As environmental challenges evolve and too often worsen, and the goal of sustainable development remains elusive, the third edition of Environment & Sustainability: A Policy Handbook reminds us that effective policy and institutional responses are well within our knowledge and grasp.
In this revised and updated edition, Dovers, Hussey and Clement combine the insights of traditional public policy with a detailed understanding of the particular features of environmental issues and complex sustainability challenges. The result is an informative guide through the policy process, from social debate and problem definition, through policy design and instrument choice, implementation and evaluation, to the essential requirements of institutional design, public participation and policy learning.
Whether you are an environmental scientist grappling with policy, a policy official confronted with unfamiliar environmental issues, or a citizen seeking to engage constructively with the challenges we face, this book at once sets out the difficulties, and offers encouraging insights into the positive possibilities.
Preface: Why This Book?
Acknowledgements
PART I: Policy and the Environment
Chapter 1: Orientation and Introduction
Chapter 2: Thinking about Policy
Chapter 3: Environment and Sustainability as Policy and Institutional Problem
Chapter 4: Policy Cycles and Models, Environment and Sustainability
PART II: Checklists and Frameworks for Policy Analysis
Chapter 5: Problem-framing
Chapter 6: Policy-framing
Chapter 7: Policy implementation
Chapter 8: Policy Monitoring and Evaluation
Chapter 9: Participation, Transparency and Accountability
PART III: Prospects for Environment and Sustainability Policy
Chapter 10: Coordination, Integration, and Institutional Change
Bibliography
Index
Reviews of past edition
Suzanne Hoverman, Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, December 2014
Dovers and Hussey present here a framework for the development of good public environment and sustainability policy, laying out in detail the processes required to demonstrate a credible effort to deliver desirable and effective behaviour change in pursuit of sustainability.
This book advertises itself as a primer for improving policymakers’ grasp of the challenges and opportunities that environment and sustainability pose for policymaking. It will also enlighten scientists with a solid understanding of their field but for whom government policy processes – including communications strategies, public consultation and drivers of large-scale behaviour change – remain a mystery. Especially educational for regulation advocates is the discussion of using a mix of policy instruments for different audiences and stages of the policy process, as necessary to truly change individuals’ and organisations’ motivations and behaviour.
… Information is provided here in a well-structured and concise manner in very accessible prose … For many readers, its merit will be to remind them of what they once knew and should have remembered, while fleshing out a few areas of new knowledge. … it is very useful to provide the full scope of options in areas such as types of public consultation, criteria for policy instruments, available policy instruments and policy coordination. The handbook fulfils its mission as an excellent reference to be consulted as needed.