Policy analysis & awareness: an introduction to environmental policy

Both our natural environment and the benefits it provides for human society rely on the ways that we seek to protect, enhance, and respond to the natural world.

On a societal and economic level, we typically do so through rules, regulations, financial incentives, or forms of environmental governance. To be effective and appropriate, those tools rely on sound environmental policy for the benefit of human society and the natural world. 

Environmental policy is therefore a crucial system for protecting and enhancing the natural world, but skills for understanding, interpreting, and engaging with policy are often underrepresented across the environment sector.

This is a briefing paper for IES members, providing a short introduction to some of the ways that environmental professionals can become more aware of environmental policy and how they can analyse its effects on their work. While providing an overview of all the basics necessary for environmental professionals to begin engaging in policy analysis, this paper should be viewed as an introduction to the wider range of policy-related skills needed for greater engagement in policy.