Role of Policy Actors in Policy Processes
Role of Policy Actors in Policy Processes
The Policy Process on Environmental Issues
It is very obvious that the world is currently experiencing many different environmental problems nowadays. One of the most pressing issue, is the issue on Climate change. Climate change is affecting the world and its inhabitants in many ways. It is a phenomenon by which the world experiences drastic and unusual changes in its climate and seasonal patterns, due to pollution and Greenhouse gases trapped in the earth’s atmosphere. This, in return, causes much more harm to the earth and its inhabitants. Climate change has had a lot of consequences that are now being felt and will be felt by humans in the future. Some of these consequences are the El Nino and La Nina phenomena. These phenomena cause more harmful situations in the daily lives of humans, specifically in agriculture, health, and the worsening of natural calamities. Because of these experience that the world is experiencing, people began to show concern for the environment and helped raise awareness to conserve the environment. Advocacy groups began emerging all over the world to spread knowledge and advocacies in promoting environmental conservation. One of the ways in which the world copes with this phenomenon is through the regulation of environmental laws and policies. This is where the policy process comes in.
The policy process is the system by which the creation of policies concerning different fields are patterned upon. Since policy making bodies are essential to every system, this provides the need for a systematic and critical approach in the drafting and creation of policies. The policy process is a multi-stage cycle with five stages namely identification of the problem/issue at hand, agenda setting, policy formulation, budgeting, implementation, and evaluation. Each stage is participated by key actors. These key actors include possible stakeholders, think tanks, the media, and the government (University of Texas at Austin, n.d).
The Policy Actors
Policy actors have been mentioned several times in the previous paragraph, and from there, one can already see the importance of the role played by policy actors in the policy process. According to Shannon (2002), policy actors are people who are affected or has anything to do with the whole policy process at any given stage. They may be individuals or groups that aims to influence the policy process in any way, whether their participation in the process is formal or informal. The reason why policy actors play a huge and important role in the whole process, is because everything that they do, be it negative or positive, will have an impact in the process of policy making. Policy actors can cause changes in the direction of the policies, most especially when they have great influence, because more often than not, the policy process is also a political discourse. The part in which most policy actors affect the policy process the most, is in the agenda setting stage. This is because, in this stage is where their purposes or goals will be served, whether it be for their personal gains, or for the actual betterment of the institution (Koduah et al., 2014). In the case of the issue on climate change, there are many partakers and contributors of the causes and effects of this problem. In establishing policies that will address issues on climate change, some of the stakeholders that can be considered in its planning and implementation are the citizens in the areas concerned, legislators and policy-makers, and industries. Industries, more often than not, are the ones who usually contribute negatively to such issues, for improper waste disposal and excessive carbon emissions contribute greatly to the destruction of the earth’s atmosphere. Normal citizens can also be contributors to this issue, but through the help of policies formulated and implemented by lawmakers, citizens can be of help in resolving issues that concern climate change. However, the policy process doesn’t always undergo a smooth one. There are instances where citizens would be receptive, but it is a lawmaker’s job to handle and deal with such circumstances. It is almost every country’s mandate to have laws and policies directed towards addressing environmental issues such as climate change. One of the largest campaigns pushed forth to combat climate change was launched by the United Nations as one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). This is the 13th goal which is to “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its imapcts”.
Environmental Agencies Around the Globe
There is a need to reiterate the role of policy actors in the policy process because any policy will always have an impact in the welfare of the public. In the case of UDIA, at first look, it may look like it is in no way involved in creating policies concerning the environment, but it is. UDIA, being in the urban development industry, would need to formulate policies that would both benefit them economically, without causing harm to the nature since they are closely working with the Australian government. One way in which they ensure environmental sustainability in their projects is their “enviroDevelopment” program. This is a national rating tool that UDIA uses in order to determine and make sure that their projects are sustainable and therefore, environment friendly. This progress ensure quality in six areas namely ecosystems, waste, energy, materials, water, and community. Another agency is the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) have established many policies and projects that were aimed at making the state of the world’s environment better. One policy program implemented by the US EPA is the “Inventory of U.S Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, which is used by the US government to monitor and regulate the carbon emissions of the country. Another organization that is dealing strongly with global policies on the environment is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The main goal of the UNFCCC revolves around the stabilization of the level of greenhouse gas in the earth’s atmosphere to prevent further harm and worsening of the state of climate change in the world.
Conclusion
Given the current state of worsening climate change that the world is experiencing, there is an absolute need to ensure that industries are controlled to not cause further harm in the environment. It can’t be denied that the world is rapidly developing and this is both advantageous and disadvantageous for the environment. The industrialization that the world is undertaking the past decades have caused economic development, and environmental destruction at the same time (Urban Development Institute of Australia Western Australia Division Incorporated).
This just shows how big the role of policy acting bodies like UDIA is. It is essential for policy actors to be well-rounded in the specific field concerned in the policy being formulated. This is because policy actors must be able to determine all possible factors contributing to the issue at hand. It is of utmost important for policy actors to know how to trace the root cause and be able to track the other problems that were caused by the main issue. However, the most important role that policy actors have is the influence that they could put into the formulation and implementation of the policy. As mentioned earlier, policy actors can be anyone who has direct or indirect participation in the formulation of the policy. However, it will be difficult to know if the actions that these policy actors will make in the agenda setting process will serve their personal agendas, or the welfare of the general public who will experience the greater impact that the policy will bring. This is an important factor since policies are made for behavior change.
References
Koduah, A., Dijk, H.V. & Agyepong, I.A., 2015. The role of policy actors and contextual factors in policy agenda setting and formulation: maternal fee exemption policies in Ghana over four and a half decades. BioMed Central. Available at: https://health-policy-systems.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12961-015-0016-9 [Accessed August 7, 2016].
Shannon, M.A., Mechanisms for Coordination. FAO Corporate Documentary Repository. Available at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/y4653e/y4653e08.htm [Accessed August 7, 2016].
The university of Texas at Austin, The Public Policy Process. Texas Liberal Arts. Available at: http://www.laits.utexas.edu/gov310/pep/policy/ [Accessed August 7, 2016].
Urban Development Institute of Australia , EnviroDevelopment . Urban Development Institute of Australia Western Australia Division Incorporated. Available at: http://www.udiawa.com.au/go/industry-envirodevelopment [Accessed August 7, 2016].
