While climate change isn’t really very directly my area of expertise, most of the scholarly research I undertake has deals with public service delivery decisions, budget allocations and policy choices under multiple constraints. Determining where to allocate scarce funds within the domestic policy arena is hard enough, one can only imagine the multiple degrees and layers of complexity that addressing climate change brings along.

I just learned of a new Policy Forum paper by my colleagues at UBC Simon Donner, Milind Kandlikar and Hisham Zerriffi where they address these questions. Donner et al indicate that mechanisms should be implemented to ensure that the funding goes to critical areas to tackle the most pressing challenges.

You can read the Policy Forum abstract of Donner, Kandlikar and Zerriffi (2011) here:

At the 2010 Cancun Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the international community agreed in principle to one of the largest development programs in history. The developed nations pledged to mobilize U.S.$100 billion per year by the year 2020 to “address the needs of developing countries” in responding to climate change. The funds, which may apply to adaptation and mitigation, are proposed to flow through multiple channels, including existing development banks, official development assistance, bilateral programs, international private investment flows (e.g., carbon markets), and other public and private mechanisms. Recommendations provided by a transitional committee for the management and operation of the proposed climate change financing will be considered by the parties to the UNFCCC at the upcoming conference in Durban, South Africa

My own research has used integrated assessment (a set of heuristics to integrate multiple disciplines to provide policy-makers with robust suggestions on policy decisions) to address issues of industrial restructuring. One of the tenets of integrated assessment is to focus on where resources can be better spent so maximum effectiveness can be attained with the least investment.

In their paper, Donner, Kandlikar and Zerriffi have sought to spell out sound policy recommendations on how financing should occur. From the media release at UBC:

Donner, Kandlikar and Zerriffi provide specific recommendations for ensuring that countries meet the funding commitment, that waste and misappropriation are minimized and that money is directed to the most effective programs. These guidelines include instituting an “adaptive” regulatory system to close funding loopholes, employing a decentralized network of third-party auditors and adopting a scientific approach to evaluating program effectiveness.

It will be very interesting to see if policy-makers and participants in COP 17 in Durban will listen to the sound advice of these UBC scholars.

Admittedly, I’m what some scholars would call an “early career/young scholar”. But I have also seen senior faculty members and academics of all walks of life adopt and embrace social media. Here are 4 ways in which I have enhanced my own research agenda using social media.

1. Build a network of like-minded scholars: When I was a graduate student, during my PhD, I e-mailed just about every Canadian environmental policy scholar. I dropped by their offices to introduce myself, chat about our scholarly research, etc. That is how I built a network of academics who work in the environmental policy field, worldwide. Mostly, through list-serves, one-on-one meetings and e-mails. With social media, building a network doesn’t necessitate you dropping by someone’s office. All you need to do is follow each other on Twitter, share tips, ideas, have a conversation, etc. On Twitter, I have met some of the nicest (and brightest) scholars, both at the graduate-student level and graduated PhDs (and non-PhDs) who are working in specific policy fields where I have scholarly interests.
2. Follow specific research themes and topics: I have built a social media monitoring dashboard (much like my friend Alexandra Samuel has proposed on her site – Alexandra is also a political scientist and a social media expert, whose opinion I do trust). Through that monitoring dashboard I make sure that I keep my fingers on specific research themes (water governance being one of the major ones).
3. Provide service to the scholarly community: As a graduate student, my former PhD advisor’s mentorship meant the world to me. He shepherded my PhD process and helped me succeed by ultimately getting my doctorate. But I owe mentorship not only to him. I was advised and helped by many senior scholars who took the time to read my drafts, critique my thoughts, share their expertise. So I do the same, through a specific community: the #PhDChat network. While #PhDChat in itself is just a hashtag created by graduate students to have discussions on the PhD process (and support each other while doing it). I participate on the #PhDChat discussions providing mentorship and helpful suggestions on how students can make the best of the process. I do this because I believe in contributing to the scholarly community, particularly the young, up-and-coming scholars.
4. Share my scholarly expertise and build credibility online: I learned (the hard way) about how important it is to build a brand (YOUR brand) online. Many people who read my personal blog would forget that I am first and foremost an academic. So I began writing a research blog (this one) where I share small snippets of my research. I also cross-post a link to my research blog entries to my professional Twitter account and my professional Facebook page. A number of scholars have contacted me in the past couple of years because I blog about my research interests and activities. Having a blog also enables me to discuss scholarship that I am interested in digesting, by sharing my preliminary results and/or research questions that come to my mind.

photo credit: Latvian Foreign Ministry

Professor Eugene Bardach is, in my opinion, one of the most practical policy analysts out there. An emeritus professor at University of California Berkeley, Professor Bardach wrote a practical, widely cited, the Eightfold Path to More Effective Problem Solving: A Practical Guide to Policy Analysis. I have used his text and many of his articles not only in my research but also in my teaching (POLI 350A Public Policy).

As I prepare to teach The Comparative Politics of Public Policy (e.g. examining cross-national variations in national public policies, or at the regional level, cross-regional changes), I thought it would be a great exercise for me, for my students and for my readers to conduct a full policy analysis (national or regional level, I don’t expect to do cross-national comparisons) using Bardach’s method.

I plan to write separate blog posts for each one of the steps of Bardach’s model to help my readers (and my students) understand how policy analysis is conducted, in real life. I have been thinking for a long time as to which policies I would like to analyze. I know that the Burrard bike trial could be one, where there’s at least *some* data. I could look at the ban on water bottles at the municipal level.

So, have your say on here. Suggest policy decisions that you would like me to examine using Bardach’s model. I’ll consider all options, primarily based on the amount of information we have available. I’ll decide by early next week (the first week of November, 2009). Drop a comment on this post with your suggestions. It can be a Vancouver, Lower Mainland or Canadian issue, or an international one.

With burgeoning electronic arts, gaming and information technology industries, Vancouver industrial base appears to be poised to become fundamentally a creative/information society. Clusters of Information Technology (IT) firms have emerged in Gastown and Yaletown (an area that used to be primarily derelict industrial) and this area continues to flourish with new tech-based startups (Hutton 2008). Vancouver isn’t the first city where this has occurred. Several European (including Barcelona and Milan) and Latin American cities have experienced the growth of information-based industries (a process that I have called tertiarization – Pacheco-Vega 2008, Evans 2009).

When I conducted my doctoral dissertation research, I focused on the evolutionary transformation of two cities and the industrial clusters that were embedded in them. I have been puzzled by the re-emergence of a trend to change land use from industrial to residential, sparked in part by the decline of industrial activity in certain urban centres. This coupled industrial/urban restructuring presents a number interesting challenges: how can we provide enough land for residential purposes and what to do about the shifting industrial base in the city.

In a city that is contained and encased (surrounded by oceans on one side and by other municipalities at the south and east), Vancouver has no additional land base to grow horizontally and therefore, planners in this city have needed to consider vertical growth and increased urban density. At the same time, an increasing amount of industrial land has been shifted to residential use (for example, the case of the South East False Creek area).

Both themes (the evolutionary dynamics of urban/industrial land use and the need for increased density) are worthy of examination, and I plan to write about them on this blog in the near future, but for now, I want to just focus on the second one (increased density), since it’s the topic of the recently approved laneway housing proposal that is embedded within the EcoDensity initiative. For those not familiar with EcoDensity, you can read the full Executive Summary of the initiative.

A cursory and preliminary literature review (using Google Scholar and library databases) yielded very little to no academic analysis of the initiative itself (a surprising finding, I might add). I did find some articles and a Masters thesis that dealt in some tangential way with the initiative, but nothing really in-depth on the initiative itself (which gives me great hope for this being a good research project). I am puzzled about EcoDensity (and frankly, skeptical) for several reasons:

First, affordability is dependent not on the capacity of home buyers or renters to purchase or rent, but on the price that developers and renters charge. This price is not controlled by the government and therefore one of the two “auxiliary” wheels in the EcoDensity charter ends being a moot point. Last year you could easily read the advertisements for “spacious 480 sq ft” apartments priced in the $ 300,000 mark (in Vancouver).

Second, livability has embedded substantial psychological considerations. The psychology of buyers and/or renters can’t be influenced by policy decisions. I currently live in a small apartment that is near 500 sq ft. For me, compared to my parents’ house, this apartment is ridiculously small. For me, it’s livable. I don’t know if my parents would have chosen to live in such a small space. For many of my friends, the idea of a house (single family dwelling) with a backyard is what they would call a livable home.

Third, increased density doesn’t guarantee increased sustainability. There are strong arguments in favor of the idea that increased density leads to a lower ecological footprint, including the fact that having more dense regions would mean that residents would have access to more services (and they would be able to reach there by more sustainable, less-impacting means – including walking and/or cycling). But there is no guarantee that this will be the case. The element that policy makers seem to forget here is that behavioral change is not easy. I can assure you that there are people who live in really dense areas who still drive just a few blocks (I’ve witnessed this myself).

I am really curious to see the actual effect of laneway housing and secondary suites on housing affordability. While I am glad that the city recognizes that affordability is a complex issue, I would like to see a more fleshed-out scheme within the EcoDensity charter to influence affordability.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, these are just preliminary thoughts. I’ve always been intrigued by the urban planning processes of the city that I’ve called home for almost a decade, and the EcoDensity initiative (and the collateral discussions) could be a good case study. Now, if I only had a research grant to undertake such analysis!

I am, as always, interested in your thoughts on EcoDensity, the laneway housing proposal, the secondary suites proposal.

I’ve been studying transnational social movements for about a decade, and in my research I have found one of the most used strategies ENGOs tend to use is public protest. I’ve been fascinated by some organizations’ choice of disruptive techniques not because I think they are particularly effective but because I always wonder its effectiveness. In my research, I have found that many ENGOs that use lobbying, letter-writing, sitting on intergovernmental panels and providing advice as influencing strategies are much more effective than disruption.

There has been a substantial amount of discussion in the online realm on the effectiveness of Critical Mass (a bicycling flash-mob-type of gathering once a month where bikers take the streets in an effort to raise awareness about the need for sustainable modes of transportation – aimed to reduce car usage). While I can fully see the value of a movement like this to raise awareness, and I am a big cycling as a mode of sustainable transportation, lately the perception of its impact on Vancouver has been that it has become less effective in elevating the discourse to issues of sustainable transportation and has become more disruptive.

I fully support the core principle behind Critical Mass but I disagree fundamentally with its disruptive nature. Let me make three points.

First, the flash-mob nature of the movement diminishes the degree to which participants are accountable. Without clear leadership, nobody is accountable for the impact Critical Mass can have on people’s lives (for however short period of time). What will happen if somebody is in an ambulance heading towards St. Paul’s Hospital and Critical Mass disrupts traffic and the patient dies? Who should be held accountable and who would be responsible? Nobody, since Critical Mass has “no leader”

Second, the degree to which disruption occurs has diminished its effectiveness as an awareness-raising event. It has become unruly social disorder. Disruptive mobilizations have a place in social movements, but when Critical Mass’ mandate has been overshadowed by the general perception that it alienates people, making drivers furious and leading to confrontations, then it’s time to change the strategy.

Third, the non-cooperative approach of the movement creates confrontations. These face-offs between drivers and bikers preclude finding any solid, sustainable approaches to increase awareness. A sustainable transportation policy by nature requires stakeholders to negotiate points of agreement and common ground. But given that there is no apparent leadership and no accountability, there is no way to create common ground amongst actors.

I asked online – “when is the tipping point? when does disruption become unruly social order?”. I think Critical Mass creators and their proponents should re-think this and their strategies. A democratic society is a collaborative society, not a confrontational one.

I would appreciate your thoughts about Critical Mass in the comments section. Let’s begin the dialogue.

Global warming protest outside Washington Park (Photo: Pembleton/Flickr)

Citizen participation in North American environmental policy-making has had some ebbs and flows, with an increase in participation in some of the CEC’s strategies and programs. Two mechanisms were specifically designed to allow for citizen participation within the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (NACEC or CEC for short). The first mechanism is the Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC), a tri-national advisory board comprised by citizens from all three countries, and from varied backgrounds (industry, academia, non-governmental organizations).

The second one is the Citizen Submission on Enforcement Matters programme (CSEM), based on Articles 14 and 15 of the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). This mechanism provides civil society organizations with the opportunity to play a “whistleblower” role. Any concerned citizen from any of the three countries can prepare and present a submission to the CEC Secretariat denouncing a country for failing to comply with its own environmental laws (NACEC 2001). The CEC Secretariat’s Office of Submissions on Enforcement Matters reviews the submission and assesses whether the submission actually warrants a response from the concerned country.

In this talk, I will provide an overview of a tri-national, collaborative project that examines CSEM. Our objective in this research project is to develop an empirical basis on which to explore the theoretical and applied aspects of civil society involvement on environmental policy-making. We focus on (amongst other aspects), how ENGOs use a trinational policy reform (CSEM). The CSEM is a mechanism built into the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation, designed to avoid “races to the bottom” and “pollution havens”. In theory, this type of institutional reform should empower civil society organizations to hold nation-states accountable.

We were particularly interested in undertaking an independent assessment on three key aspects. First, are citizen claims an effective mechanism to influence domestic environmental policy enforcement? Second, does this mechanism provide an opportunity for ENGOs to come together and form transnational advocacy networks? And third, what (if any) are the tangible impacts of the CSEM mechanism? As we have conducted our research, these objectives have had to be adapted and modified. I will offer preliminary results of our collaborative effort and suggest the direction that our project will take in the foreseeable future.

Credit: Gripso Banana Prune

Traditional theories of industrial restructuring assign the most explanatory weight of the structural change phenomenon to increasing pressures via globalization and falling trade barriers. In this talk, I will describe a new model of thinking about industrial restructuring that includes multiple stressors. The research focuses on three main drivers of structural change: market pressures, environmental regulation and changes in land use and land pricing, using two case studies of leather and footwear industrial clusters in Mexico, located in the cities of León and Guadalajara. Evidence of multiple drivers of structural change is found. Furthermore, responses to restructuring drivers in León and Guadalajara are found to be substantially different. Firms in the leather and footwear cluster in León have implemented countervailing strategies such as price competition, government lobbying, and more recently, investment in socio-economic research (competitiveness) projects. However, firms in the leather and footwear cluster in Guadalajara focused on a specific, high-end target market.

At the larger, urban scale, footwear and its allied industries in the city of León resisted change and have tried to remain in operation while the city of Guadalajara has focused on a diversification strategy, attracting new (arguably more technically advanced) industries.

Empirically, this project applies a firm demographics approach to the study of industrial clusters under multiple stressors. This approach has not been previously used on Mexican data. Theoretically, it demonstrates that future analyses of industrial complexes’ structural change can be strengthened through the use of an integrated assessment framework investigating the effect of multiple stressors (market forces, land pricing, technical change, environmental regulations, and consumer preferences) on industrial restructuring.