Integrating Environmental, Sociopolitical, Economic, and Technological Dimensions for the Assessment of Climate Policy Instruments

Abstract

Climate policy assessments often appear to lack a multi-analytical approach capable of considering different dimensions of sustainability during policy design. This paper presents an integrated assessment framework of climate policy instrument interactions by reconciling environmental, socio-economic, political, and institutional aspects for the initial stage of policy development. Selected interacting policy instruments are categorized into their policy design characteristics, referring to parameters that describe the institutional context of each instrument. Criteria covering specific environmental, sociopolitical, macroeconomic, financial, and technological objectives for assessing the policy instruments are identified and selected. Complementarities and overlaps between different combinations of instruments are identified. These affect subsequently the likely values (scores) of policy instruments against the evaluation criteria. By applying an interactive weighting method, policy makers are able to assign weighting factors on the criteria expressing their perceptions and objectives. An overall assessment of combined instruments from these steps is therefore determined based on the input from policy makers. We found that the developed framework provides a transparent tool to stakeholders capable of highlighting potential synergies and conflicts between environmental, socio-economic, political, and technological criteria during the stage of climate policies design. The method merits further attention in group decision-making for mapping stakeholders’ preferences with diverse objectives.