A new study performed by the University of East Anglia located Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research throws light on the modestly researched but politically significant climate policy exercises and developments in Europe.
According to the research, in the last decade formulation of new environmental policies drew much attention at political levels and targets have been set after intense debates, but little or no efforts have been taken to assess whether the policies delivered the promised. The research received funding through the EU FP6 ADAM project, which University of East Anglia organized between 2006 and 2009.
The research available in the international journal Policy Sciences provides the first ever methodical classification of the emerging forms of policy evaluation attempted in various parts of the European Union. The research discloses the emergence of evaluation culture stating that the number of evaluations generated has increased lately. It used the data gathered from the six EU states and found that the generation of evaluation reports in 2000 – 2005 has increased by eightfold. It revealed that there is a disparity in evaluation practices between various countries in the EU and found that the policy effects undergo more evaluation in the UK when compared to countries such as Poland and Portugal.
The 259 evaluations identified and studied by the research have established that most of the time the evaluation tools lacked selection and were short of concentrated involvement of stakeholders and nearly 80% of them did not explore for change in the policy goals and continued with the existing ones. Lastly most of them lacked focusing and concentrated only on issues related to environment and cost savings obtained by the existing policies.
According to Professor Andrew Jordan (Tyndall), one of the lead authors, the climate control policies either undertaken by the UN or in the form of pledge and review type of procedures need evaluation practices for the purpose of tweaking the existing policy changes and to build and maintain the public trust. He explained that the study has found that the existing evaluation practices are disorganized and not developed.
Jordan said that though much efforts have been put to explain and appreciate the policy forming processes in Europe, the evaluation of policies almost happen on ad hoc basis without much participation. He suggests for a more open and visible policy evaluations to tackle the questions on climate changes. He concluded saying that the policy systems currently available in Europe are under developed to meet the challenges.
Source: http://www.uea.ac.uk/