Sustainable Development, Evaluation and Policy-Making: Theory, Practise and Quality Assurance

by Anneke von Raggamby (Editor), Frieder Rubik (Editor)

Overview

This pathbreaking book contributes to the discourse of evidence-based policy-making. It does so by combining the two issues of policy evaluation and sustainable development linking both to the policy-cycle. It covers contributions:

• examining the perception of sustainability problems, which analyze the relationship between sustainability and assessment;
• highlighting the role of evaluation and impact assessment studies during policy formulation;
• looking at policy implementation by examining sustainability and impact assessment systems in different application areas;
• addressing policy reformulation by considering monitoring and quality improvement schemes;
• assessing the quality of sustainability evaluation studies.

Providing theoretic insights, reflections and case studies, this novel study will prove essential to postgraduate students, practitioners, policy makers and researchers in the area of sustainable development, policy making and evaluation.

Contributors: J. Bakkes, S. Boschen, K. Diehl, F.J. Dietz, I. de la Flor, C. George, A.H. Hanemaaijer, K. Helming, A. Hirschbeck, B. Hirschl, T. Kaphengst, C. Kirkpatrick, D. Knoblauch, J. Koniecki, M. Lehtonen, A. Martinuzzi, A.C.M. Meuwese, W. Meyer, A. Neumann, F. Rubik, R. Stecker, C. Stevens, R. Stockmann, K. Umpfenbach, A. von Raggamby, S. White, T. Widmer

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780857932549
Publisher:	Edward Elgar Publishing
Publication date:	07/31/2012
Series:	Evaluating Sustainable Development series
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Edited by Anneke von Raggamby, Ecologic Institute, Germany and Frieder Rubik, Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW), Germany

Table of Contents

Contents:

Introduction
Frieder Rubik, Anneke von Raggamby and Anna Hirschbeck

PART I: PERCEPTION OF SUSTAINABILITY PROBLEMS
1. Understanding Sustainability Evaluation and its Contributions to Policy-Making
Reinhard Stockmann

2. How to Select Policy-Relevant Indicators for Sustainable Development
Frank J. Dietz and Albert H. Hanemaaijer

3. Should Evaluation be Revisited for Sustainable Development?
Wolfgang Meyer

PART II: POLICY FORMATION: THE ROLE OF EVALUATION/ASSESSMENT
4. A Basic Roadmap for Sustainability Assessments: The SIMPLE Methodology
Candice Stevens

5. Political Challenges in Policy-Level Evaluation for Sustainable Development: The Case of Trade Policy
Clive George and Colin Kirkpatrick

6. Integrated Approaches for Ex-Ante Impact Assessment Tools: The Example of Land Use
Katharina Helming, Ignacio de la Flor and Katharina Diehl

7. Politics of (Non-)Knowledge: Problems of Evaluation, Validity and Legitimacy
Stefan Böschen

PART III: POLICY IMPLEMENTATION: SUSTAINABILITY EVALUATION/ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS IN DIFFERENT APPLICATION AREAS
8. How Informed Should Decisions Be?
Stephen White and Jakub Koniecki

9. Impact Assessment in the European Union: The Continuation of Politics by Other Means?
Anne C.M. Meuwese

10. Science-Policy Interface and the Role of Impact Assessments in the Case of Biofuels
Bernd Hirschl, Timo Kaphengst, Anna Neumann and Katharina Umpfenbach

PART IV: POLICY REFORMULATION: MONITORING AND QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
11. Indicators as an Appraisal Technology: Framework for Analysing the Policy Influence of the UK Energy Sector Indicators
Markku Lehtonen

PART V: QUALITY AND EVALUATION
12. Quality Requirements for Sustainability Evaluations
Anneke von Raggamby, Frieder Rubik, Doris Knoblauch and Rebecca Stecker

13. Bellagio SusTainability Assessment and Measurement Principles (BellagioSTAMP) – Significance and Examples from International Environmental Outlooks
Jan Bakkes

14. Evaluation Quality in the Context of Sustainability
Thomas Widmer

15. Developing and Mapping a Community for Evaluating Sustainable Development
André Martinuzzi

Index

Editorial Reviews

‘This thought-provoking and wide-ranging handbook covers a very wide range of multidisciplinary approaches to sustainable development and is a worthy addition to the bookshelf of those working in this area, whether they be evaluators, researchers, students or indeed the policy-makers themselves.’

Keith Dawson

‘Compared to other collections in this field, Sustainable Development, Evaluation and Policy-Making, Theory, Practise and Quality Assurance is straightforward in its style and writing. . . There are no strange hypotheses, no jargon, no digressions, and no endless dis-cussion. The quality of the argumentation deployed here is impressive: the notes, figures, and remarks about research results are detailed and carefully crafted.’

Yves Laberge