Browsing by Author "Garnaas-Halvorson, Peder"
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Item Implementing Circular Economy at Target Field(2018-05-12) Garbini, Grace; Kappler, Kelsey; Norgaard, Madeline; Garnaas-Halvorson, Peder; Phua, Pei YThe project idea emerged out of the Minnesota Sustainable Growth Coalition (SGC), a collaborative of over 30 Fortune 500 companies working toward a sustainable environment and economy. One of the members, Target Corporation, is particularly interested in creating a future where all packaging can be recycled (or composted). While Target Corporation is a part of a national coalition working on this issue, it was keen to improve package recycling here in Minnesota. Another SGC member, Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, was also excited about Target’s vision as a way to make circular economy a reality. The University’s connections with Minnesota’s professional baseball stadium operations management, Target Field, provided an opportunity to collaborate on a demonstration project. Target Field was an ideal partner because it was also interested in increasing its recycling rate of plastic packaging. After forming this partnership, Madeline Norgaard, a graduate student at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs took on this opportunity as a capstone project in order to explore options and create an action plan. The following paper describes this issue and a feasible recommendation for moving forward.Item Issue Linkage in the Climate Regime: Gender Policies in Climate Finance(2018-09) Chan, Gabriel; Forsberg, Lindsey; Garnaas-Halvorson, Peder; Holte, Samantha; Kim, DaSeulMultiple international agreements, such as the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement, express the norms of respecting and promoting the human rights of women and men and advancing gender equality. Studies show that climate change has disproportionate impacts on women due to socioeconomic status, restrictive gender norms, and lack of access to resources and services, but also that including women as stakeholders in planning and implementation leads to improved project outcomes. These finding highlight the need for specific and direct mechanisms for empowering women to enhance their position and efficiently support climate change mitigation and adaptation. Most major climate funds have adopted gender policies over the last decade in the interest of increasing gender equality. These funds control billions of dollars of bilateral and multilateral finance intended to help developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change, which gives them a unique position in translating gender policies into action. However, the gender policies of climate funds have been developed relatively recently, and it is unclear the extent to which they have been successful in advancing gender equality and enhancing the effectiveness of climate finance for mitigation and adaptation. Here we explore the history of gender mainstreaming in international development policy to ground the discussion of current gender mainstreaming efforts in climate finance. We then critically examine the linkage of gender and climate itself to understand why gender mainstreaming is occurring in this field and to what extent the linkage of gender to climate is appropriate and/or useful. We provide a high-level comparison of existing multilateral and bilateral gender policies, and end with open questions and key takeaways as climate funds move from policy to implementation. Although our focus is primarily on the issue linkage of gender equality and climate change, gender is only one of dozens of fields being linked to climate, and therefore the conclusions are framed around both issue linkage broadly and the gender-climate linkage specifically.Item Linking Gender Policy and Climate Finance(2017-11) Chan, Gabriel; Forsberg, Lindsey; Garnaas-Halvorson, Peder; Holte, SamanthaThe goal of gender equity is increasingly linked to climate change policy under the assumption that this “issue linkage” will produce important synergies and co-benefits. While the logic and practice of the gender-climate linkage has been critiqued, it has become prominent in international climate change institutions. Various climate funds (e.g. Green Climate Fund, Climate Investment Funds) have adopted policies requiring or encouraging gender mainstreaming or the inclusion of gender co-benefits in projects they fund. Such policies aim to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of improving both gender and climate outcomes, but little has been done to evaluate the capacity of climate change institutions to realize these dual goals. Here we summarize lessons learned from gender mainstreaming in the development sector as well as questions raised by current practices in climate change regarding the advantages, limitations, and best practices for integrating the goals of gender equity and international climate change policy.