The Role of Policy Mix in Driving Sustainable Development: Idealism or Realism?

Abstract

The recently released Environmental Performance Index 2020 by Yale Center for Environmental Performance Index has ranked Malaysia 68th amongst 180 countries, 6th in the Asia-Pacific region. The conclusion was made based on a data-driven summary, encompassing the evaluation on the 32 key performance indicators across 11 issues categories on environmental health and ecosystem vitality. Over the past few decades, Malaysia has shown a clear intent of its commitment on sustainable development through the introduction of national-level policies, standards, blueprints, and plans as well as pledging to global efforts for sustainability such as UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, Paris Agreement, and Kyoto Protocol. The impact evaluation for the public policies is often deemed to be challenging due to the lack of resources, high complexity of institutional frameworks and its execution, and the uncertainties in the timeframe to capture the respective impacts. This work applies Drivers, Pressures, State, Impact and Response Model of Intervention (DPSIR) to evaluate the impacts of the Malaysia policies in environmental health and ecosystem vitality leading to the conclusion made by EPI 2020. Various policies are introduced and implemented over the years in Malaysia for each of the EPI issue categories, but the impacts appeared to be small and ineffective, especially in ecosystem vitality area that includes biodiversity and climate change issues. While the progress on environment health area, particularly air quality and waste management standing is better, more improvements is expected to improve the standing in the EPI internationally. The outcomes of this study serve as a reference for the local authorities in refining the policy agendas, facilitate communications with key stakeholders to enhance the environmental performance of Malaysia for sustainable development. The analysis and evaluation on the impacts of policies on the respective indicators also offer industry players and practitioners the opportunity for cleaner production and green innovation.