Gender mainstreaming and enlargement: the EU as negligent actor?

In its relations with the ‘near abroad’, and in particular with countries eager to attain membership status, the ability of the EU to adopt a proactive role in international politics has been very evident. Indeed, in the case of Central and East European applicants, the EU has used its position to play the role of mentor, shaping transition processes and policy preferences in order to ensure compatibility with the EU acquis. A notable exception in this case has been the EU’s evolving policy on gender relations. While there has been discussion of the formal, legal requirements of equality Directives, the EU’s declared strategy of gender mainstreaming has been disregarded. This absence represents a lost opportunity – for EU and CEEC officials to explore together the potential of, and impediments to, an effective mainstreaming strategy. This paper outlines the principles of gender mainstreaming, explains why gender issues are important in the context of enlargement and suggests reasons for the failure to adopt a mainstreaming strategy during the pre-enlargement period

A global actor past its peak?

Examining a range of policy areas in which the European Union (EU) acts externally – notably trade, development, climate change and foreign and security policy – this article considers the notion that the years since the mid-2000s have witnessed a decline in EU actorness/effectiveness. In evaluating EU performance, the article employs the interrelated concepts of presence, denoting EU status and influence; opportunity, denoting the external context of EU action; and capability, referring to EU policy processes and instruments, with particular reference to the impact of the 2009 Lisbon Treaty. It is contended that achievement of the increased capability envisaged by the Lisbon Treaty, together with resolution of the Eurozone crisis, with its deleterious effect upon the Union’s presence, would not fully compensate for the loss of opportunity provided by the changing international structure

Movements, Networks, Hierarchies: A Gender Perspective on Global Environmental Governance

Environmental governance may be distinguished from environmental management by the implication that, in the former, some form of participatory process is involved. Here, the focus is upon the potential for women's movements and networks to influence the principles and practices of global environmental governance (GEG). It is contended that, in principle, women are uniquely placed to oppose the dominant norms informing GEG; and that women's participation would, in consequence, be crucial to the achievement of equitable and environmentally sound forms of governance. In practice, however, a number of factors combine to create divisions between women, and hence to impede transnational mobilization by women around environmental issues. This article examines these issues. Copyright (c) 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Restricting 32-128 km horizontal scales hardly affects the MJO in the Superparameterized Community Atmosphere Model v.3.0 but the number of cloud-resolving grid columns constrains vertical mixing

The effects of artificially restricting the 32-128 km horizontal scale regime on MJO dynamics in the Superparameterized Community Atmosphere Model v.3.0 have been explored through reducing the extent of its embedded cloud resolving model (CRM) arrays. Two and four-fold reductions in CRM extent (from 128 to 64 km and 32 km) produce statistical composite MJO signatures with spatial scale, zonal phase speed, and intrinsic wind-convection anomaly structure that are all remarkably similar to the standard SPCAM's MJO. This suggests that the physics of mesoscale convective organization on 32-128 km scales are not critical to MJO dynamics in SPCAM and that reducing CRM extent may be a viable strategy for 400% more computationally efficient analysis of superparameterized MJO dynamics. However several unexpected basic state responses caution that extreme CRM domain reduction can lead to systematic mean state issues in superparameterized models. We hypothesize that an artificial limit on the efficiency of vertical updraft mixing is set by the number of grid columns available for compensating subsidence in the embedded CRM arrays. This can lead to reduced moisture ventilation supporting too much liquid cloud and thus an overly strong cloud shortwave radiative forcing, particularly in regions of deep convection. Key Points Physics of MMF MJO are insensitive to near elimination of meso-beta-scale The efficiency of deep convective mixing in MMFs is limited by CRM extent 4x speedup of superparameterized models possible for MJO analysi