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Due to the alarming rate of global wetland depletion, the Ramsar Convention, an international wetland conservation and management treaty, was signed in 1971. As of today, 172 countries are signatories. The intricate connection of local communities, their indigenous knowledge and hence their participation in the wetland governance has been recently recognized by Ramsar to protect the community's right over wetlands and to establish the joint stewardship of government and communities on these vital resources. Ramsar Convention provides a broader framework for participatory wetland governance; however, there needs to be more clarity on how various countries understand, perceive, and adopt community participation in their national policies. The case of India, where communities depend on wetland bodies for lives and livelihoods, makes an appropriate case for similar countries in South Asia. Qualitative research methodologies are applied at various stages of the research. The participatory wetland governance proposed under the Ramsar Convention and India's national and state policies is analyzed based on the framework developed under this research. The pair of state and wetland sites are selected for detailed case analysis to understand the diversities and commonalities of the policy framework. The comparative examination between Ramsar and India and across the four sites helps to understand the policy diversions. The policy diversions from Ramsar's framework are observed in national and state policies. However, the case studies provide new insights embedded in the contextual setting to draw policy recommendations to create better opportunities for community participation in India and Ramsar Convention. The meaning of community participation in theories is prone to various interpretations in practice. This research provides a way to decipher the meaning of participation, bridge the gap between theories and practice, and propose practical and achievable community participation in wetland governance.

Transboundary watershed management seeks to reconcile the dichotomy between political lines and the resources that flow freely over such borders. Transboundary waters cover half of the earth’s surface and define the natural communities of over 40% of the global population. Because water plays an integral role in every culture and society, international entities seek to identify the principles and methods that minimize conflict and maximize harmonious water resource management across borders. Successful management practices to date have aimed to incorporate relevant scientific literature throughout the basin using alternate governance structures. International River Basin Organizations (IRBOs), independent governing structures, provide one such method of governance along shared water bodies. In order to determine how science influences policy and management in IRBOs, this research examines five case studies across three IRBOs: The International Joint Commission, the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube and the Mekong River Commission. To understand the gap between science production and its incorporation into IRBO policies, we conducted a comprehensive literature review and applied the findings from existing scientific literature to understand science-policy process in the five case studies. Within each case study we traced the story of science production and its uptake into policy by highlighting two types of key information in the process: the role of mandates and IRBO structure, and the IRBO’s relationship with relevant actors. Through this process we identified and explored the gap between science production and policy action, demonstrating which mechanisms are essential for generating policy founded on scientific research.

The rise of the new right in U.S. Politics from 1994-1996 is examined as a process of asymmetrical communication and informational deployments of signs constructed to appeal to a conservative political subculture. Lash and Urry’s analysis of the economy of signs and space is employed to trace the flow of these signs as they are “emptied-out” and recombined in ways that legitimate the conservative, pro-business agenda, or contract with America, unveiled during The 1994 congressional election. A re-reading of these signs seeks to replace the individual as a subject in the role of reflexive agent in a process of modernization which rejects the reassertion of the new right’s design for a social structure of moral values which maintain the distribution of risk. These risks, as managed by environmental policy, are one target of the new right’s deregulatory agenda and as such form, the central political issue examined in this paper using Lash and Urry’s theory of reflexive modernization. / Master of Urban Affairs

The present paper attempts to explain the absence of a Green Party in America by means of comparison with the country that gave birth to the most successful Green Party so far: West Germany. In the first section it will be shown, that neither the electoral system nor other legal barriers prevent new parties from emerging in the United States. Then, the two countries will be examined from two different perspectives. First, through comparison of the politics of environmental protection it will be shown how a dialogue between the state and interest groups could be established in America, while it could not in Germany. The conclusion will be drawn that different opportunity structures define different incentives to founding a Green Party. From this finding the hypothesis will be developed that the conflictual environmental politics in Germany caused environmental concern to merge with other New Politics concerns and visions of a new state. It is from this ideology that the Green Party drew its electoral success. Due to aggregation of the environmental issue in institutional politics, this potential Green electorate did not emerge in the United States. The hypothesis will be tested empirically using survey data. Three operationalizations of the Green ideology will be employed: postmaterialism, the New Environmental Paradigm, and support for protest movements. The results deliver strong support for the hypothesis. The electoral resources for an American Green Party are weak. / Master of Arts

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Yes / Despite the burgeoning interests in the environmental strategy, there is a limited understanding of how human resource slack drives sustainable innovation and environmental performance. This paper contributes to filling this gap by examining the effect of human resource slack on sustainable innovation and its impact on environmental performance. Besides, this paper investigates the contingent effects of intangible resource advantage on this relationship. The hypotheses are tested using data from 301 small and medium‐sized enterprises in Ghana. The results suggest that human resource slack positively relates to sustainable innovation and this relationship is moderated by intangible resource advantage. Also, we find that sustainable innovation mediates the relationship between human resource slack and environmental performance. The insights from our paper provide a nuanced understanding of the relationships among human resource lack, sustainable innovation, and environmental performance. Implications for theory and practices are discussed. / University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

This dissertation consists of three papers: two theoretical explorations of the relationship between globalization and unilateral policies and an empirical study on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and standardization. The first two chapters contribute to the literature on trade models with heterogeneous firms, focusing on offshoring as a form of trade in tasks. These tasks—one of which may be offshored to a lower-wage or lower-emission tax country—are inputs in the production of intermediate goods, which are then assembled into a final product. The intermediate goods sector is characterized by monopolistic competition, with firms varying in productivity according to Melitz (2003). Factor allocation is determined by an occupational choice mechanism based on managerial ability. This framework allows for an exploration of the connections between globalization, redistribution, and environmental policies. The third paper shifts focus to the financial aspect of globalization, contributing to the literature on the determinants of FDI, particularly the role of management standards. The theoretical models in Chapters 2 and 3 are set in an asymmetric two-country context where firms from a higher-wage country (the North) relocate parts of their production to a lower-wage country (the South). Both chapters examine unilateral policies in the North: Chapter 2 explores a redistribution policy involving an increase in the corporate tax rate, while Chapter 3 investigates an increase in the emission tax rate. Financially, this shift in production patterns mirrors North-South FDI. Chapter 4 examines the role of the ISO 9001 management standard in various FDI scenarios. Chapter 2 investigates the effects of a unilateral redistribution policy in an asymmetric two-country setting where globalization is modeled as offshoring. It combines the offshoring model from Egger et al. (2015) with a redistribution scheme from Kohl (2020), offering insights into how welfare states impact globalization. The framework involves two countries: a source and a host country. In the source country, individuals can choose to become workers or managers (owners of firms), while in the host country, this option is unavailable, creating asymmetry. Individuals in the source country differ in their managerial ability, and only the most capable become managers. These firms produce in the intermediate goods sector, characterized by monopolistic competition. Intermediate goods production involves two tasks: a non-routine task and a routine task, with the latter being offshorable to the host country. Offshoring allows firms to benefit from lower effective wages in the host country but involves fixed costs, so only the most productive firms choose this option. Profit income is taxed, representing a progressive income tax, while tax revenue is redistributed to individuals in the source country. The key finding is that increasing the tax rate in the source country alters factor allocation, making the worker occupation more attractive, increasing the number of workers, and decreasing the local wage rate. This adjustment reduces the marginal cost advantage of the host country, making offshoring less attractive and resulting in reshoring. This mechanism introduces an indirect channel through which a tax rate increase affects factor allocation, aggregate income, and inequality. While aggregate income decreases due to occupational choice distortion and tax-induced reshoring, inequality decreases. These results differ from related work where a tax increase is linked to decreased market share and increased attractiveness of exporting (Kohl and Richter, 2023). An extension considers the deductibility of offshoring fixed costs, affecting the tax base. A broader tax base due to lower deductibility reduces offshoring. Chapter 3 uses the same asymmetric two-country setting from Egger et al. (2015) but generalizes intermediate goods production to include emission generation, as modeled by Copeland and Taylor (1994). Firms now decide how to allocate labor between non-routine and routine tasks and how emission-intensive production should be. Emissions are taxed in both countries, with each government redistributing tax income. Unlike in Chapter 2, firms' offshoring decisions depend on wage differences and emission tax differentials. Managerial ability and firm productivity follow a Pareto distribution, leading to higher profits and lower emission intensity. The model examines the impact of a unilateral increase in the source country's emission tax rate, making emission-intensive production more expensive. This leads to several outcomes: productive domestic firms begin offshoring, domestic firms reduce their emission intensity, and the average emissions of domestic firms decrease (the technique effect). The increase in offshoring raises labor demand in the host country, increasing local wages and shifting offshoring firms' production towards more emission-intensive methods. Less productive firms enter offshoring, lowering average productivity and increasing emissions leakage. If offshoring is already high, the tax increase could lead to higher global emissions. Additionally, income shifts from the source to the host country, reducing between-country inequality but increasing within-country inequality in the source country. These findings contrast with models where an emission tax increase reduces global emissions (Egger et al., 2021b). An extension incorporating border carbon adjustment shows that such reforms prevent emission leakage, lowering global emissions but increasing global income losses. This chapter offers insights into the effects of policy instruments on climate change. Chapter 4 shifts focus to the financial aspects of cross-border activities, specifically the role of standardization in management practices, as exemplified by the ISO 9001 standard, in driving cross-border investments. This certification helps firms increase productivity, align with customer needs, and signal quality to potential partners and investors. Drawing on the literature on the role of institutions (North, 1991), globally recognized certificates can reduce frictions in cross-border investments, especially in countries with weak institutional quality. The analysis in Chapter 4 examines the effect of ISO 9001 certification diffusion on destination country inward FDI stocks, using bilateral panel data from 1995 to 2020. The estimation follows the gravity model literature, controlling for economic and institutional variables, as well as pair- and year-fixed effects. The findings reveal a positive impact of destination country certification on FDI inward stocks, particularly in North-South pairs, where lower-developed countries attract higher FDI stocks from developed countries when more local firms are certified. Origin country certification also boosts cross-border investments, especially for high-income countries, aligning with findings from Clougherty and Grajek (2008). These results highlight a novel determinant of cross-border investments, particularly relevant for firms in lower-developed countries facing higher transaction costs and information asymmetries due to weak institutions. The mechanism, beginning with the membership of national standardization bodies at ISO, suggests a policy channel through which the diffusion of certificates and, consequently, FDI can be encouraged.

by Maiken Schulz. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-51). / LIST OF TABLES --- p.iii / Chapter CHAPTER I - --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter CHAPTER II - --- THE GENERAL CONCEPT OF RECYCLING --- p.4 / Municipal Solid Waste --- p.4 / The Waste Problem --- p.4 / Ways to Reduce the Waste Volume --- p.6 / Recycling Principals --- p.10 / When to recycle --- p.10 / What to recycle --- p.11 / How to recycle --- p.13 / The economics of recycling --- p.14 / Chapter CHAPTER III - --- HONG KONG --- p.16 / Hong Kong's Waste Problem --- p.16 / Waste Content --- p.17 / Reasons for the Waste Problem --- p.18 / Increasing hygiene and convenience: --- p.18 / Lack of material re-using schemes: --- p.19 / Underdeveloped recycling of household waste: --- p.19 / Lack of environmental consciousness: --- p.19 / Hong Kong's Waste Management --- p.21 / Looking back: Waste handling --- p.21 / Landfills --- p.21 / Looking Ahead: The Waste Reduction Framework Plan --- p.23 / Hong Kong's Waste Recovery Industry --- p.23 / Focus on Recycling --- p.26 / Creating awareness --- p.26 / Material Selection --- p.27 / Collection system --- p.27 / Summary --- p.28 / Required Improvements --- p.28 / Separation --- p.28 / Collection --- p.29 / Reprocessing --- p.29 / Marketing --- p.29 / Conclusion --- p.30 / Chapter CHAPTER IV - --- RESEARCH METHODOLOGY --- p.31 / Conceptual framework： the theory of reasoned action model --- p.31 / Conceptual Model --- p.31 / How the theory works --- p.32 / Modifying the original model --- p.33 / Research Design --- p.34 / Hypothesis setting --- p.35 / Data collection --- p.37 / Analysis --- p.37 / Structured Equation Modelling --- p.39 / Test for Model Fit --- p.39 / Financial Incentives --- p.40 / Implications and Recommendations --- p.41 / Implications of the findings --- p.41 / Attitude towards the Act --- p.41 / Subjective Norm --- p.42 / Feasible approach to waste reduction through recycling --- p.43 / APPENDIX --- p.46 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.49