Resources

2011. Author: Linda Ciesielski. Today, Toronto is revered among Great Lakes' and waterfront cities for its environmental planning: its massive re-investment in water and stormwater infrastructure; protected headwaters of the region's rivers; realized waterfront plans; and more swimmable beaches. Twenty years ago, the Metro area was designated a hotspot of pollution, the waterfront was marked with vacant brownfields, while rampant development grew from the city's edge. This thesis explores how...

2014. Author: Toral Patel. The need for cities to adapt to climate change is widely acknowledged, yet the question of adaptation finance remains uncertain. Unable to access global climate funds, cities must seek out alternative sources to support their adaptations to climate change. This is particularly challenging for local governments in India, where incomplete fiscal decentralization has resulted in severe developmental deficits and resource constraints. Using Surat, Gujarat, as a case study...

2001. Author: Adil Najam. This study explores the collective negotiation behavior of the developing countries of the South in international environmental politics. The so-called 'South'-represented in global negotiations by Group of 77 (G77)-is an unwieldy and unlikely collective made up of over 130 countries displaying dramatically different economic conditions, ideological persuasions, political systems and geographic features and environmental endowments. Yet, for over 30 years now, the...

Authors: Lawrence Susskind, Sarah McKearnan, Mike Gordon, Adil Najam, Joshua Secunda, Granville Sewell, Parag Shah and Andrea Strimling. In light of recent evidence indicating that organochlorine compounds may pose serious risks to human health and the environment, the Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has decided to gather a Working Group composed of representatives from eight countries, as well as four representatives from various relevant non-governmental...

2009. Author: Anna Bromberg. The tornado that hit Greensburg, Kansas, in May 2007, traveled down the center of Main Street at two hundred and five miles per hour and destroyed ninety-five percent of the town's built environment. The extensive damage was devastating to a town that was already struggling with job loss, depopulation, and economic decline. When Greensburg unexpectedly announced it would rebuild green, the town captured national attention as a symbol of a sustainable revitalization...

Authors: Tyler Corson-Rickert and Mónica Oliver under the direction of Professor Lawrence Susskind. The city of Evantown experienced two deadly heat waves last summer that revealed the extent of climate change in the region and the poor condition of the city’s low-income housing stock. The greatest casualties during the heat wave were among the elderly and the children of low-income families living in aging public and rental housing. Now the new mayor, who won election decrying the previous...

2002. Author: A. Clinton. Joint fact-finding is a cooperative venture and communication among the participants is critical to success. Analysts have begun to recognize this and have started to adjust their craft to reflect the communicative character of their work. Non-analysts usually judge experts' opinions by their value, effectiveness, and legitimacy rather than soundness of the conclusions. Accordingly, experts must recognize the importance of these non-scientific criteria, and learn to...

Author: Jennie Hatch under the supervision of Professor Lawrence Susskind. The Ortega Company is a new hydroelectric company that hopes to build a hydropower plant in the Cordillerana region of Santales, a fictitious South American country. In a departure from normal operations, the company has asked several different communities if they are interested in allowing a hydropower plant to be developed within their borders. Of the nine communities originally considered, two have expressed...

2019. Author: Zaerpoor, Yasmin(Bijani Zaerpoor). We are headed towards a global water crisis. While technological advancements may help reduce this gap, achieving global water security will also require establishing self-enforcing agreements negotiated among countries that share transboundary rivers. At its core, transboundary water governance is a type of collective action problem (Olson 1965), in which sovereign actors must cooperate to achieve a collective interest. In this research, I...

Authors: C. M. Ashcraft, Susskind, L., and Islam, S. Indopotamia is a nine-party, mediated, multi-issue negotiation game involving a dispute over the allocation of land and water resources shared by three countries in an international river basin. The game provides opportunities to discuss the natural, societal, and political dimensions of science-intensive policy disputes in which high levels of uncertainty are involved. The game also introduces water professionals and aspiring water...

2020. Negotiation Journal, vol. 6207, no. 21 . Author: L. Susskind. Even when “warring parties” know that eventually they will have to talk to one another so that there can be peace, it is extremely difficult to get them to “fast‐forward” to that moment. The reasons for this vary. Sometimes the parties think that “time is on their side”—that continuing the battle will benefit them. Other times, leaders worry how they will appear in the eyes of their own followers if they seem to have lost heart...

2011. Author: Stephen Lloyd. Florida has experienced more population growth over the past half century than any other state, which has led to some of the most extensive urban development on valuable agricultural lands. To address this and other impacts of sprawl, Florida passed the Growth Management Act (GMA) in 1985, which among other things required local comprehensive planning and that it be consistent with a state plan of policies and objectives. While the GMA has been the subject of much...