Productive Development Policies Research Articles

Stakeholder representation in international environmental standardisation - Joint Communiqué by ANEC, ECOS, and the Pacific Institute

International standardisation in the field of the environment has long been considered an important tool in contributing to sustainable production and sustainable development policies at the global level. This has in particular been the aim of the ISO 14000 series of standards on environmental management, developed by ISO Technical Committee (hereinafter referred to as ‘TC’) 207 on Environmental Management. To help ensure that the International Standards developed by ISO enjoy a degree of credibility and legitimacy, the ISO Strategic Plan lists as one of its key objectives the need to ensure that interested and affected stakeholders are adequately involved in ISO’s work and processes. The importance of ensuring the participation of public interest groups is also echoed in the ISO Code of Ethics. Despite the noble objectives of openness and transparency, consumer and environmental NGOs have long wrangled with the issue of business dominance and the marginalisation of public interests in standardisation. To help improve this imbalance in the particular case of ISO TC 207, a mixed group of NGO representatives and the TC leadership – the so-called NGO-CAG Task Force – was tasked in 2003 with developing a pair of operating procedures to improve the balance of stakeholder participation in the work of the TC. This paper reflects the long process of development of operational procedures for balanced stakeholder involvement in ISO TC 207 on Environmental Management, and highlights the need for a change in the way environmental standards, supporting broader public policies, are developed.

Capacity building in anthelmintic drug discovery

International collaboration in anthelmintic drug discovery holds special challenges compared with local or national discovery projects, and at the same time presents the opportunity to build capacity, forge long lasting inter-institutional relationships and strengthen infrastructure in multinational priority areas. This chapter discusses important issues that should be considered in the context of anthelmintic screening centre development and will give examples (Philippines and Egypt) of the productivity of developing country based screening centres. The positive outcomes of infrastructure building is realised in greater capacities for anthelmintic screening at institutions in the countries where the parasitic diseases are endemic and allows for optimum use of specialised resources for public health priority diseases that may be different from those in Western countries. Support for developing country based screening centres also can help countries optimise product development procedures and policies and can facilitate diffusion of desirable technology in corresponding global regions around the world.

Genes, race, and population: avoiding a collision of categories.

A wide array of federal mandates have a profound impact on the use of racial and ethnic categories in biomedical research, clinical practice, product development, and health policy. Current discussions over the appropriate use of racial and ethnic categories in biomedical contexts have largely focused on the practices of individual researchers. By contrast, our discussion focuses on relations between the daily practices of biomedical professionals and federal regulatory mandates. It draws upon the legal doctrine of equal protection to move beyond such debates and to propose guidelines to address the structural forces imposed by federal regulations that mandate how data about race and ethnicity are used in biomedical research. It offers a framework to manage the tension involved in using existing federally mandated categories of race and ethnicity alongside new scientific findings about human genetic variation.

Purposive Strategy or Serendipity? Development and Diversification in Three Consumer Product Companies, 1918-39: J. & J. Colman, Reckitt & Sons, and Lever Bros./Unilever

(2003). Purposive Strategy or Serendipity? Development and Diversification in Three Consumer Product Companies, 1918-39: J. & J. Colman, Reckitt & Sons, and Lever Bros./Unilever. Business History: Vol. 45, No. 1, pp. 23-59.

Rethinking the development agenda

This paper calls for a development agenda based on five major premises: (1) a more balanced form of globalisation based on a genuine respect for diversity; (2) a broad view of macroeconomic stability, which provides an adequate role for counter‐cyclical policies; (3) the need to complement macroeconomic stability with active productive development policies; (4) strong social policies and the mainstreaming of social objectives into economic policies to guarantee adequate linkages between economic and social development; and (5) the recognition that development involves broader human development goals.

Tracking The Changing Provider Landscape: Implications For Health Policy And Practice

Throughout the 1990s health care providers were interested in developing organized delivery systems. However, industry observers have increasingly questioned the sense of these efforts. Using an established taxonomy of health networks and systems, we examined whether there was a nationwide trend away from the vertical and horizontal arrangements that serve as the backbone to organized delivery systems. Studying 1994-1998, we found that both health networks and systems became less centralized in their hospital services, physician arrangements, and insurance product development. We did not find a general pathway to disintegration but instead found considerable experimentation in organizational form.

A Water Resources Planning Response to Climate Change in the Senegal River Basin

No abstract

Water Resources Planning for the Senegal River Basin

ABSTRACT The Senegal River Basin (SRB), located in the Sahel region of West Africa, is simultaneously undergoing fundamental environmental, hydrologic, and socioeconomic transitions. The trination (Senegal, Mauritania, and Mali) river basin development authority, the Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Senegal (OMVS), is attempting to execute a shift to irrigated riceproduction for domestic consumption in the river basin in order to ease the severe foreign exchange shortfalls these riparian nations face. With the recent completion of the Manantali and Diama dams, year-round irrigated agriculture is now possible in the SRB. The full agricultural developmentpotential of the SRB is constrained, however, by the basin's limited water resources. Significantly, a time series analysis of Senegal River hydrology has provided powerful evidence that the prolonged Sahelian drought may be permanent. The negative impact of the state-imposed rice production policy compounds the severe effects of the drought on the river basin ecology. Rice production in the arid river valley has been a financial and social failure. Irrigated rice projects suffer a high rate of abandonment and have intensified the desertification process in the river valley. As an alternate use of the basin's scarce water resources, an agricultural development policy based on village-scale irrigation projects and intensive, irrigated agroforestry projects has been proposed. Village-scale irrigation is dedicated to low-water-consumption cereal grain crops and is managed by traditional sociopolitical structures. The agroforestry production system analyzed has the dual objectives of using irrigation to reestablish a protective biomass cover in the desertifying river valley and of reversing the drought-induced migration from rural to urban areas. A comparative river system simulation study was conducted to analyze the effects of both the rice production development policy (policy RP) and the natural resources management policy (policy NRM) on the SRB's full agricultural development potential. The simulation study compared three alternate hydrologic scenarios using, (I) the predrought era, (2) the 1970's level drought and (3) the 1980's level drought. Principles of dynamic programming were applied to Manantali reservoir management to optimize water allocation in each scenario. All the hydrologic scenarios generated showed that the lower overall water demand pattern exerted by policy NRM allows a higher full agricultural development potential than does policy RP.

Optimal pricing and product development policies for new consumer durables

Modelling efforts have generally assumed that learning involved with product development only affects a firm's cost function. However, post-introduction product improvements also have an impact on demand. In this paper a model for new product demand is developed by incorporating the dynamic effects of incremental product improvements and price. If demand is very sensitive to product enhancements, then optimal prices are declining over time. Conditions under which product development efforts either decrease over time, or increase and then decrease are also identified. The implied product improvement patterns are thus increasing at an decreasing rate (i.e., concave), or increasing at an increasing rate and then at a decreasing rate (i.e., S-shaped). Empirical illustrations for each of these derived patterns are provided using industry trends for a set of consumer durables.

Insurance Product Development: Managing the Changes

Deregulation, advances in enabling technology, and aggressive competition from new suppliers, including banks, are causing more and more traditional insurance companies to revise the way in which product development is undertaken. A study of ten companies offering life insurance and ten companies offering general insurance in Britain shows that a few of them are now putting into place amended managerial systems. The marketing function is undergoing changes in responsibilities in all these companies. While most companies have key managers who have visions of how markets can be reshaped to give distinct competitive advantages, effecting such changes within existing operating constraints poses major challenges.

Introduction. Population and the environment.

The complexity of the interrelationships between population growth and environmental concerns is often obscured when the global picture is presented. The variety and complexity of population-environment associations varies with spatial aggregation; analysis is needed at all levels. Of the many organizations involved in researching and discussing these associations the International Social Science Council established a working committee on population and the environment which held a symposium in January 1991. 9 papers were the topic of discussions and are summarized in this article. Attention was focused on pollution emissions and population growth by the environmental scientist Paul Harrison. The increased demand for water was discussed as it related to rapid urbanization and changes in agricultural production and industrial development policies. David Noins paper was on the increased occurrence of natural disasters and mortality i.e. cyclones and floods. The population densities surrounding areas of natural disasters excluding droughts have increased and contributed to greater impacts. Alina Potrykowska and Roger Bivend provided information on the trends and spatial patterns of mortality in Poland. Mortality increases have appeared during the course of industrialization. Data for Poland on environmental variables such as dust and gas emissions volume of untreated waste and hazardous waste are available for 49 voivodships. The most polluted areas show a statistically significant relationships with high morality. Ken Wilson presented his views on the contradiction that African famines did not cause population decline. The possible interpretations are misinterpretation of data inappropriate scales of measurement and a misspecification that social economic and political changes will improve the population environment links. Matthew Lockwood presented his findings on northern Nigeria that migration is an important cause of high density population and that proximate determinants such as proximity to urban centers directly affect demand for children. (September 1992 will be the next joint meeting with the British Society for Population Studies.)

A Case Study of Flood Losses: Implications for Flood Insurance Product Development

A Case Study of Flood Losses: Implications for Flood Insurance Product Development

Life Insurance Product Innovations: Comment

For quite a long time I have been concerned about the lack of literature in the area of life insurance product development. I am therefore very happy to see that Professors William Rudelius and Glenn L. Wood have done a study in this area.' I read their paper with great interest, but feel that it creates some misimpressions about product innovation in the life insurance business. Their selection of six nearly universally accepted developments creates a bias which shows companies to be far more responsive to change than they actually are. The six selected innovations are also particularly interesting as a group in that none of them involves any major change in the company's product line, or in its distribution or in the method of operation needed to administer the business. The conclusion that large companies tend to be more responsive to innovations may very well be misleading since many smaller companies are specailized, and a particular innovation simply may not be relevant to the business which they are in. Far more important, however, is the fact that there are a very large number of life insurance company product innovations which are never successful on a widespread basis. The failure rate (if