WHAT INFLUENCES THE DEGREE OF SOPHISTICATION OF IMPACT ASSESSMENTS? EVIDENCE FROM GERMANY, THE NETHERLANDS AND THE UNITED KINGDOM

摘要

Impact Assessment (IA) – understood as formal analysis of the potential effects of new policies before their adoption – is seen by many as a key mechanism to improve the quality of regulation and to integrate different policy objectives. Considering the increasing relevance of climate protection and Sustainable Development as global policy objectives, the assessment of intended and unintended impacts of energy and environmental policy proposals will most likely become more important. However, earlier evaluations of the practice of integrated IA (most of them focus on the European Commission’s system) have found out that IAs are not always performed with sufficient quality – particularly regarding potential environmental impacts (e.g. IMV 2006, TEP 2007). Therefore, a fundamental question is what determines the quality of IAs. In this paper we present parts of the results of the officer survey from the project EVIA (Evaluating Integrated Impact Assessment). This survey was carried out in three jurisdictions, namely Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. While Germany was included as an example of a country where activities to assess potential impacts of new policies have traditionally been less formalised, the latter two were selected because these countries have fairly advanced, integrated impact assessment systems. Our main focus lies on the degree of quantification of impacts regarding the three different pillars of Sustainable Development (economic, social and environmental), the use of methods and its potential constraints (e.g. lack of data and/or resources). We have chosen this perspective since, at least theoretically, “monetary valuation is one of the most developed ways of integrating environmental, economic and social concerns” (IMV 2006; p. 23). In practice “it is a question open to investigation if this [quantification] contributes to an integration of the different dimensions of SD or if this narrows down the perspective on costs for business only” (Jacob and Hertin 2007; p. 19). With this paper we intend to contribute to the ongoing discussions on the use of methods and quantification in impact assessments. In particular, we investigate whether there are differences between the three different dimensions of Sustainable Development in terms of the methodical efforts to assess potential impacts. Moreover, we try to identify determinants which can have an influence on the degree of sophistication of the assessment. Based on our data from the three surveyed countries we provide some evidence regarding these questions beyond the well evaluated situation on the EU level.