The use of indicators in environmental policy appraisal: lessons from the design and evolution of water security policy measures

ABSTRACT

Drawing up environmental policy options is a complex activity which involves defining and weighing the merits and risks of various alternative courses of action governments could pursue. In its modern version, this task typically involves formal policy analysis or ‘policy appraisal’, that is, policy work specifically undertaken to generate and evaluate policy options in order to address problems or issues on a policy agenda. Indicators play a powerful but under-investigated role in this process. To shed light on this issue, the paper conducts a case study of the design and evolution of policy indicators in water security policy formulation, examining both their utilization and impact. The paper documents the origins of water security policy indicators; assesses their relevance and influence in policy formulation and identifies the reasons for the emergence of certain preferred indices, despite their having several well-known limitations. In particular, the discussion flags the significance of the political advantages surrounding their ease of use and interpretation, rather than their technical merits, as a key factor affecting the continued utilization and influence of specific indicators in environmental policy and planning.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy formulation
• policy indicators
• water policy
• public policy
• policy-making

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Michael Howlett is Burnaby Mountain Chair in the Department of Political Science at Simon Fraser University and Yong Pung How Chair Professor in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He specializes in public policy analysis, political economy, and resource and environmental policy. His most recent books are the Elgar Handbook of Policy Formulation (2017); Routledge Handbook of Comparative Policy Analysis (2017) and Policy Work in Canada (2016); He is the current chair of Research Committee 30 (Comparative Public Policy) of the International Political Science Association and sits on the Executive committee of the International Conference on Public Policy.

Janet S. Cuenca is a PhD Candidate at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. She has done work relating to water policy indicators, decentralization, local governance, urbanization and population, health, education, social welfare, social protection, child protection, government taxation and expenditure, and the Millennium Development Goals. Her current research focuses on fiscal decentralization and health service delivery in the Philippines.

Notes

1. Rijsberman (2004) defined it as the reverse of water insecurity, that is, ‘when an individual does not have access to safe and affordable water to satisfy her or his needs for drinking, washing or their livelihoods.’

2. In addition to these water indicators, there are indicators that form part of wider sustainability frameworks which concern water (Appendices 1 and 2). Nevertheless, the focus of most scholars concerned on water issues is more on water security indicators than related sustainability ones. The debate is more on which is better between composite and non-composite indicators in this area than on whether or not they should be expanded into related areas of policy activity.