Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
A possible way to go about these questions and approaching the issues would be
to use an RBF point of view as attempted in the next section. The analysis is
proposed in a way that higher, lower level objectives can be de
ned and targeted
through different RBF tools.
4.2.2 High-Level Analysis
Even though some budget support instruments, like the Development Policy
Operations funded by the World Bank, are used to support reforms at higher levels
of government, one of the most suitable RBF tools to support high-level objectives
is the COD approach. The critical elements to de
ne are the indicators that will be
used to measure the results, the baseline that will be used and how the information
to calculate the indicator will be gathered, veri
ed and processed. Adding the nexus
angle to the COD scheme requires creative thinking to reinforce both concepts
mutually.
The traditional COD scheme proposes that a government and a development
institution will identify a problem, an indicator to measure variations on govern-
ment performance in dealing with the problem, a way to measure and verify pro-
gress and a payment or compensation linked to the veri
ed progress.
If the problem identified does not contemplate the impact in other areas (i.e. does
not take into account the nexus), the whole scheme could be very effective in
solving the problem at hand, but would potentially cause harm elsewhere. For
instance, improving productivity at farm level could deteriorate water resource
quality.
The solution that could be attempted is to de
ne indicators for the individual
problems identi
ed and combine them in a more complex indicator that will tend to
compensate for the crossed effects. Ideally, the combined indicator would mimic the
impacts of one subsector on the others, but this would require a perfect under-
standing of the interaction between the different subsystems, which is not possible.
Mathematical models can go a long way towards supporting the de
nition of a
complex indicator that takes into account the cross impacts of different activities on
the concerned nexus components. This in turn would allow the government to plan
the appropriate actions that will produce the largest improvement in the agreed
indicator, maximizing the COD payments.
The programme could have a built in mechanism to calibrate the model, if the
results signi
cantly differ from model predictions or keep it up to date if it is
accurate. Of course, this will require a strong monitoring scheme to track all
activities potentially impacting the indicator and the variations in the values of the
parameters participating in the de
nition or calculation of the indicator. This would
be a costly exercise and would only be viable or practical if the COD payment and
the economic bene
ts of the programme justify such scheme.
At the other end, the simplest way to build the combined indicator would be to
assign weight coef
cients to the individual indicators and multiply all of them in a
way that tends to re
ect the cross impacts. If an improvement in farm productivity,
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