Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Society
Policy Option
e.g., EU Nitrate
Directive
Share of
agricultural votes
Number of farms
Type of
Intervention
Area of
Intervention
Number of farmers
that are members
in a farmers' association
Number of people
employed in the farming sector
Property
Rights Change
Natural
Resource
Step 3:
Select
indicators
(e.g., Membership in farmers'
associations)
Step1:
Identify
policytype
(e.g., regulatory / market)
Use existing indicators
or elaborate new proxies that indicate
the extent of the crucial institutional aspect
Step 2: Extract
crucial institutional aspects
(e.g., Bargaining power of farmers' associations)
Step 4:
Conclude on e.g.,
Communication capacity
Fig. 3.3
PICA scheme
Functions of PICA Within SEAMLESS-IF
PICA can play an important role within integrated modelling frameworks - like the
SEAMLESS-Integrated Framework - that have been developed for an ex-ante
assessment of policy impacts on environmental, economic, and social systems.
Here, the economic and environmental models often assume that appropriate and
required institutions are in place for resource governance towards sustainability, or
that those institutions can be implemented with no costs. PICA can be seen as a
method that qualifies those underlying modelling assumptions to narrow the gap
between theory and the real-world. Thereby, the institutional assessment can
strengthen the modelling approaches in the
pre- and post-modelling phase
.
If PICA is applied in the
pre-modelling phase
, it can provide hints on whether
institutional constraints in some or many countries or regions are likely to be
prohibitively high and the policy option will hardly become effective there. As a
result, it could be recommended - and discussed with the policy makers - to
modify the policy option or to carry out additional in-depth institutional pre-studies
before running the other models. Similarly, the results can be used to select and
modify policy scenarios that are constructed as input for the modelling tools. For
example, an application of PICA may reveal that in some countries the implementa-
tion of the EU Nitrate Directive is very likely to be hampered due to high levels of
opportunism on part of the farmers and very low levels of trust between public
