Public PolicyPublic policy is described by Peters (as cited in Shaw & Eichbaum, 2008) as guiding a government's actions and taking into account the effects of that action or inaction on life of people in the community. Dye (as cited in Shaw and Eichbaum, 2008) defines politics as “whatever governments choose to do or not do”. Shaw and Eichbaum (2008) go on to state that public policy is the most obvious way in which government policy can affect people's lives. For example, Shaw and Eichbaum use the interest-free loan program put in place by the Labor government in 2006. “Decision moments” are often present in public policy. At every “decision moment,” the government is faced with the choice of whether to act or not. The interest free loan program policy demonstrates three decisions: firstly review the existing policy, secondly change the policy and thirdly introduce the new policy. (Shaw & Eichbaum, 2008). Public policy can often be complex as it is driven by a number of different influences and can end up being a competition of different ideas and opinions. Some of the influences on public policy described by Shaw and Eichbaum (2008) are the role that a government (and those who make up the government) play in the economy, the values ​​that people from different backgrounds have, and what resources are involved. politics is usually made to achieve a certain goal. This goal can be expressed positively or negatively. Shaw and Eichbaum (2008) use the examples of economic growth as positive and the reduction of child abuse as negative. Whether it is a positive or negative goal, the ultimate goal is to bring about an improvement for the country as a whole. Majone (1989) has a different view from Shaw and Eichbaum regarding why... middle of paper... ....1) describes the importance of the "precautionary principle" in political analysis where prevention is seen as better than cure. This is demonstrated by a number of policies including the Bergen Declaration (ECE), the Rio Declaration and the “Maastricht Treaty” where measures must be taken to avoid any environmental degradation. When used in policy analysis, the precautionary principle allows analysts to move away from reactive policies that attempt to repair damage that has already happened to the environment, towards a more sustainable system of preventing the damage that occurs in the first place. I believe that policy analysis is necessary to solve environmental problems as it provides a better understanding of the problem, the implications of the problem, the history of the problem, the parties involved, the end goal and the ways in which you can measure the achievement of the goal.