An Assessment Methodology for Environmental Policy Instruments: An Illustrative Application to Solid Wastes in Hong Kong

This paper outlines a methodology for the systematic assessment of policy instruments for environmental management and illustrates its application using solid waste management in Hong Kong. The methodology consists of three steps: (i) developing a set of evaluation criteria (and deciding whether certain criteria are to be given greater weight than others), (ii) selecting the relevant combination of potential policy instruments, and (iii) ranking each set of policy instruments on the basis of the evaluation criteria. One advantage of this approach is that the tradeoffs among the various evaluation criteria are made explicit when one policy instrument is chosen over the alternatives, thus making the assessment process more open and potentially less contentious. Unfortunately, in Hong Kong, the assessment of solid waste management options, like that for most other environmental problems, has beenad hoc, piecemeal, and has allowed for very little consultation at early stages from those outside of the principal government agency involved. Largely as a consequence, outside groups (including those from other parts of government) often strongly object to the selected policy and seek to block its implementation.