merits even more credit. The momentum of the environmental movement in global initiatives can be grouped into the following actions:

1.national environmental awareness,

2.popular movements, and

3.international environmental negotiation.

The nature of actions and their influence depend on the size and importance of resource. The influence of international negotiation may be predominant in resourceful areas like Amazon and South-east Asia, whereas national environmental awareness is likely to be more influential in the policy changes of less important areas like Bangladesh due to lack of resource abundance. Thus, responses to sustainability issues of natural resources depend, to a certain degree, on the relative abundance and importance of the resources (Castle, 1982).

Despite all these facts and practices in developing countries, the general impression is that policy proponents of the country want sustainability, but unsustainability is mainly caused by resource users. Most policy measures and intervention thus are oriented to control the resource users, not the resource managers. Despite the growing emphasis on policy evaluation, in most developing countries the focus of evaluation has continued to be narrow. In some cases, only financial and physical achievements of a policy are attended. The relationship and coordination between two decisions, either under same policy or of different policies, is seldom considered. Thus, the arguments of policy evaluation should be explained through different approaches.

3.5 TARGET ACHIEVEMENT

One of the sustainability characteristics of policy evaluation is to investigate the functional anomaly of a resource system influenced by the policy measures on a continuum basis and bringing correction to the policy for achieving the goal. Clarke (1995) has mentioned that one of the great scientific dilemmas of the present time is to determine the relative significance of natural and human factors upon environmental changes, because similar physical results can occur from different physical and human processes. The similarity of end results from different processes or factors may occur on the basis of “principle of equifinality” (Goudie, 1984), but evaluation of such end results are difficult for a variety of reasons such as the complexity of natural system and their nonlinear

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response to changes, imperfection of knowledge, and the possibility of unforeseen extreme events. To avoid the complexity, the policy evaluation may be disintegrated into the following points.

3.5.1 Detection of Changes

Understanding and prediction of environmental attributes and the abundance of resources are important for a better comprehension and/or for taking action in favor of sustainability. We can categorize here six areas, changes in which would bring changes in sustainability. They are:

1.resource growth,

2.climate change,

3.environmental health,

4.changes in governance,

5.future challenges and opportunities, and

6.anthropogenic changes.

Policy processes embracing those issues need to be evaluated continuously to detect the changes, where they are originating from, and for determining which appropriate actions need to be taken. Changes in any of the resource components or factors may bring a series of changes in the environment, some of which may proceed very slowly over a large span of time and thus may be very difficult to identify at the initial stage. Comparative study on past policy actions and their present impacts may help in identifying such factors of changes, eventually that will help in assessing target achievement.

Because policy takes a long time to complete the cycle, over time there could be changes and differences in between the policy in writing and policy in practice, policy experience and policy expertise, judgment value and actual values, policy pragmatics and policy contingencies, social habits and social tradition, and skills required and capabilities to cater. Policy evaluation should assist in detecting such changes as well to ensure sustainability. It suggests that policy evaluation based on contrasting evidence of changes will be more likely to enrich policy and hence the sustainability practice if:

•The changes are detected before it goes beyond the political and institutional limits, creates pressures/concerns on policy makers, fits within their expectation, and resonates with their assumptions.