Issues in Brief Series

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https://hdl.handle.net/2144/22703

Issues in Brief, is a series of policy briefs that began in 2008 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 34

Conspicuously absent: shipping emissions in climate change policy
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2017-03) Cowing, Rebecca
The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement relies on state actors to meet self-determined greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets by self-determined means. In this Issues in Brief, Rebecca Cowing explores the unique emissions reduction challenges posed by the integrated, multi-state nature of maritime shipping. Ninety percent of all international trade by volume is transported by ship, accounting for nearly three percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. While the world’s highest-emitting countries set goals to cap or reduce emissions in the near future, marine shipping emissions continue to rise, and are expected to account for 6-14 percent of the global share by 2050. Cowing explores the question of who “owns” shipping emissions and presents the four options under consideration for the past two decades for allocating those emissions to individual countries. She concludes that without a robust methodology for assigning responsibility of shipping emissions and the proper incentives for states to include these emissions in their national totals, it will be nearly impossible to meaningfully reduce emissions from the sector. Rebecca Cowing is a 2016 graduate of Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies with a Master’s in International Relations and Environmental Policy. Her master’s thesis examined the complexities of international maritime shipping and the difficulties surrounding the mitigation of the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions. She currently works for the World Wildlife Fund in the Chinese Markets division.
Diffusion of microfinance in development: the role of U.S. philanthropic foundations
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2017-02) Bryant, Emily
Microfinance programs that provide small loans to poor people engaging in income-generating activities is a common means of supporting international development and poverty alleviation efforts. In this Issues in Brief, Emily Bryant, a Boston University doctoral candidate in Sociology and 2015 Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellow, explores the role that U.S. philanthropic foundations played in helping to create the organizational infrastructure that allowed for the diffusion of such programs. Her first-of-its-kind analysis looks at the amount and type of support that various sizes and kinds of U.S. foundations devoted to microfinance over time, and finds that the early support of older, wealthier foundations paved the way for microfinance to become a new type of poverty alleviation program starting in the late 1970s. “Understanding what characterizes foundations and their support sheds light on the diffusion of international development strategies and points to how NGO workers and development practitioners might harness foundations’ capacity for institutional entrepreneurship,” Bryant writes. Emily Bryant is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Boston University, where she was 2015 Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellow. Her work has focused on international criminal tribunals as well as U.S. philanthropic support for international microfinance. Her dissertation examines the decision-making practices of American foundations engaged in international grantmaking.
Transboundary threats in the Mekong basin: protecting a crucial fishery
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2017-01) Altman, Irit
In this Issues in Brief, Pardee Center Visiting Research Fellow Irit Altman looks at the impacts that dams in the upper Mekong River basin have on the critically important fishery in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia. Altman explores how development of dams, in combination with a failure of regional governance, has threatened the ecological sustainability of the lake and its watershed, and the livelihoods of people in the region. She identifies strategies to enhance the resilience of the Tonle Sap fishery and improve the lives of people who are connected to this unique ecosystem. Irit Altman is a Pardee Center Visiting Research Fellow and Research Assistant Professor of Biology at Boston University. A marine and freshwater ecologist, she works with an interdisciplinary research team to develop ecosystem models that integrate scientific knowledge and inform decision-making. She has extensive experience working with field experts and decision makers in Cambodia to understand system change and explore sustainability options in the Tonle Sap ecosystem.
Improving women’s reproductive health in India by educating men and families
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2016-03) Venkatesh, Maanasa
In this Issues in Brief, 2015 Pardee Graduate Summer Fellow Maanasa Venkatesh argues that reproductive health care for women – as well as men – would improve in India if health care providers included men and marital family members in discussions and education about women’s reproductive health issues. She cites research that has shown that effective reproductive health programs consider cultural decision-making norms and include the partners and other family members who are directly involved in decisions about seeking reproductive health care. She writes “There is discomfort acknowledging that the role of traditional social norms and decision-making dynamics don’t fit with widely-held perceptions of modern female agency. Yet public health efforts have been found to be most effective with they understand and work with existing social structures to achieve change through education and dialogue.” Maanasa Venkatesh was a 2015 Graduate Summer Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. She completed her MBBS in India and earned a master’s degree in Public Health at the Boston University School of Public Health in 2016. She is presently working as a junior resident doctor in Chennai, India. Her research interests include women’s health and equity in international health.
Smallholder challenges in the growing palm oil industry
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2015-05) Wissler, Laurie
2014 Pardee Graduate Summer Fellow Laurie Wissler explores the challenges faced by smallholder palm oil farmers, particularly in Southeast Asia. Smallholders operating less than 50 hectares of land produce about one-third of the global palm oil supply, but their livelihoods are threatened by land conflicts, market vulnerability, and low crop yields. She concludes that action by domestic governments, industry stakeholders, and NGOs is needed to protect smallholders and to continue to meet the growing global demand for palm oil.
Five challenges to the future of transboundary water governance
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2014-08) Sullivan, Leeann M.
Pardee 2013 Graduate Summer Fellow Leeann Sullivan uses the Okavango River in Southern Africa as a case study to discuss the key challenges of the future of transboundary water governance. She argues that while local-level management has been successful thus far, climate change and rapid socio-economic development pose basin-wide challenges that communities cannot address alone. By creating a regional framework to help communities tackle issues of communication, governance, financial stability, resource allocation, and data management, water managers may be able to strengthen political and environmental resilience in the basin. She concludes that lessons drawn from the integration of management systems in the Okavango could inform practices for sustainable water management in a more global context.
The Minamata Convention and the future of mercury abatement
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2013-10) Selin, Henrik
Pardee Faculty Fellow Henrik Selin examines the new Minamata Convention on Mercury, a global agreement intended to “protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and releases of mercury and mercury compounds.” Selin argues that the new convention is “more legally and politically important than environmentally significant.” To achieve truly meaningful reductions in mercury releases to the environment and threats to human health, he says collaborative measures must be enacted across global, regional, national, and local scales of governance, with support from inter-governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and industry associations.
Water resources development: engineering the future of global health
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2013-03) Gergel, Diana
Pardee 2012 Summer Graduate Fellow Diana R. Gergel argues that not enough attention is paid to the public health challenge of various water-borne diseases and their relationship to the engineering design of dams in developing countries. She explores the ways in which water resources development can be planned and executed to minimize the risk of spreading or worsening water-borne diseases in nearby communities. While water resources development in the form of irrigation systems, dams, and reservoirs is essential to sustainable development on the African continent, they profoundly alter water landscapes and the surrounding ecosystems, leading to the spread of water-borne diseases. She concludes with a number of feasible solutions to this problem by altering engineering design techniques to mitigate these diseases.
The IMF's new view on financial globalization: a critical assessment
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2012-12) Gallagher, Kevin
In December 2012, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a new “institutional view” on capital account liberalization and the management of capital flows between countries. In this Issues in Brief, Kevin P. Gallagher, one of the co-chairs of the Pardee Center Task Force on Regulating Global Capital Flows for Long-Run Development, offers his assessment of the IMF’s new position. The IMF’s “institutional view” historically tempers the IMF’s advocacy of capital account liberalization and even endorses the regulation of cross-border finance in some circumstances. What is more, the IMF points out that many trade and investment treaties do not provide the appropriate level of policy space to regulate cross-border finance when needed. This is truly landmark, given that the IMF attempted to legally mandate worldwide capital account liberalization in the 1990s. The turnaround is largely a function of the persistence of emerging market and developing country members of the Fund, in addition to some innovative economists on the IMF staff. Unfortunately however, those voices did not fully prevail. The IMF view still urges capital account liberalization as a long-run goal for all nations, only sanctions regulating cross-border finance under limited circumstances, and puts too much of the burden for regulation on emerging market countries, rather than the industrialized world that is often the source of this finance. The brief reiterates the “rules of thumb” put forward by the Pardee Center Task Force in 2011 that should be considered when devising capital account regulations applicable to developing countries.
Religion, social movements, and zone of crisis in Latin America
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2012-11) Junge, Benjamin; Rubin, Jeffrey; Smilde, David
Based on the outcomes of a three-year project led by Boston University’s Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs (CURA), this Issues in Brief explores the connections between religion and social movements in Latin America, especially in areas where efforts have been made to expand citizens’ rights and institute reforms to improve social justice. The authors use examples presented by collaborating scholars at the project’s conferences to show how religion is, in fact, an intrinsic part of everyday life and has played an important role in both revolutions and evolutions toward democracy in the region. They argue that any assessment of where Latin America has been and where it is headed must understand and consider “the multiple roles played by religion as citizens fight for new rights and reshape democratic politics.”
Global financial reform and trade rules: the need for reconciliation
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2012-09) Gallagher, Kevin; Stanley, Leonardo
In the wake of the global financial crisis, many economists and policymakers are advocating the use of regulations to control the cross-border flows of capital. However, such capital account regulations (known as CARs) often are limited or prohibited by commonly-used provisions in trade and investment treaties. This policy brief describes the outcomes of a “compatibility review” between the ability to implement capital account regulations and standard provisions of the global trading system. It argues that changes should be made so that the two systems are more compatible, providing countries – especially developing countries – with the policy space to employ CARs to stabilize their economies and stave off boom-and-bust cycles and still participate in bi-lateral and multi-lateral trade and investment treaties.
Free trade and inclusive development: lessons from the Indian experience
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2012-04) Nabar-Bhaduri, Suranjana
Can trade liberalization result in long-term economic growth for developing countries? In this Issues in Brief, Pardee Center Post-doctoral Fellow Suranjana Nabar-Bhaduri argues that the experiences of Latin America and, more recently, India, have shown that liberalization must be complemented by industrial and employment generation policies if the process of economic growth is to be made more sustainable and inclusive. She compares both the policies in place and the employment and productivity numbers for pre- and post-liberalization India, and suggests industrial and employment policies need to be coupled with trade liberalization for a positive outcome.
Capital account regulations for stability and development: a new approach
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2011-11) Gallagher, Kevin; Griffith-Jones, Stephany; Ocampo, José Antonio
In the wake of the financial crisis numerous emerging market and developing countries have been deploying what have traditionally been referred to as ‘capital controls’ to curb excessive speculation on their currencies and domestic assets. In response to those efforts, French President Nicolas Sarkozy called on the International Monetary Fund to develop a set of guidelines for the use of capital controls. The goal is for the President to present such guidelines at the G-20 Summit in Cannes this year. The IMF has published a preliminary set of guidelines to that end. This policy brief provides a critical review of those guidelines and offers an alternative protocol for a development friendly-approach to capital account regulation. In this policy brief, the co-conveners of the Pardee Center Task Force on Managing Capital Flows for Long-Run Development argue that capital account regulations (CARs) should be viewed as an essential tool in the macroeconomic policy toolkit. Based on discussions that occurred at the Task Force meeting in September 2011, the authors present an alternative set of guidelines for how and when CARs should be employed, and call for international financial institutions and international trade agreements to ensure that policy space remains available to allow developing countries to employ CARs when deemed necessary for financial stability and economic development.
Adulthood denied: youth dissatisfaction and the Arab Spring
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2011-10) Mulderig, M. Chloe
This Issues in Brief discusses the role that youth played in “the Arab Spring” of 2011 in terms of the inability of young people to progress to adulthood following traditional cultural channels and rites of passage. M. Chloe Mulderig, a 2011 Pardee Graduate Summer Fellow and Boston University doctoral candidate in anthropology who has done extensive field work in the Arab world, discusses the social, cultural, and market forces that have thrust much of a generation of Arab youth into a “liminal state of pre-adulthood” and the implications that has for the future of Arab countries.
Perceptions of climate change: the role of art and the media
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2011-02) Muñoz, Miquel; Sommer, Bernd
The public perception of climate change is strongly influenced by what people read and see in the popular press and, increasingly, in the work of artists. Based largely on discussions that occurred at an October 2010 symposium held at Boston University titled Transatlantic Perceptions of Climate Change: The Role of the Arts and Media, supported by the Goethe-Institut Boston and the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Essen (KWI). Reflecting on the conversations at that symposium, this paper explores the role that the media and the arts play in shaping whether and how people view climate change as an issue of concern for society.
The future of corporate social responsibility reporting
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2011-01) Maguire, Matthew
The number of companies that do some type of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting has risen dramatically in the past 15 years, especially among large international corporations. But the form and content of such reports can vary dramatically among the nearly 4,000 companies that file them. In this paper, 2010 Pardee Graduate Summer Fellow Matthew Maguire explores the current state of corporate social responsibility reporting in various countries and where the future of CSR may be headed. Will CSR become mainstream?
China and the future of Latin American industrialization
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2010-10) Gallagher, Kevin
The rise of China has created an unprecedented demand for Latin American and Caribbean exports, which has helped boost the region’s growth for almost a decade. But ultimately, such export growth may not be sustainable. Perhaps even worse, Chinese manufactured goods are more competitive than those from Latin America in both home and world markets. These twin trends may jeopardize prospects for long-term growth in the region. Based on research for his most recent book, economist and trade expert Kevin Gallagher discusses how China’s rise to prominence on the world trade scene has affected Latin America and what Latin America might learn from China’s ascendency to improve the long-term outlook for its own economic future.
Complex natural disasters and the role of the university
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2010-10) Silva, Enrique
What is the potential and future role of the university in disaster mitigation and humanitarian emergencies? The complexity and imminence of disasters and humanitarian emergencies demand multidisciplinary and innovative approaches, as has been seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake. In this brief, Enrique Silva suggests that universities need to harness the wealth of knowledge and interest within and across their institutions to think critically about and work creatively on “natural” disasters, and cites examples of how this effort has begun at Boston University and elsewhere.
Call for a corporate social conscience index
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2010-09) Watts, Stephanie
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a widely used term to describe how large companies adopt practices and policies that curb the potential negative impacts their operations can have on the surrounding environment and the community in which they are based. But companies’ claims of CSR behavior can be difficult to verify. This brief calls for the development of a “Corporate Social Conscience Index” as a mechanism for exerting some degree of transparency and accountability for CSR programs of large multinational companies. The author argues that by developing an index that provides insights to corporations’ excessive, unproductive spending as well as their activities related to environmental sustainability, job creation, and supply chain transparency, consumers along with policy makers, employees and researchers would be able determine whether a corporation is truly practicing corporate social responsibility and pressure more corporations to adopt meaningful CSR programs.
Mapping the complexity of higher education in the developing world
(Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, 2010-05) Campbell, David K.; Najam, Adil; Zaman, Muhammad Hamid
On October 27 and 28, 2009, a workshop of experts on higher education in developing countries was convened by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. The meeting was supported by a grant from the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative with additional support from the Pardee Center and the Office of the Boston University Provost. The meeting brought together experts in economics, public policy, education, development, university management, and quantitative modeling who had rich experiences across the developing world. These experts offered a variety of conceptual tools with which to look at the particular complexities associated with higher education in developing countries. The meeting was convened by the authors of this paper. This policy brief builds upon and reflects on the discussion at this meeting, but is not a meeting report, per se.

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