Plastic bags and bottles have been an obvious menace for decades, but the emergence of microplastics will test the policy capacity of governments in new ways. Adopting elevated standards for water quality, improving treatment technologies,…
Following Berkeley’s example, governments should apply soda tax revenue to nutrition and physical education programmes, and include information about sugar in school curricula. The approach should consider local conditions, enhance education, and provide access to…
The frontier of possibilities presented by cloud computing is just now being fully realized, and governments must be forward-thinking in understanding and embracing these trends. The implications for economic growth are immense: cloud computing has…
China has an opportunity to strengthen its emerging global leadership role in urban sustainability. However, it must first implement an effective vision for how sponge city initiatives complement broader environmental governance efforts. Improving regulatory enforcement…
This article introduces government competitiveness, a concept that recognizes overlooked factors like the role of social organizations, the use of diverse policy inputs and policy development processes, and the imperative to address human needs at…
“I seek to be a part of the conversation about 21st century urbanization in its many forms, from uncontrolled sprawl in developing countries to post-industrial revitalization in developed countries. As an academic, I am not…
Elevating the groundwater crisis to the national policy agenda is essential, and the federal government must oversee a system that is at once distributed, standardized and robustly monitored. National un-governability of water can no longer…
In an era when political parties around the world are turning inwards, embracing populism, and behaving irrationally, the rationality of durable state institutions should supersede the self-preservation interests of a single dominant party. Vietnam has…
Natural disasters are having increasingly disruptive effects on social, environmental and economic systems. Wildfires, floods and similarly recurrent challenges have relatively clear policy interventions. By contrast, earthquakes are largely unpredictable, and there is no certain…
ASEAN’s 21st century call-to-action should be the pursuit of higher development standards and their normalisation across rural and urban areas – on issues like personal security, health, education, housing, and basic services. A robustly financed commitment…
