Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Globalization And Environmental Stewardship: A Global Governance Perspective, Maria Ivanova, Daniel Esty

Maria Ivanova

No abstract provided.

Global Responses." Global Environmental Outlook 5. Nairobi, United Nations Environment Programme, Maria Ivanova, Ivar Baste, Bernice Lee, Satishkumar Belliethathan, Ibrahim Abdel Gelil, Joyeeta Gupta, Peter M. Haas, Zerisenay Habtezion, Achim Halpaap, Jennifer Clare Mohamed-Katerere, Peter King, Marcel Kok, Marcus Lee, Trista Patterson, Vivien Campal, Bradnee Chambers, Melissa Goodall, Slobodan Milutinovic, Felix Preston

Maria Ivanova

No abstract provided.

Institutional Design And Unep Reform: Historical Insights On Form, Function And Financing, Maria Ivanova

Maria Ivanova

Large-scale environmental problems captured the world’s attention in the early 1970s, as countries recognized the close links between environmental integrity and economic prosperity. In response to these problems, states created a system of international environmental governance, with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), established at the 1972 Stockholm Conference, at its core. Since then, the institutional framework has grown in size and complexity, with a steady increase in the number of institutions,1 agreements, meetings, reports, and actors; yet global environmental concerns remain largely unresolved. In the absence of clear goals, a shared vision, and effective communication and coordination among international …

Unep In Global Environmental Governance: Design, Leadership, Location, Maria Ivanova

Maria Ivanova

As debates on reform of global environmental governance intensify, the future of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has come into acute political focus. Many argue that the organization has faltered in its role as the UN's leading agency for the environment. In this article, I use historical institutional analysis in combination with current international relations and management theory to explain UNEP's creation and evolution. Having described how the creators of UNEP envisioned the nascent organization, I analyze its subsequent performance, identifying the key factors that have shaped its record. I argue that the original vision for UNEP was ambitious …

Unep As Anchor Organization For The Global Environment, Maria Ivanova

Maria Ivanova

No abstract provided.

Economists, Value Judgments, And Climate Change: A View From Feminist Economics, Julie Nelson

Julie A. Nelson

A number of recent discussions about ethical issues in climate change, as engaged in by economists, have focused on the value of the parameter representing the rate of time preference within models of optimal growth. This essay examines many economists' antipathy to serious discussion of ethical matters, and suggests that the avoidance of questions of intergenerational equity is related to another set of value judgments concerning the quality and objectivity of economic practice. Using insights from feminist philosophy of science and research on high reliability organizations, this essay argues that a more ethically transparent, real-world-oriented, and flexible economic practice would …

Shading Facilitates Sessile Invertebrate Dominance In The Rocky Subtidal Gulf Of Maine, Ron J. Etter, Robert J. Miller

Ron Etter

Dramatic shifts in community composition occur between vertical and horizontal rocky surfaces in subtidal environments worldwide, yet the forces mediating this transition are poorly understood. Vertical rock walls are often covered by lush, diverse communities of sessile suspension-feeding invertebrates, while adjacent horizontal substrates are dominated by algae, or corals in the tropics. Multiple factors, including light, sedimentation, water flow, and predation have been proposed to explain this pattern, but experimental tests of these hypotheses are lacking. We manipulated light level and predation to test whether variation in these mechanisms could be responsible for the shift in composition of sessile communities …

Reclaiming U.S. Leadership In Global Environmental Governance, Maria Ivanova

Maria Ivanova

The United States entered the 21st century actively pursuing a “go-it-alone” approach to international relations. This is especially the case in global environmental affairs, where the United States is now widely perceived as a laggard and even an obstacle to collective action. Yet, the United States was the prime proponent and creator of international environmental organizations in the 1970s. In this article, we analyze the U.S. role in global environmental governance from a historical perspective and present a platform for U.S. re-engagement. We contend that the new U.S. Administration should re-examine its strategy towards global environmental concerns and reinstate a …

Institutional Fragmentation And Normative Compromise In Global Environmental Governance: What Prospects For Re-Embedding?, Maria Ivanova

Maria Ivanova

No abstract provided.

Designing The United Nations Environment Programme: A Story Of Compromise And Confrontation, Maria Ivanova

Maria Ivanova

The role of the United Nations in global environmental governance was determined in 1972 when a new international body for the global environment was created as a programme within the United Nations rather than as an autonomous specialized agency. A set of political dynamics between developed and developing countries led to the decisions on the functions, form, financing, and location of the new intergovernmental organization—the United Nations Environment Programme. This article traces the historical roots of these choices and exposes the motivations behind them.

Enumerations Of The Kolmogorov Function, Richard Beigel, Harry Buhrman, Peter Fejer, Lance Fortnow, Piotr Grabowski, Luc Longpré, Andrej Muchnik, Frank Stephan, Leen Torenvliet

Peter Fejer

A recursive enumerator for a function h is an algorithm f which enumerates for an input x finitely many elements including h(x). f is a k(n)-enumerator if for every input x of length n, h(x) is among the first k(n) elements enumerated by f. If there is a k(n)-enumerator for h then h is called k(n)-enumerable. We also consider enumerators which are only A-recursive for some oracle A.

We determine exactly how hard it is to enumerate the Kolmogorov function, which assigns to each string x its Kolmogorov complexity:

• For every underlying universal machine U, there is a constant a …

Unruly Complexity: Ecology, Interpretation, Engagement, Peter Taylor

Peter Taylor

Ambitiously identifying fresh issues in the study of complex systems, Peter J. Taylor, in a model of interdisciplinary exploration, makes these concerns accessible to scholars in the fields of ecology, environmental science, and science studies. Unruly Complexity explores concepts used to deal with complexity in three realms: ecology and socio-environmental change; the collective constitution of knowledge; and the interpretations of science as they influence subsequent research. For each realm Taylor shows that unruly complexity-situations that lack definite boundaries, where what goes on "outside" continually restructures what is "inside," and where diverse processes come together to produce change-should not be suppressed …

Climate Change: National Interests Or A Global Regime?, Maria Ivanova, Christiana Figueres

Maria Ivanova

No abstract provided.

Decidability Of The Two-Quantifier Theory Of The Recursively Enumerable Weak Truth-Table Degrees And Other Distributive Upper Semi-Lattices, Klaus Ambos-Spies, Peter A. Fejer, Steffen Lempp, Manuel Lerman

Peter Fejer

We give a decision procedure for the ∀∃-theory of the weak truth-table (wtt) degrees of the recursively enumerable sets. The key to this decision procedure is a characterization of the finite lattices which can be embedded into the r.e. wtt-degrees by a map which preserves the least and greatest elements: a finite lattice has such an embedding if and only if it is distributive and the ideal generated by its cappable elements and the filter generated by its cuppable elements are disjoint. We formulate general criteria that allow one to conclude that a distributive upper semi-lattice has a decidable two-quantifier …