120 Sustainability Assessment

activities subjected to the constraints. If diminishing returns are assumed, the optimum mix is the one that allocates the budget in such a way that the marginal rates of return are equalized across the places or activities so that nothing can be gained by redistributing the budget.

In optimum choice problem 3, one needs to determine the benefit and costs from each choice. The optimum choice is then the one that has the maximum benefit cost difference, after appropriate discount. The problem of the optimizing concept with the land use policy could be that there are many issues within the environment which cannot be evaluated on standard prices, and therefore, the application of optimizing principle is limited in the field of environment. Also, the optimizing principles are applicable for policies under planning. The scope for utilizing those principles in evaluating the past policies is limited.

9.10 POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES

Political perspective is a special consideration of policy decision. If involved, the deducing perspectives and optimizing perspectives of such a decision may give negative results. Such perspectives of decision are important for international relations or to reduce social instability. Administrative influences on resource policies are mostly related to special political perspective thus are quite relevant to this study. In this principle, the policy serves some fixed objectives beyond the resource system, thus the evaluation explains what had happened to the resources (not what could happen) before placing a next interest on the resource. Thus, this principle tries to explain the post-policy status of resources and correlates them with the implementing tools used in the policy.

The above discussion reveals that there are numerous principles and tools for policy evaluation. The choice of tools for evaluation depends on the temporal status (whether the policy is planning phase, ongoing, or passed), interests, objectives, and targets of policy.