Sustainable Development:  Effective Policy Implementation
Research Team:  Denise Mauzerall and Tom Hale (undergraduate)

To be successful in introducing new science based policy, it is valuable to also critically examine existing policy infrastructure.  We therefore examined the efficacy of partnerships between governments, industry and non-governmental organizations in furthering the goals of sustainable development, including projects on energy, climate change and air pollution mitigation.  Partnerships, also called Type II agreements, were launched at World Summit on Sustainable Development with the intention of catalyzing nongovernmental participation in and additional funding of sustainable development projects around the world. We found, however, that little partnership financing is coming from new sources; most is coming from governments and less than 1% from the private sector.

Guided by empirical findings from the partnerships to date, we proposed the following to make the partnership program more effective: (a) establishing a learning network through which information can be broadly exchanged; (b) increasing the transparency of partnerships; (c) increasing private sector and small stakeholder participation; (d) establishing an institutional home to support partnerships; and (e) ensuring that the partnerships are consistent with multilateral priorities [Hale and Mauzerall, 2004].  Since publication there is evidence that several of our recommendations have been implemented - in particular increasing transparency of partnerships and the establishment of a web-based learning network.

Publication

Hale, T. N. and Mauzerall, D. L., “Thinking Globally and Acting Locally: Can the Johannesburg Partnerships Coordinate Action on Sustainable Development?” Journal of Environment and Development, September 2004.