Abstract: Environmental management plays a key role in the sustainable development of cities.

The effectiveness of environmental management is commonly examined through some evaluation

schemes, but the effectiveness of such evaluation schemes also needs to be verified. As such, in this

study, meta-evaluation was creatively introduced into environmental management to improve the

evaluation of environmental management (EEM). Meta-evaluation is the evaluation of an evaluation

scheme, and can verify and enhance the evaluation quality. First, a set of new meta-evaluation standards and criteria was proposed based on the unique characteristics of environmental management,

which made meta-evaluation standards more adaptable and effective. After that, the efficacy of

the proposed meta-evaluation standards was verified through their application to two evaluation

schemes used in different fields of EEM. Based on meta-evaluation, suggestions for improving

these two EEM schemes were also provided. The major contributions of this study are to introduce

meta-evaluation into environmental management, establish new evaluation standards, and examine

the efficacy of EEM. The research showed that it is critical to carry out meta-evaluation before and/or

after the implementation of EEM.

Keywords: meta-evaluation; evaluation of environmental management; standard; criteria; urban

sewage treatment; national key ecological function areas

1. Introduction

Meta-evaluation is “the evaluations of evaluation” [1], which can identify the limitations of an evaluation process itself [2]. In the literature, researchers have claimed

that the reliability of evaluation processes should be ensured and enhanced by carrying

out meta-evaluation [3], and meta-evaluation has now entered an era of application [4].

However, to date, few studies have been done on the theme of meta-evaluation, especially

in environmental science [5,6]. In fact, most evaluations of environmental management

(EEM), which is to discover the issues in environmental management and promote sustainable development [7–9], are based on the presumption that there is no problem with the

evaluation process itself.

EEM is a first-order evaluation method. According to the evaluation theories, firstorder evaluation has many common problems, and the results of EEM may be problematic [1]. For example, in Shaanxi province, China, key ecological function areas were set to

refer to areas that played an important role in water-holding, soil and water conservation,

flood control and storage, windbreak and sand-fixation, and biodiversity maintenance [10].

The local government improves the ecological quality of these areas through national key

ecological function areas management (NKEFAM). By evaluating NKEFAM, the provincial

government has claimed that national key ecological function areas were well managed,

and the ecological quality of almost all key ecological function areas was improved [11].

However, based on the analysis of remote sensing data, the ecological quality in some areas

of Shaanxi is actually deteriorating [12,13]. Even the evaluators of NKEFAM admitted that

Sustainability 2021, 13, 2567. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13052567 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability