those affected by the policy may end up being slightly different to the original policy intent, perhaps due to necessity, incomplete information, or convenience. As we move down this process to the part where actions are delivered on the ground, it may be that there’s a mismatch between the outcome we get and the outcome we expect. We can only know what happens if we study the whole policy process, from policy design, to implementation and monitoring and evaluation.
- Now in my PhD, I’ve been focusing mainly on biodiversity offset policy. There’s been a lot work done on developing simple yet robust offset metrics (Gibbons et al. 2015; Miller et al. 2015), for example the work of several CEED researchers on the Australian Environmental Offsets Policy. Yet despite this good work on policy design, we still very rarely know what outcomes are being delivered by offset policies – not just in Australia, but around the world. So how does policy design translate to implementation, and how do we know if a policy “works”?
- Earlier this year I organized a workshop jointly with CEED and CSIRO, where I asked participant “What are the key issues facing the successful implementation of biodiversity offset policy” – specifically, issues other than how to accurately measure biodiversity losses and gains. Now I deliberately invited people mainly from non-ecological backgrounds – economists, lawyers, political scientists, as well as key people from industry and NGOs. The combination of these different people provided some really interesting insights into how offsetting policy can be more effective. To give you an example, Alan Key has successfully brokered over 60 offset trades over the last 10 years, in Queensland alone. Compare that to the NSW BioBanking program which has been in place since 2008, and at last count has had about 12 offsets come into operation. I think we as researchers can learn a lot from people like Alan, who works in the thick of environmental policy every day.
- What I’ll be doing next year is doing a series of qualitative interviews to get an understanding of what are the key things needed to get good outcomes from biodiversity offsetting. I’ll be talking to a range of different stakeholders, which will allow me to get a good picture of how the policy system works – who are players, and what are the formal and informal rules. From there, my aim is to identify where there might be areas in the existing system where there are opportunities to get better outcomes from biodiversity offset policy. And I think this is an approach that could be applied to a whole range of different environmental policy problems.
- Thank-you, and I’d just like to acknowledge my supervisors who have helped to shape this thinking over the last couple of years.