Policy analysis and environmental problems at different scales: Asking the right questions

In this volume, we seek a common understanding of three environmental problems linked to land use change in Southeast
Asia: smoke pollution, degradation of biodiversity functions, and degradation of watershed functions. The objectives of this
special issue are to identify usable data and methods for quantifying the impact of land use change on these environmental
problems, to identify gaps in either data or methods and, where gaps exist, to set priorities for filling them. That assessment
will be done in greater detail in the concluding chapter (Tomich et al., this issue). In this paper, we begin the process by raising
policy analysts’ basic questions for each environmental problem in turn and making a preliminary assessment of where each
of these three problems lies in the ‘environmental issue cycle’.