Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

The How And Why Of Visual Practice At Un Climate Negotiations, Stéphanie Heckman

New England Journal of Public Policy

In this article Stéphanie Heckman examines the process and outcomes of her graphic recording work and other forms of visual practice in the context of UN climate negotiations, reflecting on three years of collaboration with the UN Climate Change Secretariat, particularly during the eighteen-month Global Stocktake process. After a review of the history and science behind visual storytelling, she analyses one of the graphic recordings made for the third meeting of the Technical Dialogue of the Global Stocktake through the lens of Kelvy Bird’s ‘Levels of Scribing’ model. Drawing on comments from delegates at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt and …

The Role Of Carbon Management Technologies In Meeting Net Zero, Ali Al-Saffar

New England Journal of Public Policy

The pathway toward implementing the changes necessary in the energy sector to keep global temperature rises from breaking through catastrophic barriers is narrow and tenuous and will require a range of zero- and low-carbon technologies to be dispatched at a speed and scale that is virtually unprecedented. Decarbonization through renewables, matched with the more efficient use of energy in the end-use sectors will play a large part. But there is growing realization that there will be residual fossil fuel use long into the future, and that the emissions from the burning of these fossil fuels in power plants and factories …

The Gulf: An Appeal For More Coordinated Action On Climate Change, Fareed Yasseen

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article seeks to provide the rationale behind Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Sudani’s call at the United Nations for the formation of a negotiating group within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process that brings together all member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Iraq, and Iran. This article argues that these countries would benefit doubly from such an arrangement, because it would help them better address the direct effects of climate change, on the one hand, and to better address the effects of the measures taken to address climate change, which will affect them as fossil fuel producers, …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley, Adanna C. Kalejaye

New England Journal of Public Policy

To coincide with COP28 in Dubai, this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy published a series of articles on climate warming.

Results Of Cop27 And Expectations For Cop28, Cecilia Kinuthia-Njenga, Fareed Yasseen

New England Journal of Public Policy

Since 1995, government representatives from around the world have gathered nearly every year for the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) to advance work on multilateral agreements and to provide a way forward in tackling the significant challenges of climate change. The last of these conferences took place on November 6–20, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

COP27 brought together more than 35,000 people from across the globe to deliberate on important actions for addressing the climate. Hailed as the “African COP” and “Implementation COP,” it raised expectations that decisions from previous conferences, reflecting the needs and priorities of the …

The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good: Carbon Credits And Funding For Decarbonization In Developing Countries, Andrew A. Bernstein

New England Journal of Public Policy

Carbon credits issued in the voluntary carbon market are an important source of funding for projects in developing countries designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as forest preservation and renewable energy. Beyond their potential to provide billions of dollars of private sector financing for decarbonization, carbon credits can generate economic opportunity, employment, and biodiversity. But they are controversial, mainly (but not only) because it is difficult to confirm and to quantify their emissions benefits. This article argues that policymakers should nonetheless support voluntary carbon market growth, so long as companies use carbon credits to mitigate emissions they cannot avoid …

Joint Global Responsibility Fund For Climate, Conservation, And Communities: A Proposed Innovative Tax-Based Funding Mechanism, Tamar Ron

New England Journal of Public Policy

Nature-based solutions address biodiversity loss, climate change, and societal challenges at the local, national, regional, and global levels. The costs of their conservation, however, are mostly local and national in nature. Confronting the rolling dual crisis of biodiversity loss and climate change requires us to recognize nature’s intrinsic value. Moreover, we must find practical ways for their monetary valuation to be channeled as payment for the services of conservation custodians. It is suggested here to translate the value of natural assets and the understanding of the local costs and global benefits of their conservation, into an innovative and ambitious funding …

Solar Radiation Modification Governance In The Context Of Temperature Overshoot, Janos Pasztor

New England Journal of Public Policy

As the climate crisis escalates, governments—and recently even those in the wealthier countries in the Global North—are struggling to manage the impacts we are experiencing around the world in frightening abundance, including record-setting temperatures, fires, floods, and glacial and ice melt. Behind closed doors, policymakers are concerned as they contemplate the increasing likelihood, even under the most ambitious emission reduction pathways, that the world will overshoot the goal agreed upon in the Paris Agreement to limit global average temperature rise to 1.5oC beyond pre-industrial levels.

It is in this “overshoot context” that interest is growing in an emerging, potentially supplementary …

Cop27 And The New Rise Of The Global South, Janice Golding

New England Journal of Public Policy

Developing countries require direct and indirect financial and non-financial assistance to address the climate crisis. The COP27 announcement of a new Loss and Damage Fund as well the unveiling of the Bridgetown Initiative collectively hold substantial promise to alter the course of climate multilateralism. The outcome of COP27 has presented unprecedented opportunities for the Global South to build global solidarity for climate justice, but the path ahead will not be easy. Materialization of support to developing countries may be, at best, not sustainable, or at worst, unforeseeable without consistent application of principles and values enshrined in historic, moral accountability for …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

The articles in this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy primarily interrogate the challenges facing democracy and democratic peacebuilding in divided societies.

Peacemaking And Peacebuilding In A Divided Society: South Africa’S National Peace Accord In The Transition From Apartheid To Democracy, Liz Carmichael

New England Journal of Public Policy

South Africa’s complex history is outlined, providing an explanatory background to the two chief conflicts that existed in 1990 as the apartheid era drew to a close: the divide between the government with its security forces and the majority of the population, and grassroots violence between African National Congress supporters and the conservative Inkatha movement. During the 1990s, as South Africa accomplished its transition, a series of structures were created to manage the process. The best remembered is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was the final transitional structure, holding its hearings in 1996–98. The first was the National Peace …

Referendum Metrics: The Numbers Game, Chapter Five From Perils And Prospects Of A United Ireland, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article is an extract from Perils and Prospects of a United Ireland, published by Lilliput Press, Dublin, Ireland in March 2023. The book draws on extensive interviews with ninety-seven senior politicians across the ethno-national divide, a range of academics and political commentators, and religious leaders.

The context for the chapter is the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA), which ended thirty years of violent conflict between Irish republicans, mostly Catholic, who wanted Northern Ireland to become reunified with the rest of Ireland, and unionists, mostly Protestants supported by British security forces, who wanted to maintain the union of Northern Ireland …

Reset Or Revolution? Contemporary Problems Of Political Stability And Some Ancient Solutions, Dariusz Karłowicz

New England Journal of Public Policy

In this article I take a critical look into the challenges faced by the contemporary social, political, and economic scene in Europe and the United States after nearly eighty years of political stability. I question the sources of the anger, frustration, and distrust toward national and supranational institutions that are visible both on the streets and in the light of numerous public opinion polls. I argue that political and legal stability—the driving force and most desirable product of Western democracies—is becoming a problem. Through the tendency to permanent, often hereditary, marginalization of large groups of the population, a stable political …

Toward A New Political Project: Resetting By Reconceptualizing, Scherto Gill

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article starts by pointing out that existing proposals to confront the failures of democracy tend to be limited to tackling the symptoms of the current dysfunctional system rather than offering meaningful alternatives to transform the system. It then suggests that a total reset is required and offers an innovative theoretical framework, to conceptualize the new political project, that can transcend the existing impasses. It further argues that such a framework ought to consist in four fundamental, interdependent, and mutually reinforcing principles: (1) equal primary, non-derivative value of all persons; (2) non-instrumentalization of persons; (3) well-being of all as a …

The Art And Artifacts Of Solidarity, Yasmin Merali

New England Journal of Public Policy

In Complex Adaptive Systems in a Contentious World I showed how viewing social systems as Complex Adaptive Systems exposes the systemic mechanisms that underpin their resilience and sustainability. In this article I show the utility of that approach for elucidating the role of art and artists in the evolution of resilient social movements. I do this by exploring the way in which art and artifacts were implicated in the evolution of the Polish Solidarność movement.

Seeing Race As We Are: Avoiding, Arguing, Aspiring, Michael A. Cowan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Racial conflict in the United States pushes people to positions of argument or avoidance, more or less intensely and for varying lengths of time, depending on external events like the murder of George Floyd. Neither stance produces the conversations required to seek common ground and compromise around racial issues. Argument alone deepens divisions and avoidance leaves them to metastasize in the social body. In an attempt to go beneath these two positions, this article first explains the role and form of interpretation in all conflict and dispute resolution and how it is shaped. Then it examines the concepts and strategies …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

Stephanie Heckman is a visual artist who attended the Glasgow conference. “I attended COP26 as a visual storyteller,’ she says. “Visual storytelling (known also as graphic recording) involves the use of graphics, drawings and hand lettering to capture the essence of collective conversation. It is a tool for live notetaking and sense-making; it stimulates participants to engage with each other and complex subject matter, and makes the outcomes more memorable, engaging and accessible to others not present at these conversations.”

Stephanie was an accredited observer delegate at COP26 and a “civic participant” in the many events happening around Glasgow at …

Visual Report Of Cop26, Stéphanie Heckman

New England Journal of Public Policy

As a visual practitioner my job is to draw people’s thoughts, and in so doing, help people make sense of them. The visual summaries I create live during conferences aim to capture more than just the dry content, but also the dynamic, the mood and the unspoken. It is a tool more aligned with how our associative, sensory-fed brains work, for coping with the deluge of information that faces us these days. And it’s a tool that can help overcome language, learning and other barriers to access.

When I discovered in January 2020 that the next Conference of the Parties, …

What Motivates Barrier-Crossing Leadership?, Michael D. Buhrmester, Michael A. Cowan, Harvey Whitehouse

New England Journal of Public Policy

From large-scale wars, natural disasters, and pandemics to community-level religious and ethnic conflicts, many leaders wield power during crises by championing their group’s goals against those of rivals. But there is also a rarer breed of leader—barrier-crossers who pursue group interests by recognizing rivals’ interests and working with them to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. Though such leaders have played vital roles in resolving conflicts, little is known about their extraordinary motivation. Here we report survey results contrasting barrier-crossing with barrier-bound leaders from seven communities. In line with new theories from group psychology and anthropology, we found that barrier-crossers uniquely reported …

The Youth Inferno: Two-Way Working On Ancestral Lands, Pamela Nathan

New England Journal of Public Policy

In this article I present some of the work of Creating a Safe and Supportive Environment (CASSE) in Central Australia, Northern Territory, with the youth in the justice system, referring to our dual cultural and therapeutic program Shields for Living, Tools for Life. Psychoanalytic concepts and tools that have informed the work and transformed the trauma landscape are detailed. The work is at the epicenter of anger, concern, and politics in Central Australia and this epicenter has been named the “youth crisis.” It is a journey of feeling the heat, of being on a rollercoaster ride in a landscape of …

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

The articles in this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy reflect aspects of the changing world order as it continues to adjust to the digital age.

Complex Adaptive Systems In A Contentious World, Yasmin Merali

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article is about developing and implementing interventions that are systemically viable in a world that is constantly evolving. Geopolitical and economic forces, environmental stressors, and the weaponization of information confront us with an unprecedented level of complexity, requiring new ways of seeing and being when intervening in conflictual situations. I draw on the Complex Adaptive Systems paradigm to explore how world order emerges from the dynamics of network relationships between the players in the cyber-social landscape. This treatment elaborates on mechanisms underpinning resilience, adaptation, and transformation of socioeconomic systems in turbulent contexts. It emphasizes a need to reconsider conventional …

Enter The Age Of Csywar: Some Reflections On An Emergent Trend, Kumar Ramakrishna

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article uses the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict as a jumping-off point for a broader, preliminary reflection on the continuing evolution of war in the digital age. It is the contention here that we are witnessing an emergent phenomenon of what we might call csywar. Intervening states engaged in csywar—best understood as an indirect, hybrid strategy—seek to attain data, infrastructural, and epistemic dominance over the target state. This article discusses various defensive counter-csywar strategies that target states could pursue, such as fostering data, infrastructural, and epistemic resilience internally, and makes the case for developing deterrent counter-csywar capabilities against hostile intervening states.

Responding To Turbulent Times: Where Does Leadership Come In?, Mike Hardy Cmg Obe Frsa

New England Journal of Public Policy

Leadership is a major twenty-first-century concern because of the need to make sense of an increasingly complex context and to make choices between options for the positive changes that are deemed required. Reviewing the success of leadership responses to challenges of violent conflict and health pandemics as well as the extent to which we see futures through fragmented or solidarity lenses has created real interest in global perspectives in leadership and a new research agenda that is associated with this imperative. The article concludes by identifying work in progress, that is, by assessing the universality of characteristics that have been …

Managing The Atmosphere: Intelligence And Assessment In The Early Years Of The Northern Ireland Peace Process—An Interview With Sir John Chilcot, Graham Spencer

New England Journal of Public Policy

Though the Northern Ireland peace process was shaped by the involvement of many actors and participants, it is also evident that certain figures were central to its development. One such figure was Sir John Chilcot, who, based in the Northern Ireland Office in the formative years of the peace process, provided a point of focus for communicating with and managing a range of individuals and groups with the overriding objective of ending conflict in Northern Ireland. This article is based on an extended interview with Chilcot about the challenges he faced in assessing intelligence across a range of sources and …

Cultural Work In Peacebuilding Among Traumatized Communities Of Northern Ireland 1: Background And General Considerations, Eugen Koh

New England Journal of Public Policy

Peace in Northern Ireland today remains fragile despite the exhaustive peacebuilding efforts that have taken place since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Many aspects of the sectarian conflict have been embedded in cultural substrata of the respective communities, and cultural transformation is necessary to achieve comprehensive and sustained peace. The basic assumptions about the Other in this sectarian conflict have their origin in traumatic events that occurred more than three hundred years ago and have been reinforced by the more recent three decades of conflict known as the Troubles. These traumatic individual and collective experiences across the generations have …

Cultural Work In Peacebuilding Among Traumatized Communities Of Northern Ireland 2: Talking About Culture, Eugen Koh

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article is the second of two that describe a psychodynamically informed understanding of the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland and an approach to cultural transformation called “cultural work” aimed at building peace among the state’s traumatized communities. The conflict between Protestant and Catholic communities has extended well into the cultural domain and is often weaponized to attack the Other. Conversations about culture quickly become stuck in a quagmire of identity politics. This article describes a psychodynamic trauma–informed approach to cultural conversations involving an in-depth analysis of culture that avoids becoming stuck. It outlines a framework and set of preconditions …

Jasmine’S Day: An Ai Education Story, Rob Weil

New England Journal of Public Policy

No abstract provided.

Crafting An Innovation Ecosystem That Works For Working People, Amanda Ballantyne, Patrick Woodall, Katie Corrigan, Edward Wytkind

New England Journal of Public Policy

The rapid pace and expanding scope of technological change is reshaping work and the workplace. These innovations can benefit workers by improving safety, reducing physical or repetitive burdens, or creating new types of jobs. But automation and new technologies can also eliminate workers, deskill occupations, reduce autonomy and job satisfaction, and erode economic stability for working families that contribute to the rising economic and racial inequality. These technologies do not fall from the sky; they are incubated in an innovation ecosystem shaped by public policy and public-research funding that is driven largely by an oligopoly of Big Tech companies and …

Proactive Union And Teacher Strategies For Shaping Technology In Education, Thomas A. Kochan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Artificial intelligence and related technologies will have profound effects on the future of work in all industries and occupations, including education. But technology has no predetermined effects. How it will change work, working conditions, and the performance of organizations depends on who participates in the key decisions that (1) define the problems technology is asked to solve, (2) set the design parameters that shape specific applications, (3) link new technologies and work processes, (4) ensure that the workforce is well-prepared to use advanced technologies, (5) determine who controls the data generated by these tools, and (6) address the needs of …