Understanding policy processes.A review of IDS research on the environment

Abstract

This synthesis report focuses on how environment and development policies came to be the way they are, and how and why they change - or why they do not. The key questions considered are: Why is it that particular views about the nature and causes of environmental 'problems' stick with such tenacity in policy debates? How do particular perspectives and the interests they represent find their way into policy? Why is there so often a gulf in analysis and aspiration between the perspectives of local land-users and those underlying and driving policy? How might policy processes be changed to encourage a greater inclusion of otherwise excluded voices? The report presents a number of case studies which illustrate a selection of work by the IDS Environment Group that ranges in scale from investigations of global-level standards, to donor policy, to national policies, to micro project policies: Environmental governance in Ethiopia Biodiversity policy in Guinea Biotechnology policy in China Environmental policy in the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Livestock disease and trade in Africa Water scarcity and dams in Gujarat, India