Designing synergetic and sustainable policy mixes - a new methodology

Complex environmental management issues often require fulfilling different objectives at the same time, as e.g. economic, ecological, social objectives of different actors and on different scales. This challenge is currently discussed regarding interactions of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their targets and also regarding the broader issues of policy design, namely how to avoid contradiction and to foster mutual support (synergies) between interdependent policies. This paper presents a new methodology to design effective, synergetic and sustainable policy mixes. The methodology has been developed to contribute to the integrated and sustainable water resources management of the catchment area of Río Lurín, Peru. The approach uses a qualitative form of systems analysis (cross-impact balance analysis CIB) to build a conceptual model of interactions between alternative policies of water users in the Lurín catchment. Iterating between desk research and expert and/or stakeholder consultation on different objectives, policies to achieve them and interactions, a qualitative but semi-formalized policy interaction model is built. Its analysis allows identifying alternative combinations of policies (policy mixes), which i) optimize the different objectives at the same time, ii) are free of internal contradictions and use synergies between policies and iii) contribute to attain different targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 (‘water for all’). We argue that the methodology tested and demonstrated in this paper to build and analyze policy interaction models is transferable to other areas of the world as well as to other complex fields of environmental management as land use, energy, and in particular to nexus issues. It is one possible element of coherent policy processes and can be applied to deal with SDG trade-offs and synergies in a new way, namely on the level of policies.