Authors
Nora Sulots
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is pleased to announce the release of the fifth and final module of mini-lectures in our Solving Public Policy Problems massive open online course (MOOC).

Case studies like this are instrumental to the curriculum for both CDDRL’s Leadership Academy for Development (LAD) and the Masters’ in International Policy (MIP). They address a wide range of issues in developing countries and are designed to encourage you to think critically about key decisions that have led to policy reforms. This video refers to the implementation segment of the problem-solving framework (Module 1.3).

Facilitating Trade through Effective Border Control: Costa Rica's Challenging Reform Agenda


Peñas Blancas, the border post where all overland commerce passed between Costa Rica and Central American countries to the north, was infamously slow and exceedingly congested. Trucks sometimes waited five days or more to pass through the customs post. The inefficiencies also had a real economic cost, as the border crossing was a major contributor to Costa Rica’s national budget through customs-related taxes and duties. Fixing Peñas Blancas had become a major national priority, and the Deputy Minister of Commerce was put in charge of recommending solutions to the congestion problem and improving the collection of taxes and fees. The task was especially complex because of the power of entrenched opponents of reform and the need to reconcile the competing interests of numerous stakeholders. Any solution would have to take into consideration the ways in which government officials, as well as private-sector actors — from exporters to customs brokers to banks — interacted and conducted business at the border crossing.

In this final lecture, Francis Fukuyama introduces the Costa Rica Border Case, focusing on the problem of ineffective border control and its impact on trade facilitation. He elaborates on the shortcomings of Costa Rica’s border crossing controls and outlines how an effective stakeholder analysis could have helped the reform leader, President Laura Chinchilla, build a coalition for policy reform. The lecture delves into who the supporters and opponents are, their respective vested interests, and what they seek to gain from the reforms. Furthermore, it analyzes the strategies to expand the reform leader’s coalition and evaluates the feasibility of implementing their proposed solutions. Through this case study, students will learn how reform leaders can apply stakeholder analysis to formulate an implementation strategy.

You can read the case study here, access the full series on our YouTube page, and watch Module 5 below:

Read More

Gifford Pinchot
News

Module 3 of CDDRL’s “Solving Public Policy Problems” Online Course Out Now

This single-video module examines the case of Gifford Pinchot and Sustainable Forest Management. Through this case study, students will gain a better understanding of how good communication is important for persuading stakeholders that a reform objective is both achievable and beneficial.
Module 3 of CDDRL’s “Solving Public Policy Problems” Online Course Out Now
Solving Public Policy Problems
News

Reimagining Public Policy Education at Stanford and Beyond

The Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law is proud to announce the launch of a new free massive open online course aimed at providing participants with a foundational knowledge of the best means for enacting effective policy change in their home countries.
Reimagining Public Policy Education at Stanford and Beyond
All News button
1
Subtitle

This module examines the issue of ineffective border control in Costa Rica, its impact on trade, and the various stakeholders involved. Through this case study, students will learn how reform leaders apply stakeholder analysis to formulate an implementation strategy.

Authors
News Type
Blogs
Date
Paragraphs

Catastrophizing the state of the world in which one comes of age is a common fallacy of youth. I intend to avoid this pitfall. Still, contextualizing the present state of affairs is a tremendous feat. My generation is graduating from university amidst the looming sixth mass extinction, as our planet continues to warm, and humanity appears unable to free itself from imperial wars.

Yet as I begin to find my footing in this world, my way of contributing to solving these seemingly insurmountable challenges, I am imbibed with hope rather than fear. This faith emanates from the fabric of the communities in which I have been fortunate to be embedded. For it is in the folds of communityliving, learning, and working with people who care deeply about making the world a better place and about each other as human beingsthat we find the strength to persevere, even when it appears that much of the progress we thought we had made as a species is disintegrating in real-time.

From Costa Rica to Chile, Latin American democracies are in jeopardy.


Three months ago, I submitted my honors thesis to the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) as a student in its Fisher Family Honors Program. Under the advisement of my brilliant mentors, Professors Beatriz Magaloni and Jeremy Weinstein, I spent the last year and a half of my time at Stanford conducting original research on citizenship in Chile, a country currently working to redefine its social contract.

Tara Hein '23 presents her honors thesis Tara Hein '23 presents her honors thesis. Nora Sulots

Though Chile is one of Latin America’s poster childrenlauded for its economic success and the strength of its democratic institutionsin 2019, the world watched with bated breath as protests erupted nationwide. Over a million people took to the streets in the capital alone, fueled by a broad range of demands from improved healthcare and pension systems to greater recognition of Indigenous peoples and women’s rights. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, I sought to understand how low-income citizensa group standing to gain significantly from the protestors’ demandssaw the state and understood their role as citizens of a democratic polity. Because democracy derives its legitimacy from the participation of its members,1 how people self-conceptualize their citizenship and choose to exercise their rights and responsibilities matters greatly in determining the vitality and longevity of this political system.

I was born and raised in Costa Rica, one of three liberal democracies in Latin America, and consistently ranked among the best democracies in the Western Hemisphereeven above the United States according to V-Dem’s liberal democracy index and Freedom House’s freedom score. Growing up, however, I was perplexed and disillusioned by the reality I witnessed at home.

In 2018, my country confronted one of the most contentious presidential elections in its recent history: the candidates that faced off in the runoff were both from nascent parties promising to diverge from the status quo, bogged down by corruption scandals and legitimacy crises.2 Across Costa Rica, young people worried about our democracy formed Coalición Costa Rica, a nonpartisan national civil society coalition dedicated to safeguarding our democratic system by working towards a more informed and participatory country. As a founding member of this organization’s local branch in my hometown, Monteverde, I went door-to-door informing voters on the critical issues at stake that election cycle, organized transportation systems to bring citizens to the polls, and spearheaded events to increase my community’s engagement with these elections.

Caminata por los derechos humanos, Monteverde, Costa Rica 2018 Caminata por los derechos humanos (Monteverde, Costa Rica 2018) Tara Hein

That April, as I worked the polls at the Escuela de Santa Elenaa local school serving as a polling station—I found I, too, was losing faith in democracy. Our efforts felt insufficient. I was disheartened by the rationale folks gave for selecting their chosen candidate; I was frustrated by the imperfect nature of our system. How many people had not voted that day? How many had not voted simply because they could not get to the polls? How many did not know who to vote for or how to choose, and how many more thought that regardless of who won, their government would continue to fail them? If I saw so many shortcomings in my home countryallegedly one of the best democracieswhat was it like elsewhere?

Community and collaboration are vital ingredients to solving the pressing issues facing our societies.


This was one experience among many that motivated me to come to Stanford, determined to learn how democracies across Latin America could be strengthened from the ground up, creating systems of governance that fulfill their promise of working in service of all their members.

Through my honors thesis, I sought to explore this question using rigorous empirical research. I saw the case of Chile as one that could shed light on the challenges democracies in my region face. In particular, I observed striking parallels between the growing discontent with and diminishing trust in democracy in Chile and Costa Rica. From developing a research design, writing the interview protocol, and securing IRB approval, to conducting fieldwork in Santiago, creating local partnerships, recruiting participants, and conducting interviews, writing my honors thesis pushed me to use the tools I had acquired throughout my undergraduate career in service of contributing to our understanding of the state of our democracies.

The concluding chapter of my thesis features an epigraph with a statement from former Uruguayan President José “Pepe” Mujica, cautioning that “if we renounce politics and each one takes refuge in the individual,” our civilization will break down.3 These words speak to how democracies suffer when people withdraw from the political communityfrom decision-making processes, public spaces, and their democratic citizenship. Citizen participation is democracy’s oxygen; this form of government hinges on our ability to act collectively and integrate members’ voices into its functioning. The Chilean experience illustrates the perils of a disjointed society divided into isolated units.

A similar sentiment holds for addressing the challenges of our time. Ideas require feedback and discussion to flourish, for it is only once they are subjected to scrutiny through a variety of paradigms that they are able to withstand the chaotic pressures of real-world implementation. This process is not about relentless criticism or antagonism: it is about cooperation and collaboration, operating under the premise that those around you care as deeply as you do about solving the pressing issues facing our societies.
 

My time at CDDRL was transformative, not only in my growth as a young scholar but also in my development as a citizen of the world.

Fisher Family Honors Program Class of 2023 Fisher Family Honors Program Class of 2023 Damian Marhefka

My time at CDDRL was transformative, not only in my growth as a young scholar but also in my development as a citizen of the world. This is precisely because, beyond an intellectual home, I found community here. From daily greetings, smiles, exchanges of heartfelt conversation, and comradery — within the honors cohort, between students, staff, and faculty—emerges a culture of care that nurtures the whole person. Such quotidian interactions brim with positivity, converting weekly research seminars, workshops, or even casual encounters in Encina Hall into powerful energy sources. It is this spirit that informs the relationships that are born here, turning a group of remarkable individual scholars into a community.

On days when it seemed my thesis did not want to get written — when the headlines on the constitutional process in Chile, presidential elections in Brazil, or violence in El Salvador flooded my inbox, dampening my ability to continue reading journal articles and coding interviews — coming to CDDRL became an antidote. I could find solace in conversations with advisors and mentors, work sessions with other students, or moments of shared humanity with the wonderful staff and faculty at the Center.

Confronting the troubles of our time with the intention of finding solutions — facing a myriad of setbacks along the way — requires a kind of dynamic resilience that takes a great deal of courage and resolve. Yet engaging in this endeavor embedded in a collaborative, vibrant, and compassionate community, like the one found at CDDRL, makes even the hardest days a little bit easier. Such communities are the key to having the stamina and faith to continue developing new, innovative, and daring solutions in an environment where they will be pushed to become their best versions.

Becoming intimately familiar with the case of Chile has proven a sobering endeavor on the practicalities of democratic reform. As I finalized my thesis, Chile was embarking on its second attempt at re-writing its constitution after the draft resulting from the first was vehemently rejected by a majority of the population.

Perhaps above all, both my research itself and my time at CDDRL more broadly have impressed upon me the need to care for our political communities as one would a delicate flower in a tropical garden.

Tara Hein poses with Fisher Family Honors Program co-directors Didi Kuo and Stephen Stedman. Tara Hein poses with Fisher Family Honors Program co-directors Didi Kuo and Stephen Stedman (June 2023). Damian Marhefka

1. O’Donnell, Guillermo. “The Quality of Democracy: Why the Rule of Law Matters.” Journal of Democracy 15, no. 4 (2004): 32-46.
2. Colburn, Forrest D., and Arturo Cruz S. “Latin America’s Shifting Politics: The Fading of Costa Rica’s Old Parties.” Journal of Democracy 29, no. 4 (2018): 43-53.
3. Klein, Darío. Vota y Verás: Reflexiones de Pepe Mujica. Syncretic Press, 2018.

Read More

2023 Honors Thesis Award Winners, Tara Hein and Sean Michael
News

Graduating CDDRL Honors Students Recognized for Outstanding Theses

Tara Hein ('23) is a recipient of the 2023 Firestone Medal and Sean Michael ('23) has won CDDRL's Outstanding Thesis Award.
Graduating CDDRL Honors Students Recognized for Outstanding Theses
Phi Beta Kappa graduates
News

CDDRL Congratulates Newly Elected 2023 Phi Beta Kappa Members

Tara Hein and Sorcha Whitley (honors class of 2023) are among the newest members of this prestigious academic honors society.
CDDRL Congratulates Newly Elected 2023 Phi Beta Kappa Members
All News button
1
Subtitle

Fisher Family Honors Program graduate Tara Hein (‘23) reflects on her time at Stanford and the community she found within the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

-
LAD's first event featuring regional and international experts who will discuss the main challenges that the problem of insecurity presents to governance and the institutions of Central America.
Using case studies, an analysis of the current situation in Colombia and various public and private strategies developed in the country to respond to the situation will be presented. After the presentations, there will be discussion and comments provided with the participation of attendees, faculty of INCAE and other guests.

Case studies for this course are available here.  

INCAE Business School - Campus Walter Kissling Gam

Alajuela, Costa Rica

Workshops
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

South of Mount Fuji, along Japan’s central eastern coast, sits Shizuoka Prefecture. Home to green tea plantations, hot springs resorts, and Yamaha pianos and motorcycles, Shizuoka Prefecture is a vibrant agricultural, tourist, and manufacturing region. It is also home to Katsunori Hirano, a current Corporate Affiliates Visiting Fellow at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC).

Image
Katsunori Hirano
Hirano was born and has lived most of his life in Shizuoka Prefecture, and has worked for the prefectural government for nearly 20 years. He specialized in energy and environmental policy while pursuing a master’s degree in urban affairs and public policy at the University of Delaware (UD). His research explored ways to apply watershed management framework concepts to forest resources management in Japan. While at Stanford, he is studying biodiversity conservation and enhancement while also seeking to re-envision the path to a clean and safe sustainable future.

Last year’s Fukushima nuclear disaster has inspired him to explore ways for Japan to reduce its dependency on nuclear energy. Under the direction of political science professor Phillip Lipscy, Hirano is currently researching incentive mechanisms for financing energy efficiency and renewable energy in place in the United States.

At the very beginning of his UD program, Hirano learned about the distinction between “economic growth” and “development.” “People tend to use the Japanese-language terms interchangeably,” he says.

He is currently exploring case studies from Costa Rica and Bhutan—two countries that have been successfully managing biodiversity—in his search for sustainability models. He says the United States also offers a variety of practical examples of environmental and social sustainability. This year, Hirano plans to study the lifestyle of Amish villagers in Pennsylvania.  
 
Hirano also actively participates in Shorenstein APARC-organized visits to local companies and government organizations such as Facebook and San Francisco City Hall. He says that such site visits help broaden his thinking about innovation and sustainability.

Hirano will continue taking Stanford courses related to his research, attending on-campus workshops and seminars, and speaking with the many people he meets through his campus activities. “Stanford’s extraordinary breadth of teaching and research resources is just wonderful. To me, the learning opportunities that Stanford offers are limitless,” he says, adding that the value of in-person learning far outweighs book-based knowledge.

As Hirano pursues his research at Stanford on energy efficiency and renewable energy and searches for a redefinition of sustainable development, he hopes Japan will begin to pursue social-based development. “I believe that the challenges posed by the Fukushima experience will help inspire Japan to lead the world in creating a sustainable future for generations to come.”

All News button
1
Authors
Heather Boynton
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Dr. Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru, describes his vision as “democracy that delivers.”

“My colleagues and I who have taken the challenge of public life as a vocation and a life commitment,” Toledo says, “cannot but feel concerned about the great challenges faced by our continent where half its population lives between poverty and misery and where inequalities and social exclusion are at their highest.” Toledo has spent the past academic year in residence at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, applying theoretical rigor to a bold new plan for Latin America and also making a sweeping call to action. At the same time, as Distinguished Visiting Payne Lecturer for the Freeman Spogli Institute, Toledo has shared his vision and his plans for the future with the Stanford community in a three-part special Payne Lecture Series, titled “Can the Poor Afford Democracy? A Presidential Perspective.”

Forty percent of Latin Americans — 230 million people — are trying to survive on less than $2 a day, and 110 million live on less than $1 a day, Toledo is quick to point out. He also notes that income levels do not reflect the “drama of poverty”— things like infant mortality, malnutrition, lack of access to health care and education, and ethnically based social exclusion. Impoverished populations see corruption, exclusion, and economic inequality, and they begin to associate these things with democracy and become impatient with it. Toledo is calling for leaders to have the courage to invest in human development through nutrition, education, and microfinance programs and to make decisions that may not have short-term political benefits. “This is a moment for more leadership and less politics,” he said in January.

With the Global Center for Development and Democracy, the non-governmental organization that he founded, Toledo is organizing a new, broad-sweeping initiative to construct a social agenda for democracy in Latin America for the next 20 years. This Social Agenda for Democracy Initiative will identify specific and measurable goals to demonstrate that democracy is capable of “delivering concrete results to the poor.” To do this, Toledo says, the group of former Latin American presidents, democratic leaders, experts, and exponents of civil society that he is organizing will need to map out an agenda for both stimulating economic growth and reducing inequality and exclusion. Their agenda will be supported by parallel and ongoing efforts to promote and strengthen democratic institutions including judicial systems, freedom of speech, human rights, and the independence of all branches of government.

Toledo’s working group met for the first time on November 26, 2007, at the National Endowment of Democracy in Washington, D.C. The core team is made up of 12 former presidents, including Presidents Vicente Fox (Mexico), Fernando H. Cardoso (Brazil), Carlos Mesa (Bolivia), Ricardo Lagos (Chile), Cesar Gaviria (Colombia), Jose Maria Aznar (Spain), Rodrigo Carazo (Costa Rica), and Ricardo Maduro (Honduras). The group met again in Lima, Peru, on April 25, a meeting that Toledo is particularly excited about. “Our meeting in Lima has special significance for the initiative,” Toledo explains. “First, because the Latin American, Caribbean, and European Union Summit between 60 heads of state was held this year in Lima, just one month later, and second, because the theme of this year’s summit is ‘Poverty, Inequality, and Exclusion.’”

Which is the task that lies before Toledo and his colleagues.

One of the main aims of the Social Agenda for Democracy Initiative is to develop a social matrix to measure progress on key indicators such as economic growth, health, education, employment and salaries, poverty and income distribution, and access to technology. Several working group members reported on May 14 to the Latin American, Caribbean, and European Union Summit on the Social Agenda for Democracy Initiative and their progress in constructing this social matrix — giving the bold plan of this already super-charged group additional visibility and opportunity for capacity building. The group will meet two more times in 2008: in Bolivia this July and again in September in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

For Toledo, the link between democracy and social change is palpable — he is both the product of and an advocate for the transformative powers of these two processes. Democratically elected in 2001, Toledo was Peru’s first president of indigenous descent, having grown up in an impoverished and remote Andean village. “For 500 years, someone with my ethnic background was never accepted to be a candidate,” Toledo said in May, in his final Payne lecture. “I was a political intruder in the establishment of politics in Latin America and in Peru.”

In his five-year term as president, Toledo achieved 6 percent average annual growth, increased foreign direct investment by 50 percent, balanced the budget, and brought 25 percent of the population above the poverty line. He also initiated a program called Juntos, or “Together,” a system of conditional, direct cash transfers to female heads of the poorest households. In return for obtaining pre- and post-natal checkups, vaccinating their children, and making sure their children went to school, the women received $30 per month to invest in their economic self-sufficiency. The short-term solution provided by Juntos was initially criticized by the IMF but has been so successful that it is now being evaluated as a policy option by both the IMF and the World Bank and has been continued by the current government.

In his first Payne lecture, held in January, Toledo interwove firsthand observations with quantitative research to support his argument that a reduction in poverty and inequality does not necessarily follow economic growth. While he has “cautious optimism” that Latin America is poised to “make a substantial jump and take a prominent place in the world economy in the next 15 to 20 years,” he said that only an ambitious social agenda to reduce poverty and inequality will stimulate economic growth, strengthen democratic institutions, and consolidate democratic governance in the region.

Having analyzed the relationship between democratic reform, economic growth, and poverty, inequality, and social exclusion in Latin America, Toledo focused his second Payne lecture, in April, on some of the political dynamics in Peru leading up to his election to president. His multimedia presentation included footage of the mass protests that followed Alberto Fujimori’s controversial re-election to a third term in 2000 amid allegations of electoral fraud. Fujimori ultimately agreed to schedule a new election the following year and stepped down as a candidate.

In his third and final Payne lecture, on May 14, Toledo answered the question that served as the organizing principle for the series: Can the poor afford democracy? Yes, he said — but more importantly, “Democracy cannot afford to neglect the poor.”

Like Toledo, former president of Mexico and Social Agenda for Democracy colleague Vicente Fox sees positive economic and social growth for Latin America. He accepted Toledo’s invitation to visit the Stanford community and on March 5 spoke with intensity about Latin America’s prospects for both social welfare and economic well-being in the coming century. Mexico, which Goldman Sachs recently projected to be the world’s fifth largest economy by 2040, was emblematic of this electrifying future, he said. On the one hand, there is great promise for economic growth, stability, and entrepreneurship; and with this great promise, he was careful to note, comes great responsibility for the reduction of poverty and inequality through a “package of powerful social policies.”

Looking ahead, Fox hoped that Latin American democracy would not to be taken for granted; “it has to be nourished, it has to be taken care of, it has to be promoted.” But his outlook for Latin America is that this is a time for its countries to consolidate democracies and freedoms, consolidate economies, and promote new leadership. After years of military dictatorships, corruption, inefficiency, and poor development, “People decided to go for change,” Fox said, “and change is a magic word. It moves people to action.”

Hero Image
All News button
1
Paragraphs

BACKGROUND: Gender differences in health system usage can lead to differences in the incidence of morbidity and mortality. We conducted a pilot screening targeted towards men to evaluate gender differences in cardiovascular disease risk factor detection and time since last clinic visit.

METHODS: Three evening sessions in two communities screened 148 people, mean age 47.7 years. Height, weight, body mass index, blood pressure, blood glucose, and total cholesterol were measured. A questionnaire on past medical history was administered. Participants with elevated measurements were referred to appropriate care.

RESULTS: Men accounted for 60.1% of those screened; 65.5% of the group was overweight, and 22.3% was obese with 42.6% hypertension, 39.2% hypercholesterolemia, and 2.7% high blood glucose. Among men aged 35 to 65, 65.2% were overweight, 20.3% obese, 46.4% hypertensive, 42.0% hypercholesterolemic, and 1.5% with high blood glucose. Within the last 2 years, 53.3% of men and 9.1% of women aged 35 to 65 had not visited a doctor (P = 0.004).

CONCLUSIONS: A significant portion of those screened had elevated cardiovascular disease risk factors. Given that men visited doctors significantly less frequently, efforts to involve men in prevention of cardiovascular disease within these communities are warranted.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Preventative Medicine
Authors
Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert
Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert
Goldhaber-Fiebert SN
Andorsky DJ
Authors
Harold A. Mooney
Angela Cropper
Walter Reid
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs

Senior fellow and contributing author, %people1%, comments in <i>Nature</i> on the release of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment--a four year endeavour that explores the link between human well-being, the status of ecosystems and their sustainable use.

How can ecosystems provide sustainable services to benefit society?

Four years in the making, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (see Nature 417, 112-113; 2002) is released this week (starting 30 March). This gigantic endeavour explores the link between human well-being, the status of ecosystems and their sustainable use.

What has this assessment taught us about developing our planet, and will it, or should it, be continued? To answer the first part of this question, the assessment is an invaluable record of where we stand now, and why. But for it to be useful, the answer to the second part of the question must be 'yes'. We need to take a consistent approach to measuring the status and trends of the world's ecosystems. To take one example, the Convention on Biological Diversity has set the target of reducing the rate of global loss of biodiversity by 2010. But the data to evaluate whether this goal is being met are not readily available, as biological diversity is more than just an enumeration of species present or absent - it includes parameters such as the populations of species and the ecosystems in which they reside. In addition, biodiversity is just one of the many aspects of change in ecosystems and their related functions assessed in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Only from a periodic audit of the state of our natural resource base can we determine if we are indeed approaching sustainability.

At present, there are no formal plans to repeat the Millennium Assessment. There should be, and we hope that the informal discussions among the current sponsors will bear fruit from the seeds sown by the many smaller, ongoing sub-global assessments that were stimulated by the assessment.

Achievements and goals

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment took a new pathway of evaluating the status of the Earth's human support systems. Rather than the standard environmental audit, the new assessment places audits of numbers of organisms and so on into the context of how ecosystem changes have affected human well-being, and how they may do so in the foreseeable future. It had to find a link between the status of biotic systems and the status of individuals in various societies in the world to estimate the capacity of ecosystems to provide services that benefit society. Many of these links are obvious, but others have not been appreciated, nor have all these linkages been quantified. In essence, we had to make a large leap from the current styles of evaluations of status and trends in ecosystems to an entirely different approach - an ecosystems services database related to how ecosystems and societies operate, and how they interrelate.

Current status of ecosystems

Human societies have made marked progress in increasing provisioning services, such as crops and livestock, to meet the demand of a growing population (see Box 1). Food is more abundant and cheaper than in the past. Despite these dramatic accomplishments, there are still more than 850 million undernourished people, and some advances in production are at the cost of other services essential for human well-being, such as ocean fisheries, wood for fuel, genetic resources and - perhaps the most important - fresh water. It is the poor in many nations that are most directly dependent on services from ecosystems, and the degradation of these systems can exacerbate their poverty. Millions of people face the reality of the declining availability of cheap protein from local fisheries, inadequate water for sanitation or live on degraded landscapes.

There are a number of issues that cloud the goal of sustaining a high level of provisioning services. The use of fertilizer in agriculture has greatly increased to meet food demand, but at the cost of polluting off-site unmanaged ecosystems, such as groundwater, rivers and coastal fisheries. In many regions, water for irrigation is being pumped from groundwater and in some cases from fossil sources. Rivers are dammed and diverted for irrigation, altering ecosystems that depend on this water - causing the loss of many of the services they provided.

Further, we are diminishing crucial 'regulating' services responsible for climate, erosion, air- and water-quality control, as well as for the regulation of pests and natural hazards. We are losing these services due to massive land-surface conversion, atmosphere alteration, eutrophication, overharvesting and the impact of invasive species. The Millennium Assessment concluded that 60% of the ecosystem services evaluated were either being degraded or being used unsustainably.

As an example, cultivated systems (areas where at least 30% of the landscape is in croplands, confined livestock production or freshwater aquaculture) now cover a quarter of the Earth's surface, partly by conversion of temperate grasslands, Mediterranean-climate forests and many tropical ecosystem types. Forests have essentially disappeared from 25 countries, with 9.4 million hectares being lost annually from the Earth's surface. Historically important fisheries have collapsed or are overfished, one third of the mangrove forests for which there are historical data have been lost, as have 20% of the coral reefs, with a further 20% degraded. Nearly 40% of the rivers of the world have been fragmented. Species and populations of species are being lost at unprecedented rates, while at the same time the global biota is becoming homogenized owing to the introductions of alien species to new regions. These examples represent major losses of pieces of the biosphere machinery, which have a serious impact on the delivery of ecosystem-regulating services - impacts such as greater prevalence of infectious diseases in disrupted ecosystems, adverse effects on local climates by ecosystem modification, and the loss of flood protection (as in the recent tsunami in Indonesia).

What we can do

The drivers of change in ecosystems and their services will continue in direction and intensity. So how can these trends be reversed to achieve sustainability and to relieve the negative impacts of the loss of services to society, particularly to the disadvantaged? New pathways and approaches can and must be taken. But these are major initiatives, which will mean profound changes in the way global society operates. As learned in the Millennium Assessment, favourable responses need to take place at all levels, from the local to the global. Global mechanisms do not necessarily solve local problems, yet are an important part of the overall solution. At the same time, local players and solutions can feed into regional and global approaches. The players at these different levels address different decision-makers, who can collectively put in place the major changes that are needed for ecosystem sustainability.

The Millennium Assessment examines the merits of options for mechanisms and policies, to accomplish the goal of maintaining and enhancing the delivery of ecosystem services to society. Some of these require major reorganization in the way we do business. At present, our organizational structures address separately the issues of a single resource, such as agriculture, fisheries or the environment. There is little interaction within and between each issue, and much less again with trade and the treasury bodies. The lesson of the Millennium Assessment is that all these resource issues are interrelated: action on one issue has consequences for another. It is crucial to address how to minimize the trade-offs (biodiversity or clean water for agricultural yield), either on-site or by managing landscapes. One important example of how this process can work is the EU system of directives for nitrate accounting on landscapes.

Some institutional innovations are moving towards more integrated views of issues and responses to them. For example, Britain has a government department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. These are all closely interrelated domains, but in other countries are often handled by competing agencies. Elsewhere, interagency groups are evolving to address central issues such as climate change, but their effectiveness is hampered by competitiveness and politics. We need new kinds of institutions in better positions to achieve sustainability of ecosystems that provide for human well-being.

We must also try to improve the economics. Although provisioning services are enmeshed in the local (and increasingly global) marketplace, regulating services are not. We must accelerate our ability to value ecosystem-regulating services at the national level, as well as the ecosystem services that provide crucial cultural amenities, and ensure that these values are considered in decision-making.

Some progress is being made. Costa Rica has established a system of conservation payments, under which contracts are brokered between international and domestic 'buyers' and local 'sellers' of sequestered carbon, biodiversity, watershed services and scenic beauty. On a global scale, the Ecosystem Marketplace consortium is beginning to track transactions, pricing trends and buyers' requests on the carbon, water and biodiversity markets. It is predicted that the global carbon market will reach US$44 billion by 2010.

We need to eliminate the subsidies that promote the excessive use of ecosystem services and evaluate more carefully the trade incentives that damage ecosystem services. We must work harder to educate the public on the strong links between sustainable ecosystems and the lives of humans. The role of new technologies in more efficient use of natural resources is crucial and needs more incentives.

There is plenty that can and needs to be done to deal with the crisis that has already enveloped us. The path is open for scientists to quantify, to a much greater extent, the way in which the operation of ecosystems is directly linked to human well-being, and hence model the course of human activities on future outcomes of the delivery of these services. The Millennium Assessment is certainly providing a strong stimulus for such studies.

Millennium Assessment

Acknowledgements. We thank the scientists, reviewers and members of the review board who provided input to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the sponsors of this work.

All News button
1
Paragraphs

OBJECTIVE: The prevalence of type 2 diabetes, especially in developing countries, has grown over the past decades. We performed a controlled clinical study to determine whether a community-based, group-centered public health intervention addressing nutrition and exercise can ameliorate glycemic control and associated cardiovascular risk factors in type 2 diabetic patients in rural Costa Rica.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: A total of 75 adults with type 2 diabetes, mean age 59 years, were randomly assigned to the intervention group or the control group. All participants received basic diabetes education. The subjects in the intervention group participated in 11 weekly nutrition classes (90 min each session). Subjects for whom exercise was deemed safe also participated in triweekly walking groups (60 min each session). Glycosylated hemoglobin, fasting plasma glucose, total cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL and LDL cholesterol, height, weight, BMI, and blood pressure were measured at baseline and the end of the study (after 12 weeks).

RESULTS: The intervention group lost 1.0 +/- 2.2 kg compared with a weight gain in the control group of 0.4 +/- 2.3 kg (P = 0.028). Fasting plasma glucose decreased 19 +/- 55 mg/dl in the intervention group and increased 16 +/- 78 mg/dl in the control group (P = 0.048). Glycosylated hemoglobin decreased 1.8 +/- 2.3% in the intervention group and 0.4 +/- 2.3% in the control group (P = 0.028).

CONCLUSIONS: Glycemic control of type 2 diabetic patients can be improved through community-based, group-centered public health interventions addressing nutrition and exercise. This pilot study provides an economically feasible model for programs that aim to improve the health status of people with type 2 diabetes.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Diabetes Care
Authors
Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert
Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert
Goldhaber-Fiebert SN
Tristan ML
Nathan DM
Paragraphs

In response to scores of requests, this textbook edition of Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries has been abridged to convey the core arguments of the book in a format appropriate for classroom use.

The authors explore the complex and reciprocal interactions between a society's dominant beliefs, values, and attitudes about politics and the nature of its political system. Among the issues they address are: to what extent is political culture cause or effect; how can its causal importance for democracy be weighed; what are the most important elements of a democratic political culture; and how are these elements developed over time?

Contents

  • Foreword: The Return to Political Culture—Gabriel A. Almond.
  • Introduction: Political Culture and Democracy—L. Diamond.
  • Culture and Democratization in India—R. Sisson.
  • Between Liberalism and Statism: African Political Cultures and Democracy—N. Chazan.
  • Paths to Democracy and the Political Culture of Costa Rica, Mexico, and Nicaragua—J.A. Booth and M.A. Seligson.
  • A Nonparadigmatic Search for Democracy in a Post-Confucian Culture: The Case of Taiwan, R.O.C.—A.Y.C. King.
  • Autonomous Groups as Agents of Democratic Change in Communist and Post-Communist Eastern Europe—C. M. Sadowski.
  • State Elites and Democratic Political Culture in Turkey—E. Ozbudun.
  • Christian Democracy, Liberation Theology, and Political Culture in Latin America—P.E. Sigmund.
  • Causes and Effects—L. Diamond.
All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Books
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Lynne Rienner Publishers
Authors
Larry Diamond
Larry Diamond
Subscribe to Costa Rica