Underlining Basis for the National Environmental Policy Design in Ethiopia

Abstract

This article focuses on Ethiopia’s National Environmental Policy design process. The research methodology entails a mixed research design to yield reliable and valid evidence, allowing for a comprehensive evaluation and analysis of the National Environmental Policy design process. The empirical investigation demonstrates that the National Environmental Policy in Ethiopia has been triggered by the inability of the policy to respond to the emergent environmental changes, and international environmental convention, and to harmonise with the restructured environmental sector. Although significant new environmental issues have been acknowledged higher on the policy agenda, the National Environmental Policy design process is dominated by the ideological, incremental, and elitist policy design approach rather than rational policy analysis. The policy option generation and selection process has not been conducted through generating the possible policy alternatives and weighing up their relative consequences, and decisions seem made under bound rationality using the rule of thumb guided by the ruling party policy and the overpromising intentions of international environmental conventions which affect the quality of the policy and the implementation thereof.