http://www.innovations.harvard.edu This section details innovations and issues in the fields of air quality, climate change, ecosystems energy resources, environmental education, environmental ethics, environmental health, environmental regulation, growth management, hazardous and solid waste, land resources, recycling and water resources. en-us Copyright 2009, Government Innovators Network Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:22:00 -0500 Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:22:00 -0500 info@innovations.harvard.edu http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=77 A new approach to environmental policy advocated by state agencies and by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is to create "tracks" of environmental performance. The philosophy behind performance track programs is simple: distinguish strong environmental performers from weak ones and give strong firms special recognition and rewards such as enforcement forbearance and flexibility ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=69 This paper reviews major developments in national environmental policy during the Clinton Administration, defining environmental policy to include not only the statutes, regulations, and policies associated with reducing pollution, but also major issues of public lands management and species preservation.  The authors adopt economic criteria for policy assessment — principally efficiency ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=3248 Suburban sprawl has become a hot topic across the United Staes and is affecting even such federal policies as Vice President Gore's open spaces initiative. The author examined this topic about five years ago in New Visions for Metropolitan America (1994), and is now working with several other analysts on a comprehensive federally funded study called The Costs of Sprawl — Revisted (Burchell ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=9905 This survey outlines recent innovations in energy policy at the state level across the U.S. It is organized by state. Below we have provided a list of the survey's contents by topic.  Multi-State Cooperative Initiatives Western Governors Association: Clean and Diversified Energy Initiative (led by CA and NM) Eight Midwestern states entered into the Memorandum of Understanding ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=642848 Managing the dangers of global climate change will require developing countries to participate in a global climate regime. So far, however, those nations have been nearly universal in their refusal to make commitments to reduce growth in their greenhouse gas emissions. This paper describes how a set of international "Climate Accession Deals" could encourage large policy shifts that are in ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=642846 Despite an enormous amount of work done to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change and the need for quick corrective action, there is little progress toward a global compact for managing climate change. In fact, there are some basic differences of perspectives on climate change policies between developed and developing countries which may bedevil future global agreements on climate ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=659 The cost of building and operating wind farms continues to decline. And governments increasingly encourage development of renewable energy resources. As a consequence, the amount of wind capacity is growing, raising important questions about the integration of wind output with electric-power systems. These questions have physical (especially reliability) and economic consequences.   This ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=3247 This article discusses mortgage lending programs aimed at lower-income buyers looking to purchase homes in compact, transit-accessible neighborhoods. Unlike traditional lending formulas, transit supportive home loan calculations consider transportation cost savings from living in transit-friendly neighborhoods and apply these savings to allow borrowers to qualify for a larger mortgage.   ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=2554 The Pingree Forest Partnership, a multi-year effort spearheaded by the New England Forestry Foundation to acquire a permanent conservation easement on 762,192 acres of privately-owned forestland in the state of Maine, stands as an important conservation innovation marked by novelty and creativity in conception, political significance, and measurable effectiveness.   Conservationists active ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=51 The authors critically review the Kyoto Protocol and 13 alternative policy architectures for addressing the threat of global climate change. They employ six criteria to evaluate the policy proposals: environmental outcome, dynamic efficiency, cost effectiveness, equity, flexibility in the presence of new information, and incentives for participation and compliance.  The Kyoto Protocol does ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=642850 Human activity is causing irreversible harm to the climate system and environment. The Kyoto Protocol is only a good starting point to raise the awareness of climate change. However, this protocol failed to address some core issues, such as setting targets based on a fair and efficient burden-sharing principle, effectively engaging developing countries, setting a long-term goal, implementing ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=58 The purpose of this paper is to assess the Kyoto Protocol and the alternative policy architectures that have been proposed in regard to their respective abilities to induce participation and compliance. This paper compares these various policy proposals and discusses their relative merits in terms of these major criteria. The authors find that those proposals that are best in terms of cost-effectiveness ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=4883 Improvements in environmental quality depend in large measure on decisions made by private-sector managers. For decades, government regulators and others interested in environmental protection tried to affect these decisions by altering incentives so that businesses would achieve a desired level of emissions or would adopt specified pollution control technologies. While these traditional performance ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=642849 OVERVIEW Although an effective solution to the climate change problem will require the cooperation of the developing countries, it is not clear that near-term greenhouse gas emission quotas from these countries are either feasible or desirable. This paper argues that a post-2012 international climate agreement should instead focus on creating incentives to stimulate research and development ... http://www.innovations.harvard.edu/showdoc.html?id=4888 Scientific and economic consensus points to the need for a credible and cost-effective approach to address the threat of global climate change, but the Kyoto Protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change appears incapable of inducing significant participation and compliance. We assess the Protocol and alternative policy architectures, with particular attention to their respective ...