Ecological sustainability in policy assessments: A wide-angle view and a close watch

We give a perspective from two practitioners on some of the challenges of addressing sustainability concerns in environmental policy assessments. We focus on the ecological dimension of sustainability, which is closely related to the concept of “ecosystem resilience.” First, we discuss several recent benefit-cost analyses conducted by EPA that illustrate many of the practical difficulties analysts have faced when attempting to assess the ecological benefits of proposed regulations. Next, we discuss the importance of increased coordination of policy assessments among offices and agencies that traditionally operate more or less independently. We conclude by using a stylized model to illustrate how using an “adaptive management” approach to designing and evaluating policies can help to avoid some of the limitations of standard policy assessments highlighted in this special section of Ecological Economics and elsewhere.