Innovation 2.0: Grantmaking to Transform America's Education Systems

As social and technological forces reshape the environment, the educational landscape is being similarly transfigured as parents, employers, policymakers and students grow impatient with incremental efforts to reform a broken system. Too often such efforts have proven both slow and inadequate to the evolving needs of learners: Innovations have been inequitably distributed, promising solutions have been difficult to implement at scale. Yet the signs of widespread change are real, and there is little doubt that transformation has begun

Implications Of Bulk Water Transfer On Local Water Management Institutions: A Case Study of the Melamchi Water Supply Project in Nepal

To mitigate a drinking water crisis in Kathmandu valley, the Government of Nepal initiated the Melamchi Water Supply Project in 1997, which will divert water from the Melamchi River to Kathmandu city's water supply network. In the first phase, the Project will divert 170,000 cubic meters of water per day (at the rate of 1.97M3/sec), which will be tripled using the same infrastructure as city water demand increases in the future. The large scale transfer of water would have farreaching implications in both water supplying and receiving basins. This paper analyzes some of the major changes related to local water management and socioeconomics brought about by the Project and in particular the changes in the local water management institutions in the Melamchi basin. Our study shows that traditional informal water management institutions were effective in regulating present water use practices in the water supplying basin, but the situation will vastly change because of the scale of water transfer, and power inequity between the organized public sector on one side and dispersed and unorganized marginal water users on the other. The small scale of water usage and multiple informal arrangements at the local level have made it difficult for the local users and institutions to collectively bargain and negotiate with the central water transfer authority for a fair share of project benefits and compensation for the losses imposed on them. The process and scale of project compensation for economic losses and equity over resource use are at the heart of the concerns and debates about the Melamchi water transfer decision. The Project has planned for a one-time compensation package of about US$18 million for development infrastructure related investments and is planning to share about one percent of revenue generated from water use in the city with the supplying basin. The main issues here are what forms of water sharing governance, compensation packages, and water rights structures would emerge in relation to the project implementation and whether they are socially acceptable ensuring equitable distribution of the project benefits to all basin communities. In addition, these issues of the Melamchi project discussed in this paper are equally pertinent to other places where rural to urban water transfer projects are under discussion

Enhancing Ontario’s Rural Infrastructure Preparedness: Inter-Community Service Sharing in a Changing Climate — Environmental Scan

Given the research that has been done in this environmental scan and the gaps found in this research, it is our aim to find out: What types of service sharing are going on in Ontario municipalities, particularly in rural/remote areas? How can inter-community service sharing (ICSS) benefit the asset management planning process in these rural/remote areas to enhance capacities for climate change resilience? Climate change (CC) will exacerbate deterioration to existing infrastructure and increase replacement costs. Improved preparedness reduces risks and increases efficiency, readiness and coping capacity. To increase the preparedness of Ontario rural communities, this project develops CC-Prepared Inter-Community Service Sharing (ICSS) as an innovative strategy that expands cost-effective solutions within Ontario’s standardized Asset Management Planning (AMP) process. Overseen by a Project Advisory Board (PAB), it identifies a suite of best practice ICSS processes and principles and a range of factors and indicators that influence the uptake of ICSS as a viable and practical opportunity targeted to enhance rural infrastructure preparedness for CC. It utilizes a multimethod, interdisciplinary approach involving an environmental scan, interviews, a survey and case studies and develops an ICSS Toolkit consisting of reports, workbook, policy brief and media kit. Knowledge translation and transfer (KTT) includes blogs, teleconferences, articles, presentations and a workshop. For small rural Ontario communities, this study enhances management of CC impacts on infrastructure through the development of a CC-Prepared ICSS strategy, increasing anticipatory, collective actions that reduce dam age and increase efficiencies. It informs sound municipal/provincial level programs and policies about innovative ICSS that benefit rural communities through the identification of Ontario-wide trends, case study best practises and action-oriented recommendations

Institutional change and collective action: The case of reclamation systems in Northwest Poland

This paper examines two drastic changes in the performance of local water associations in providing local public goods - appropriate levels of water table - in the reclamation system in the Powiat Pyrzyce in the Voivodship Zachodniopomorski in northwest Poland. Employing an institutional economics approach shows the results of processes of revalorisation of the interrelated property objects land and reclamation infrastructure that have been triggered and shaped not only by the drastic political, economic and administrative changes after the breakdown of the socialist regime in Poland in 1990, but also by the prospect of joining the European Union and the proactive leadership of the director of the Powiat Department of Environmental Protection, Forestry and Agriculture. More precisely, both processes - the discontinuation (from 1990 onwards) and revival (from 2002 onwards) of the local water associations - were mainly determined by changing market conditions together with variances in the ability of state authorities to effectively control and facilitate these associations. Further, the delay in overcoming the period of collective inaction was fostered by the time-delayed and cumulative effects of neglecting the cleaning and the maintenance of secondary ditches. --Collective action,institutional change,reclamation systems

Conflict, Resistance and Alliances in a Multi-Governance Setting: Reshaping Realities in the Andhra Pradesh Irrigation Reforms \ud

In this article, we will explore how local politics of policy, in the interaction with governance mechanisms, have produced specific polity outcomes in the irrigation sector of Andhra Pradesh. The water sector of Andhra Pradesh, which has been struggling within inefficiency, poor performance, deterioration, and lack of participation as elsewhere in India, has undergone substantial reforms aiming at Participatory Irrigation Management (PIM). Previous research has indicated how reform policy choices were contested and mediated by relevant actors and how this affected the outcome in key areas of irrigation management. This is referred to as the politics of policy. We will look at multi-level governance in a situation where different tiers represent different institutional basis, and argue that the politics of policy at multiple levels of governance can be perceived as a form of support and/or resilience by actors to new governance mechanisms/arrangement