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Board Rooms and Jail Cells- Assessing NGO Approaches to Private Environmental Governance
Get PDFStaff of the Nature Conservancy often find themselves in corporate board rooms. Staff of Greenpeace often find themselves in jail cells. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) prides itself on its non-confrontational, collaborative deal making, partnering closely with corporations like chemical giant Dow and agricultural lightning rod Monsanto. Both Dow and Monsanto, in fact, are members of TNC’s Business Council along with the likes of BP, Shell, and Cargill. Greenpeace, on the other hand, prides itself on direct action, civil disobedience, and non-violent confrontation. Greenpeace has launched combative operations against Dow, Monsanto, and other TNC collaborators. While business partners praise TNC’s cooperative efforts, they resist Greenpeace’s strategies, which have been the subject of recent litigation accusing Greenpeace of, among other things, racketeering, conspiracy, and defamation. Given the stark differences in personality and reputation, when it comes to environmental protection instrument choice it is startling to realize that Greenpeace and TNC are nearly indistinguishable.Both TNC and Greenpeace are, fundamentally, proponents of Private Environmental Governance. Private Environmental Governance is the striving for public goals through private endeavor. Through private land conservation and corporate collaborations, TNC is squarely engaged in private environmental governance. Though less obviously so, through public pressure on private companies, reputational campaigns, and consumer persuasion, Greenpeace too seeks to change the market and the behavior of private companies to achieve environmental goals without government involvement.The literature on Private Environmental Governance has been explicit that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like TNC and Greenpeace have an important role to play, but there is little depth to this assertion. This article will add depth, by examining the efforts of NGOs in environmental instrument selection and implementation. This article offers a novel typology of environmental NGOs based on four categories: (1) Overarching Goal; (2) Governance Philosophy; (3) Advocacy Targets; and (4) Key Tactics. The article then overlays these categories on a diverse range of environmental groups.Critics often toss environmental NGOs into the single basket of Big Green. But this closer examination shows some important distinctions, including significant differences in the way these groups approach Private Environmental Governance.Across the legal literature there is a dearth of research on how advocacy organizations select and influence environmental protection instruments in the public and private spheres. Private Environmental Governance, with its principle focus on private actors rather than government entities, has recognized the importance of this inquiry, and this article opens the doors for a more searching and robust consideration of the role of NGOs in influencing public and private environmental policy
A Machine Learning Approach to Verify and Reduce False Positive Alarms Generated by Data Breach Detection Processes
No full textThe unauthorized use of sensitive data is a major risk for organizations. Customers whose information is kept by these enterprises are vulnerable if the company does not take protective measures in the handling of their information. The problem of false alarms that arise from breach monitoring systems is risky and costly because there is a tendency in the administration of data breach detection systems to favor the occurrence of false alarms to minimize the occurrences of false negatives. As a result of this propensity, the experts that need to inspect and confirm the nature of these alarms need to dedicate more time to handle many bogus alerts, and whose efforts, in turn, could be used for addressing real data breach events. The subsequent manual confirmation is time-consuming and inefficient. This dissertation aims to improve the quality and reduce the solution time of the verification process. It presents a prototype based on an iterative approach that can verify the true nature of the alarms after detection has taken place, and prioritizes them for the subsequent manual review. The approach utilizes use case scenarios of data-in-motion and data-at-rest instances that are examined by a machine learning method, the ID3 (Iterative Dichotomiser 3). After initially trained, the method keeps acquiring knowledge whenever the model flags a new pattern of alarm and then confirmed by the subject matter expert. It also generates an automated notification when it determines that there is a discrepancy between the model’s training dataset predictor variables and the detection engine access rules. In this way, the prototype minimizes the risk of missing true alarms while using a more efficient verification process
Alliance Announcement “Surprise” and the Impact on Firm Valuation
No full textThis study integrated research on strategic alliance formation activity and market signals to examine the impact of alliance announcement history and alliance announcement surprise on firm performance consequences, and then explored the affect of moderator dyads (linked to three of Gulati’s (1998) alliance formation concerns) on the prior alliance announcement/firm performance consequences and the alliance announcement surprise/firm performance consequences relationships. The focus is on non-equity alliances that involve marketing, product development, research, technology transfer, and licensing agreements. The non-equity alliance is the preferred mode of collaboration because it provides a quick way to markets, resources, and capabilities (Kwicinski, 2017), although it lacks the control aspect of ownership found in an equity alliance (Globerman & Nielsen, 2007; Gudergan, 2002; Gulati, 1995b).The research model revealed that abnormal returns, for firms making announcements with no alliance announcement history, were roughly 3× higher in magnitude than the abnormal returns for firms with alliance announcement history. Moreover, abnormal returns for firms that disclosed less than three announcements within a calendar year were 2× to 3× higher than abnormal returns for firms that disclosed three or more announcements within a calendar year.Finally, the combined contributions relating to alliance announcement surprise and prior alliance announcement history offer an interesting new perspective to the alliance formation literature: the notion of alliance announcement cadence
GMOs, International Law and Indigenous Peoples
Get PDFThis Article sprung from a desire to discover why—despite scientific uncertainty and the oft-cited precautionary principle in international law—genetically modified organisms are still allowed to spread via international trade and natural ecological cycles. While exploring this topic, it did not take long to come across the environmental justice impacts of genetically modified crops, and their particularly disparate impact upon indigenous peoples across the globe. Not only are GMOs threatening biodiversity and our planet, but also the very existence and cultural foundations of many indigenous groups.
This Article seeks to answer the following questions: What are the international agreements that can be used to protect indigenous peoples against GMOs encroaching on their food security and food sovereignty? Why have these agreements, especially the precautionary principle, thus far failed to restrict the spread of GMOs, and protect the food sovereignty of indigenous peoples? Moving forward, how can international treaties, declarations, and conventions be enforced with regard to international GMO promulgation
Predictive Modeling of the Non-Profit Sector in the US
Get PDFThe Non-Profit Sector contributes almost $1 trillion to the US economy, representing 5.4% of GDP, and generating over 12 million jobs in 2017. Yi (2010) suggests that a better understanding of the factors that affect fundraising should be of great interest to policy makers, and fundraisers. However, the workings of the sector are subject of much debate. Matsunaga, Yamauchi and Okuyama (2010) relate its size to the Theory of Government Failure. Sokolowski (2013) proposes that government funding does have a positive effect on revenues. Curry, Rodin and Carlson (2012) suggested they swing with GDP, but, Berman, Brooks and Murphy (2006) contend that macroeconomic variables do not affect short-run dynamics. List (2011) found that non-profit revenues react more to economic upswings than downturns. And the National Philanthropic Trust (2016) relates ups and downs to certain events and public awareness. Wallace (2016) points to the fact that predictive modeling has focused big-donor analytics, aimed at the identification of potential donors. We set out instead to define a working model. After locating complete time series for an emblematic segment, the environmental cause, Factor Analysis allowed us to pinpoint independent variables. We found that Non-Profit Revenues (NPR) depend largely on Public Awareness, as measured by TV coverage, and Disposable Personal Income (DPI), specifically: NPR = -4401.542 + 528.327(DPI) +23.121(TVCoverage) +
Opening Up: Why Are We not Using More Open Education Resources?
Get PDFOpen Educational Resources (OER) have the ability to alleviate the student dropout rate, make faculty course design easier, and allow faculty to contribute and participate in the OER undertaking that is swiftly spreading through our nation. In addition we are able to save our students 3,000 dollars over the course of their education. This work looks at findings from a survey which was sent out to list serves and by direct email to faculty. The survey posed questions to try to determine why faculty were having a difficult time accepting and using OERs in their own classrooms. It was discovered that the major issue was trust. 141 respondents felt that OERs could benefit students, but felt that they had no oversight of the content used in the open resources. I propose a method of peer review which helps build the trust of faculty to begin to use more OERs in their courses
The Cost of Success: The Significance of Funding in the Academic Success of Charter Schools\u27 Minority Students
Get PDFSince the state of Minnesota first began charter schools nearly three decades ago, they have slowly become a major part of public education throughout the United States. Often times strategically placed in communities of low socioeconomic status, charter schools have offered alternative options to at-risk, low-income students who would otherwise attend the traditional public school within their school zones. In New York City today, there are almost four times the number of charter schools than there were ten years ago. Across the city, at-risk students who have the opportunity to attend charter schools are reaching higher levels of educational achievement and succeeding in more varied fields than their public-school-attending counterparts. It is not possible to say that any single factor contributes to the success of charter schools; however, in my investigation I hypothesize that one major contributing factor to New York charter school success is funding. As such, I compared the annual state revenue brought in by charter schools versus that of traditional public schools. In analyzing both total funding for two specific charter networks and six individual public schools, as well as funding per-pupil, I found that funding discrepancies have most likely made a difference in the differing education systems
Carbon Pricing in New York ISO Markets: Federal and State Issues
Get PDFNew York’s Clean Energy Standard (“CES”), adopted in August 2016, aims to steer the state’s electricity sector away from carbon-intensive generation sources. It supports low-carbon alternatives by requiring retail electricity suppliers to purchase credits, the proceeds from which are paid to renewable and nuclear generators. Recognizing that this will affect the operation of wholesale electricity markets, New York’s electric transmission grid operator (the “New York Independent System Operator” or “NYISO”) has commenced a review to assess possible means of incorporating the cost of carbon emissions into market prices. This Article explores two approaches to carbon pricing in NYISO markets: the first would involve NYISO adopting a carbon price of its own initiative with a view to improving the operation of wholesale electricity markets (“Approach 1”), while the second would involve adoption of a carbon price designed to reflect and harmonize state-level policies aimed at reducing electricity sector emissions (“Approach 2”). Under either approach, NYISO would adopt a per megawatt hour carbon price and use it to establish a fee for each generating unit, consistent with its emissions profile. This fee would be added to the prices generators bid into the wholesale electricity market and those adjusted prices used by NYISO to determine the dispatch order. The result would likely be a re-ordering of dispatch, with high-emitting generators dispatched (and paid) less frequently, and cleaner alternatives more frequently. Our proposal, while conceptually simple, is likely to be difficult to implement