OECD Environmental Performance Review Programme

Abstract

The growing interest in evaluation as a new form of environmental governance stems from two developments: the movement towards New Public Management, and the search for new policy instruments for managing complexity, uncertainty and plurality of values in the pursuit of sustainable development. The former holds increasing accountability as the main purpose of evaluation, while the latter stresses the importance of learning. These approaches are often considered as mutually exclusive, but recent literature has underlined their complementary roles in policy making. This article examines to what extent the OECD Environmental Performance Review (EPR) programme has succeeded in combining the objectives of learning and accountability within a single evaluation framework. The EPRs have been relatively successful in avoiding the negative side-effects often associated with traditional performance measurement, but have usually failed to generate broad debate. Focusing on enhancing accountability through social learning would probably contribute to overcoming this problem.