1,720,974 research outputs found
From the Clean Power Plan to the Affordable Clean Energy Rule: How Regulated Entities Adapt to Regulatory Change and Uncertainty
No full textRegulated entities often struggle to adapt to regulatory change and uncertainty. This is particularly true in the power and utilities sectors, where the scope and scale of project-level planning and management is broad, and changes to these processes can be highly disruptive. Regulatory disruption notwithstanding, some companies adapt to regulatory change and uncertainty better than others. Presently, there is a gap in understanding what these regulatory adaptation best practices might be for the power and utilities sectors.
When the federal Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) publicly proposed the Clean Power Plan (“CPP”) in 2014, stakeholders in the power and utilities sectors were forced to reckon with the possibility that the CPP would prompt profound changes in the regulatory landscape. As of writing, however, the EPA has since proposed to repeal the CPP and replace it with the Affordable Clean Energy (“ACE”) rule, a decision that significantly relaxes regulatory obligations for power companies. The ACE rule will be challenged in federal court, and its future remains in doubt.
This case study will focus on the CPP as a means of investigating the best practices and ongoing challenges of adapting to regulatory uncertainty. The study will provide an in-depth analysis of the approach taken by three companies whose projects and/or financial investments would be implicated by the CPP. The three companies have been interviewed by the Author, and have developed unique and potentially transformative approaches to regulatory uncertainty, while at the same time offering cautionary tales and lessons learned
Florida Water Management Districts and the Florida Water Resources Act: The Challenges of Basin-Level Management
Full text linkFlorida’s plentiful freshwater resources are indispensable to the state’s municipal, agricultural, and environmental interests. As such, decision-makers presiding over complex water management decisions wield extraordinary powers. The Water Resources Act of Florida vests these powers in five water management districts drawn according to hydrological (not political) boundaries. The water management districts have robust technical, financial, and regulatory powers, and hold the key to Florida’s sustainable development. But with the stakes so high, Florida’s water management districts are at the center of a broader fight for control of water resources. In particular, transboundary water conflicts, political pressure, and ecological needs show that while the water management districts are institutionally mature, external forces can exert significant influence on basin-level water management
Comparative Cannabis: Approaches to Marijuana Agriculture Regulation in the United States and Canada
Full text linkThe United States and Canada may be friends and allies, but the two countries\u27 approaches to the regulation of marijuana agriculture have not evolved in tandem. On the contrary, their respective paths toward legalization and regulation of marijuana agriculture are remarkably divergent. In the United States, where marijuana remains a federally prohibited and tightly-controlled substance, legalization and regulation have remained the province of state legislatures and their administrative agencies for decades. In Canada, a succession of court cases paving the way toward medicinal marijuana use has prompted the federal government to develop a national framework committed to legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana.
Many jurisdictions attempting to regulate (or exploring the possibility of regulating) the marijuana industry struggle to address the first step in the supply chain agriculture. This essay will compare and contrast the experiences of the United States and Canada in the regulation of marijuana agriculture. It is evident that there is more than one regulatory approach that can provide a safe and sustainable product to consumers while promoting equity among farmers. Nonetheless, the trials and tribulations of pioneering governments can illuminate the pitfalls, consequences, and drawbacks policymakers are likely to encounter in the future. [excerpt
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Weed and Water Law: Regulating Legal Marijuana
Full text linkMarijuana is nearing the end of its prohibition in the United States. Arguably the country’s largest cash crop, marijuana is already legal for recreational use in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Washington DC. Between now and election day 2016, an additional 14 states may place marijuana legalization initiatives on their ballots. In addition, 23 states and Washington DC have legalized medical marijuana, with up to seven states pending legislation. The era of marijuana prohibition is rapidly coming to a close.
At the same time, traditional doctrines of water law are struggling to cope with the modern realities of water scarcity. Administrative agencies lack capacities to monitor and enforce water rights in real-time amid rapidly changing conditions. As marijuana cultivation leaves the black market and enters state regulatory frameworks, legal doctrines and administrative agencies will need to adapt in order to balance existing water rights with the demands of marijuana production. Failure to do so will encourage producers to remain clandestine while perpetuating existing conflicts between legal and illegal water users. At present there is a gap in understanding the relationship between water rights and marijuana legalization, despite their rapid convergence.
This Article is the first to systematically address that gap. The study begins by describing status quomarijuana production taking place outside the context of state water law doctrines, and the unsustainable conditions that often result. Sections III and IV envision a legal marijuana market governed by the predominant doctrines of US water law: prior appropriation and riparianism. In Section V the theoretical becomes reality, as California’s complex water laws are put to the test by the largest marijuana cultivation community in the United States. Section VI concludes with recommendations for states in the process of legalization. Broadly speaking, this Article finds that both common law and regulatory approaches to water allocation are capable of accommodating legal marijuana cultivation, but to minimize disruptions to existing water rights and the marijuana industry, state agencies will need to proactively adapt to the new realities of the legal marijuana economy
The United Nations Watercourses Convention on the Dawn of Entry Into Force
Full text linkThe United Nations Watercourses Convention entered into force in August 2014. Despite overwhelming support when signed in 1997, the ratification process has been slow. As a binding treaty, the Watercourses Convention provides hope that its provisions will articulate legal principles of transboundary water management capable of promoting cooperation and regional agreements. Despite entry into force, however, global support for the Watercourses Convention is weak, concurrent efforts to develop treaty regimes governing water resources create competition for resources and may obscure understandings of international water law, and the foundational principles of the Watercourses Convention remain ambiguous. These limitations are illustrated in a case study of the discordant hydropolitics of the Nile River Basin – perhaps the most significant watercourse lacking a cooperative management agreement. This article provides an analysis of international water law and the limitations of the Watercourses Convention, considering the implications of entry into force. While the Watercourses Convention creates a workable framework for negotiating regional agreements, low levels of support from UN member states, competing treaty instruments, and ambiguous legal principles limit the potential impact of the Watercourses Convention
Marijuana Agriculture Law: Regulation At The Root Of An Industry
Full text linkMarijuana legalization is sweeping the nation. Recreational marijuana use is legal in eight states. Medical marijuana use is legal in thirteen states. Only three states maintain an absolute criminal prohibition on marijuana use. Many of these legalization initiatives propose to regulate marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol, and many titles are variations of the “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act.” For political and public health reasons the analogy makes sense, but it also reveals a regulatory blind spot. States may be using alcohol as a model for regulating the distribution, retail, and consumption of marijuana, but marijuana is much more than a retail product. It is also an agricultural product, and by some measures, the largest cash crop in the United States. Since marijuana prohibition laws were passed long before any cultivation regulations, states now face an unprecedented challenge: to regulate, for the first time ever, one of the country’s largest agricultural industries.
Major regulatory challenges lie ahead, and how states respond to those challenges will shape the course of the marijuana industry. At present, there is a lack of understanding of the regulatory challenges marijuana agriculture presents and the options states have to address them. This Article identifies those challenges and the regulatory approaches most capable of addressing them. The study begins by describing the existing state of marijuana agriculture regulations. States are likely to find that the marijuana industry’s unique characteristics justify a tailored regulatory approach; relying on existing agricultural policies may be ineffectual or lead to perverse outcomes. Next, the study explores fundamental questions about the “marijuana fragmentation spectrum.” Will the industry come to be dominated by agricultural conglomerates mass-producing a marijuana commodity, as many have feared? Or will governments and the industry adopt the appellation model favored by the wine industry to protect local farmers and differentiate between products? The study also analyzes the major environmental impacts of marijuana agriculture, including regulations that address water allocation, water quality, energy, organic certification, and crop insurance. Finally, the study addresses power distribution trade-offs within marijuana agriculture regulation frameworks, including local vs. state, and consolidated vs. fragmented, regulatory authority dilemmas. The findings suggest that responsible and sustainable marijuana agriculture can be fostered at the state level, but only if regulations are responsive to the unique and unprecedented challenges that marijuana agriculture present
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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