Ensure a Healthy Start: Prevent and Reduce Childhood Exposure to Harmful Chemicals

This brief provides an explanation of key concepts and considerations funders will encounter when exploring philanthropic opportunities in a new topic area, and strategies and resources funders can leverage to achieve high impact.It also presents an overview of key issues involved in addressing childhood exposure to harmful chemicals in the U.S., and several strategies for funder engagement. The brief reflects our synthesis of over 20 publications, studies, and websites, as well as several conversations with academics, funders, and nonprofits working in this space. To illustrate how funders can support the identified strategies, we included several organizations that were cited in our review of the literature and/or mentioned by those we consulted. We have not analyzed their impact and cost-effectiveness. As always, we hope this brief helps funders move from good intentions to high impact

Economic alternatives and childhood poverty

Current national and international economic policies are exerting ever more direct pressures on children's lives and futures. This paper reviews key concerns and contradictions in neoliberal economic policies' effects on childhood. Alternative feminist and green economics and critical theory critiques of neoliberalism are summarised and their implications for childhood poverty are considered. In conclusion there are suggestions about sustainable green economics for childhood to take account of the problems of advocating perpetual economic growth in a finite planet. Copyright © 2008, Inderscience Publishers

POLICY OF NATIONALISM GUIDANCE THROUGH IN TRADITIONAL MARKET MANAGEMENT IN CENTRAL JAVA

A research on policy nationalism guidance through in traditional markets management in the province of Central Java is implemented in “Pasar Gede Solo” with qualitative methods. The reason for selecting “Pasar Gede Solo” because of Solo City has a lot of cultural heritages that are still held strong until today. The cultural heritage is the local identity. The Local identity can develop into the province identity, then to be the national identity. A strong national identity shows high Nationalism which reflected from loyalty, passion and pride of the nation itself. The number of local identities in “Pasar Gede Solo” is likely to evolve into national identity should be encouraged to preserve the Government's policy to strengthen Indonesia Nationalism

Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood: The European Community Stays on the Path to Strict Liability

Part I of this Note will briefly outline Community policy on product liability as detailed by the Product Liability Directive, then review the development of product liability law in various Member States of the European Community. Part II will analyze how the concept of state-of-the-art highlighted tensions between a strict liability regime and a negligence regime in U.S. product liability. It will then review similar discord in the European Community caused by the development risk defense. Finally, Part III of this Note will argue that in contrast to the United States, the European Community has thus far chosen to stay true to the strict product liability label in its implementation of the development risk defense

UNH Law Alumni Magazine, Winter 2003

https://scholars.unh.edu/alumni_mag/1021/thumbnail.jp

Opponents and supporters of water policy change in the Netherlands and Hungary

This paper looks at the role of individuals and the strategies that they use to bring about or oppose major policy change. Current analysis of the role that individuals or small collectives play in periods of major policy change has focussed on strategies that reinforce change and on the supporters of change. This paper adds the perspective of opponents, and asks whether they use similar strategies as those identified for supporters. Five strategies are explored: developing new ideas, building coalitions to sell ideas, using windows of opportunity, playing multiple venues and orchestrating networks. Using empirical evidence from Dutch and Hungarian water policy change, we discuss whether individuals pursued these strategies to support or oppose major policy change. Our analysis showed the significance of recognition of a new policy concept at an abstract level by responsible government actors, as well as their engagement with a credible regional coalition that can contextualise and advocate the concept regionally. The strategies of supporters were also used by opponents of water policy change. Opposition was inherent to policy change, and whether or not government actors sought to engage with opponents influenced the realisation of water policy change

Global Warming and the Problem of Policy Innovation: Lessons From the Early Environmental Movement

When it comes to influencing government decisions, special interests have some built-in advantages over the general public interest. When the individual members of special interest groups have a good deal to gain or lose as a result of government action, special interests can organize more effectively, and generate benefits for elected officials, such as campaign contributions and other forms of political support. They will seek to use those advantages to influence government decisions favorable to them. The public choice theory of government decision making sometimes comes close to elevating this point into a universal law, suggesting that the general public interest can never prevail over powerful special interests. In the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, Congress enacted numerous significant environmental laws, laws that continue to form the backbone of federal policies toward environmental problems. These laws were truly innovative in their policies and their designs, and they pitted the general public interest in improving environmental quality against powerful, special interests. In each case, the general public interest was able to prevail. This policy “window” did not stay open for long. It was quickly succeeded by an extended period in which enacting additional innovative statutes has proven nearly impossible, which continues to this day. Yet we need innovative approaches to address continuing and emerging environmental problems more than ever. This is self-evidently true with respect to the problem of global warming and climate change. The questions worth asking are whether we can identify the factors that once made policy innovation possible in the late 1960s and early 1970s and if those factors can be produced once again. For the public’s David to be able to stand up against the special interest Goliaths, a broad base of the public must first be mobilized, and then that mobilization must be sustained, which typically occurs when the public embraces a sense of great urgency. Urgency can be generated when the public appreciates that failure to address a problem threatens them or their loved ones with significant harm. Media attention plays a key role in creating the public’s awareness of any urgent problem. These factors can succeed in putting general concerns of the public on the public agenda, at which time acceptable proposals for workable solutions need to be available. When the first window for policy innovation opened up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, each of these favorable factors was present for many of our conventional pollution problems. At the same time, the strength of the special interests was at a low ebb. This Essay argues that under current circumstances, the conditions for policy innovation are not yet as favorable as they were in this earlier period. Strong presidential leadership may be capable of altering those conditions, but as yet the public’s concern about the adverse effects of climate change does not appear to have achieved the same strength or intensity as comparable concerns over conventional pollution problems had earlier

Trade, transition paths, and sustainable economies

The main criticisms of trade from a sustainability viewpoint are that it accelerates resource depletion and pollution, harms income distribution both locally and internationally, and undermines democratic institutions. After considering the relationship between trade and "sustainability," this paper discusses a number of feedback mechanisms which promote the kind of trade that is more sustainable - for the South as well as the North. The role of technological change, a model of the relationship between production and "sustaining services," data needs and research priorities are also discussed