Primary Source: Ritthoff, M. (2006) Material Flow Analysis Swat Evaluation in Report on the SWOT analysis of concepts, methods, and models potentially supporting LCA. Eds. Schepelmann, Ritthoff & Santman (Wuppertal Institute for Climate and Energy) & Jeswani and Azapagic (University of Manchester), pp 23-31

Application Purpose:

An MFA is concerned with environmental sustainability, focused either on detoxification or dematerialization.

Description:

MFA is a tool used at the macro level (region or country). It is concerned with environmental sustainability. It comprises a set of related descriptive and analytical methods which have a common basis for the paradigm of industrial metabolism (Ayres and Simonis 1994, Ayres and Ayres 2002). MFA methodologies are tools for understanding the function of the physical basis of societies. This includes the interlinkages of processes and product chains, and the exchange of materials and energy with the environment. Mass balancing is a common characteristic of MFA.

Classification Schemes:

There have been many different attempts to classify MFA methodologies (e.g. Bringezu and Kleijn 1997, Bringezu and Morigushi 2002, Bringezu et al. 2003, Fischer−Kowalski and Hüttler 1998). Bringezu and Moriguchi (2002) distinguish between two basic strategies according to the primary interest of the analyst.

1)       The first strategy may be characterized as detoxification of the industrial metabolism. This means to reduce the release of hazardous substances to the environment in order to provoke less pollution. Related tools are the substance flow analysis (SFA), the bulk material flows analysis or the life cycle assessment (LCA).

2)       The second strategy could be described as dematerialization of the industrial metabolism. Dematerialization means to increase the resource efficiency by decoupling material use and economic growth, i.e. to produce more (or the same) by simultaneously using less primary material input.

The substance flow analysis (SFA) concentrates on [...]

Procedural authority-based instruments typically involve the exercise of government authority to recognize or provide preferential access or treatment to certain actors – and hence to fail to recognize others – in the policy process, or to mandate certain procedural requirements in the policy-making process in order to ensure it takes certain views or perspectives into account. These instruments perform a wide variety of network management functions (Agranoff and McGuire 1999), very often in order to gain support or marginalize policy opponents but also to ensure certain standards and standard practices are followed in policy choices (Goodin 1980; Saward 1992).

Policy network activation and mobilization tools

In terms of network management activities, many procedural authoritative tools are involved largely in the ‘selective activation’ of policy actors and/or their ‘mobilization’ through the extension of special recognition in a policy process. The key use of authority is in the extension of preferential access to decision-makers or regulators for certain views and actors and not others, or at least to a lesser extent (Doerr 1981).

Procedural authoritative tools attempt to ensure efficiency and effectiveness of government actions through activation of policy actor support. Networks may be structured, for example, through the creation of various advisory processes which all rely on the exercise of government authority to recognize and organize specific sets of policy actors and give them preferential and O’Toole 2004). These include advisory councils, ad hoc task forces and inquiries, consultations, and public hearings (Hall and O’Toole 2004). Phillips and Orsini (2002) list the types of policy process activities which advisory committees undertake (see Table 6.4).

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Several distinct types of authoritative network management tools can be identified. Prominent ones include the following.

Advisory councils

Advisory councils are the best example of [...]

Collegial model: In collegial models the members (staff) of specific public agencies evaluate the performance of their peers in the same agency or others using relevant “professional criteria of merit and standards of quality”. The peer review approach common in academia is a good example of the collegial model. Self-evaluation conducted by individuals or groups in an organization can sometimes precede and feed into the peer review process. Collegial models also entail interaction and deliberations between the evaluator and evaluate.

The Client-oriented model allows beneficiaries of the policy intervention (‘clients’) to evaluate it based on merit criteria that they themselves set. For example, these criteria could relate to the purpose of the intervention, mode of delivery and outcomes and how these fare against the expectations of the clients. The value of such a model is very evident because public services are targeted towards specific beneficiaries in the society and thus they are well-suited to evaluate these services with the objective of conveying useful feedback to the policymakers. This process of client-based evaluation can occur in a participatory as well as deliberative manner. The main drawback of this model is that this can expose the policy intervention to unjustified client complaints in a bid to pressurize the public agencies to increase service standards or elite capture to cater to vested interests as well. Thus the model should still adhere to the “rules of the agents and principals in the representative chain of control” despite the significance given to client preferences and feedback.

The side-effects model considers such unintended side-effects while retaining the focus on goals similar to the goal-attainment model. The side-effects model does this by looking for side-effects beyond the ‘target area’ of the policy intervention. A side effect in this case can be defined as “at least a partial consequence of the intervention, which cannot be included among the desired main effects, and these can be unanticipated, anticipated, beneficial or detrimental and considered in calculations preceding decisions to adopt policies” (Vedung, 2013). Within the target area the policy intervention can also generate impacts that are contrary to what was intended (‘perverse effects’). A challenge for the evaluators in the case of side-effects is to determine how to value or place these side-effects in the overall evaluation of the policy intervention, given these were not anticipated.