**3. Conventional policymaking**

Policies are essentially government or private organisation statements of what these entities intend to do or not to do, including laws, regulations and decisions designed to achieve defined goals [15]. Public policies essentially are government statements that outline public plans of dealing with societal problems in terms of the relevant laws, regulations or orders that seeks to influence behaviour for longterm societal collective benefits [15]. However, despite stating their objectives and the enacting of laws, public policies in particular are often late and regularly deliver suboptimal outcomes. Such outcomes and associated delays result from compromises that are necessary to accommodate the diverse views of critical and powerful/ influential stakeholders active in the policymaking arena. With reference to public policy, the outcomes reflect the prevailing political system. The policy cycle is a conceptual model that outlines the formulation, implementation and revision of these plans [3, 16, 17]. The cycle comprises five political activities, namely, (i) agenda setting, (ii) policy formulation, (iii) policy adoption, (iv) implementation and (v) evaluation.

Agenda setting deals with selecting societal problems that require addressing through public policy interventions. Such problems could be local issues such as discernible crime levels, public transport concerns or global issues such environmental degradation and international trade and standards. Power dynamics and asymmetries in the cultural, political, social, economic or ideological arenas are important for either including or excluding societal issues in and from policy agendas [18, 19]. This implies that some important societal problems may not make it to the policy agenda especially those not championed by powerful constituencies as individuals and/or groups of elected or bureaucracy public officials, the media and the interest groups [18, 20]. An issue that makes it to the policy agenda then proceeds to the next process of policy formulation. This is the stage at which discussions seek to define the courses of action for dealing with particular societal challenges.

The related discussions take place in government bureaucracies, legislative bodies (i.e. parliament) interest group offices and public meetings, that is, special commissions, among other platforms [21]. Visible activities of policymaking inter alia include parliamentary debates, exchange between parliament and the executive and public policy enquiries. Power dynamics remain in play at this stage. For example, interest groups may work with the executive, parliament or even the senior civil servants to formulate policy. Some parliamentary representatives may owe the success of their campaigns to the financial backing of interest groups who expert particular policy positions as a return on their investment. This approach excludes other groups that may have different interests and views on the policy agenda. After policy formulation, policy adoption, which essentially is the official recognition of a policy, follows. This essentially is an exclusive domain of explicit actions of government institutions. Adoption is dependent on the majority of relevant actors such

as parliamentarians, either as individuals, representatives of particular groups or along party lines accepting the proposed policy [22]. The political systems play an important role in the policy adoption process. Absolute dictatorship, veto or other forms of executive powers can be used either to accept or reject a policy as earlier formulated or with modifications.

Accepted policies proceed to the implementation stage with the conversion of new laws and programmes into practice. A critical component of public policy implementation is capable and capacitated civil service in the bureaucratic structures of government. Implementation involves the interpretation of policy documents into operational frameworks. To this end, there is a need of clarity of policy objectives particularly where are the contestations around a particular. Ambiguity and conflict result in policy implementation challenges [23]. In addition, an accurate translation of policy documents into operational frameworks avoids the bureaucratic drift phenomenon [24], which is the shifting of policy away from its objective and towards the preference of the bureaucracy. After a period of implementation, it becomes necessary to evaluate the efficacy of the policy. This serves to ascertain if or not a policy has or is attaining its stated objectives. Evaluation examines if a policy has resulted in changes in practices and behaviours, satisfied needs such as increasing financial savings, addressing traffic congestion or addressing environmental concerns or has systematically addressed core societal problems and not mere symptoms of the problem(s). More important is that evaluation serves as feedback mechanism to either modify the existing policy for improved efficacy and identifying new challenges that in turn enter the policy cycle commencing with agenda setting. This gives rise to an interminable policy cycle. Alternatively, policy evaluation can lead to the termination of some policies.

The journey from agenda setting to policy adoption can be long. For example, in the international arena, the contribution of different countries in mitigating GHG is a hotly contested issue. The glimmer of hope that emerged after the Paris Agreement (COP 21) has somewhat been extinguished by the Donald Trump administration in the United States of America. Meanwhile GHG emissions continue to grow and with that global warming and ultimately climate change with its adverse impacts. In an ideal world, climate change needs the rapid development of a policy regime that manages climate change. More importantly, the policy must be evidence-driven and be flexible to rapid changes as dictated by emerging knowledge. Even more important is that the policy regime must confer systemic changes. This is a tall order in a globe with diverse interests and views. Nature often delivers on systemic changes that deliver widespread optimal outcome. Can policymaking learn from nature?
