Downloads

• Table of Contents
• Chapter One

Ordering Information:

• {CD2E3D28-0096-4D03-B2DE-6567EB62AD1E}, 9780815727415, $32.00 Add to Cart
• {9ABF977A-E4A6-41C8-B030-0FD655E07DBF}, 9780815725794, $26.00 Add to Cart

      

After decades of neglect, Latin American governments are increasingly focusing on urban slums. What often spurs their policy interventions is a desire to counter violent criminality leaking out from the poor marginalized slums controlled by gangs into the city centers the better-off residents want to keep safe. But tackling the socioeconomic dynamics of slums -- the trap of poverty, discrimination, lack of public goods and social services, and rule by nonstate actors -- is not only complex, but also costly. Governments, elites, and middle classes tend not to want to spend resources on slums. Effective policies have to be sustained for decades, and political will and tax revenues for such complex state-building are frequently scarce.

Focusing on a discreet intervention – providing low-cost housing – becomes tempting. Rarely is it sufficient. The condition of the buildings alone is not what makes a slum a slum. Moving residents from slums to better low-cost housing has encountered systematic challenges not just in Latin America, but also in other places where it has been tried, such as Kenya. Instead, policies need to focus on broader community dynamics, including public safety, legal job creation with sufficient income, human capital development, and robust connectivity of slums to economically-thriving areas, something residents of the latter often don’t want.

Paradoxically, real estate dynamics can have pernicious effects. If broader pacification does take hold and public safety in slums increases, some slum areas can become desirable real estate with vast development possibilities. Developers may well seek to buy the land by offering “better” low-cost housing to slum residents to get them to move. Since many slum residents do not have title to their residences, forced displacement also occurs, albeit under the cloak of being nice to the poor.

Instead of being limited to the provision of alternative residences, policies to address slums need to be about inclusion, economic growth, safety, and connectivity of slums with the thriving city parts, and accountability of city-governance authorities.

This commentary was originally published by the Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin America Advisor. 

      

Editor's note: This article is part of a series marking International Women's Day, on March 8, 2016. Read the latest from Global scholars on bridging the gender inequality gap, women’s well-being, and gender-sensitive policies in sub-Saharan Africa. 

This Tuesday, March 8, marks the first International Women’s Day since world leaders agreed last September to launch the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030. A more rounded conception of gender equality marks one of the SDGs’ most important improvements compared to their predecessor Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Two SDG targets help to illustrate the broadening geopolitical recognition of the challenges. They also help to underscore how much progress is still required.

A new target: Eliminating child marriage

The inclusion of SDG target 5.3 adds one of the most important new priorities to the global policy agenda: to “eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage, and female genital mutilation.” Until only a few years ago, the child marriage portion of this target had received only scant international attention. The driving force advancing the issue has been Girls Not Brides, a fast-gelling coalition that now includes more than 550 civil society organizations from over 70 countries. The initiative was first spearheaded by Mabel van Oranje, the dynamic international policy entrepreneur.

At a practical level, ending child marriage faces at least two major challenges. First, it is largescale. Every year, an estimated 15 million girls around the world are married before the age of 18. Second, it is highly complex. There are no simple solutions to addressing cultural practices with deep roots. Impressively, Girls Not Brides has already published a thoughtful theory of change to inform policy conversations, accompanied by a menu of recommended indicators for measuring progress. Regardless of whether this specific theory turns out to be correct, the coalition deserves significant credit for advancing public discussions toward practical action and outcomes. One can only hope that every constituency that lobbied for an SDG target presents similarly considered proposals soon. The advocates for ending child marriage have already registered some early gains. In 2015, four countries raised the age of marriage to 18: Chad, Guatemala, Ireland, and Malawi.

A renewed target: Protecting mothers’ lives

The SDGs are also carrying forward the previous MDG priority of maternal health. Target 3.1 aims as follows: “By 2030, reduce the global maternal mortality ratio to less than 70 per 100,000 live births.” Formally this falls under Goal 3 for health and wellbeing, but it certainly represents a gender equality objective too. Part of that is by definition; mothers are female. Part of it is driven by the need to overcome gender bias; male decision-makers at all levels might overlook key health issues with which they have no direct personal experience.

As of the early 2000s, maternal mortality was too often considered a topic only for specialist discussions. One of the MDG movement’s most important contributions was to elevate the issue to the center stage of global policy. For example, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made it a centerpiece among his own foreign policy priorities, including at the G-8 Muskoka summit he hosted in 2010.

Figure 1 shows an initial estimate of the gains across developing countries since 2000, as measured by maternal mortality ratios (MMR). The solid line indicates the actual rate of progress. The dotted lines indicate how things would have looked if previous pre-MDG trends had continued as of 1990-2000 and 1996-2001, respectively. (This is the same basic counterfactual methodology I have previously used for child mortality trends here and here, noting that maternal mortality data remain considerably less precise and subject to ongoing updates in estimation.)

The graph shows that developing countries’ average MMR dropped from approximately 424 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990, down to 364 in 2000, and further to 233 in 2015. That works out to a 36 percent decline over the past 15 years alone, driven by acceleration in progress during the mid-2000s. Importantly, the value in 2015 was also at least 12 percent lower than it would have been under pre-MDG rates of progress—287 under 1990-2000 trends and 266 under 1996-2001 trends.

Figure 1: Developing country progress on maternal mortality, 1990-2015

A long road ahead

Whereas the MDGs focused on developing countries, the SDGs apply universally to all countries. In that spirit, and slightly different from the previous graph, Figure 2 shows an estimate of the current global MMR trajectory for 2030, extrapolating the rates of progress from 2005 to 2015. Drawing from available data for 174 countries with a current population of 200,000 or more, the world’s MMR is on course to drop from approximately 216 in 2015 to 163 in 2030. This would mark a 25 percent improvement, but falls far short of the global MMR target of 70. (These calculations follow a similar methodology to my assessment last year of under-5 mortality trajectories.)

Figure 2: Global maternal mortality - current trajectory to 2030

The mothers of nations

Although the SDG for maternal mortality is set at a global level (unlike the country-level target 3.2 for child mortality), it is worth assessing how many individual countries are trailing the MMR benchmark of 70. The geographic nature of the global challenge is underscored in Figure 3. It lists the number of countries with MMR above 70 across the respective years 2000, 2015, and—on current trajectory—2030. As of 2000, 90 countries still had MMRs greater than 70. By 2015, this was down to 77 countries. By 2030, on current rates of progress, the relevant figure drops only slightly to 68 countries.

Most notably, the figure for sub-Saharan Africa remains unchanged between 2015 and 2030, at 44 countries, even though most of the region is already experiencing major mortality declines. Rwanda, for example, saw its MMR plummet from 1,020 in 2000 to 290 by 2015. It is on track to reach 106 by 2030. Meanwhile, Sierra Leone saw a decline from 2,650 in 2000 to 1,360 in 2015, on a path toward 768 in 2030. The challenge is not a lack of progress. Instead, it is simply that these countries have huge ground to cover to reach the ambitious goal. On current trajectory, 11 African countries are on course to have MMRs of 500 or greater in 2030.

Figure 3: Scoping progress on SDG 3.1

Number of countries with maternal mortality ratios > 70

Women and girls deserve more

Although these two targets for child marriage and maternal mortality embody only a small portion of the SDGs’ broader gender equality imperatives, they reflect crucial aspects of the overall challenge. On the positive side, they provide inspiration for the ways in which long-overlooked issues can rapidly gain political and policy traction. But they also underscore the scale of the task ahead. The global challenges of gender inequality—ranging from discrimination to violence against women to inequalities of opportunity—all require dramatic accelerations in progress. On this International Women’s Day, we all need to recommit to break from business as usual. Our mothers, sisters, daughters, and partners around the world all deserve nothing less. 

Note: The maternal mortality figures presented above have been updated subsequent to the original post in order to correct for a coding error discovered in the original country-weighting calculations for global trajectories.

      

Let’s take a moment for a thought experiment. I do this days after more Palestinian attacks on Israelis, including the horrific murder of a mother of six children; soon after Israel announced the expropriation of another 370 acres of land near Jericho; and after Majed Faraj, the Palestinian security chief, announced that Palestinian security forces had intercepted 200 potential terrorist attacks against Israel. The thought experiment focuses on whether the “Plan B” for the Israel-Palestine dispute should be Israel’s annexation of the territories it occupied in 1967 and the extension of full citizenship rights to the Palestinians in those areas.

To be sure, I still count myself among the dying breed of those who believe fervently in the two-state solution—two states living side by side in peace and security, each enjoying sovereignty and political independence in part of the land that both claim as their exclusive national homes. This is still the best, by far, of all possible outcomes of the dispute. This is not to say that the two-state solution is without faults. Thus far, the two sides have not been able to agree on critical details, and there is no guarantee that achieving two states would assure peaceful relations. But the two-state solution, based on partition of the land, appears to offer the best chance for long term peace. I would dump all Plan B’s and C’s in a heartbeat if leadership emerged in Israel and Palestine—and in the United States—that proved willing to move toward a two-state outcome. 

I still count myself among the dying breed of those who believe fervently in the two-state solution.

But hoping for better, stronger, more farsighted leadership is not a substitute for policy. The fact is that both Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are further today from bringing forth such leaders than at any time before. Even if Benjamin Netanyahu yields the prime minister’s office to another contender, no one in Israel is proposing the kind of far-reaching accommodation toward which Ehud Olmert was heading in 2008. None of Mahmoud Abbas’s likely successors has even articulated a reasonable peace plan. And none of the candidates for U.S. president is likely to be as committed to the search for peace as Barack Obama has been, and even his commitment has fallen far short of what is needed to move the recalcitrant parties toward peace. The sad reality is that politics—not policy, per se—is what blocks progress toward a two-state solution.

The sad reality is that politics—not policy, per se—is what blocks progress toward a two-state solution.

Regional solution?

In the absence of progress toward two states, are there better alternatives than throwing in the towel and looking at annexation as Plan B? The search for alternative Plan B’s is a fool’s errand. Some of those ideas are creative, but none of them will be accepted by both sides. For example, one Plan B variant du jour rests on the premise of a “regional solution”—that is, having Israel and the Arab world reach a comprehensive peace agreement that includes a resolution of the Palestinian issue. Sounds good, except it makes no sense. 

First, Israel has not accepted the Arab Peace Initiative (API) of 2002, the closest the Arab world has come to accepting Israel within the borders of the 1949 armistice line and agreeing to normalize relations with Israel once peace has been achieved. But no Israeli government has liked its terms, especially the paragraph on Palestinian refugees, the notion of a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem, and the API’s insistence on full Israeli withdrawal. Thus, the question to those who propose a regional solution today is whether there is a coalition in Israel ready to use the API as the basis for negotiating a comprehensive peace. I think not.

Second, the Arab world is in no position to deliver on what the API promises. The Arabs have never followed up the API by engaging Israel. And the premise of the API has been that the Arabs will recognize Israel and agree to normalize only after peace is concluded with the Palestinians (and the Syrians and Lebanese)– not a very attractive incentive for Israelis to enter a risky peace process.

[T]he Arab world of 2002, however dysfunctional, was far more stable than the Arab world of 2016.

And third, the Arab world of 2002, however dysfunctional, was far more stable than the Arab world of 2016. The opponents of the two-state solution in Israel point to this when describing the security dangers that Israel would face were it to concede anything now to the Palestinians. Even if a comprehensive solution were to rest on the shoulders of Egypt and Jordan, Israel’s peace treaty partners, would Israeli skeptics truly be assuaged that these countries could assure Israel’s security in the face of continued instability (Egypt) or the impact of refugees and economic distress (Jordan)? Indeed, the idea of a regional or comprehensive solution based on Arab stability today is chimerical. 

Status quo?

The alternatives to the regional idea are equally unrealistic. The idea of confederation rests on the agreement of Jordan (and potentially Egypt) to join a political entity with the Palestinians. However, neither state has indicated any interest in doing so. 

“Maintaining the status quo” is a non-starter, because status quos are never static—as the events of recent years prove, they tend to get worse. How many Intifadas or stabbings will it take for the people of Israel to believe their own security chiefs, who recognize that these actions are born of frustration over the occupation and related grievances? Why should Israelis believe that the majority of Palestinians are interested in peace when Hamas—opposed to Israel’s very existence—still rules Gaza and commands significant popular support, and while the Palestinian Authority is crumbling and hardly represents anyone anymore? And how long will it take Palestinian supporters of armed and violent resistance to recognize that their abortive efforts to destroy Israel and indiscriminate attacks on Israeli civilians are repugnant: targeting civilians is a morally unacceptable tactic for any resistance movement. 

Thus, the idea of “conflict management” or even “conflict mitigation”—staple products of those who support maintaining the status quo until somehow things change—is pernicious, for it rests on an assumption that the rest of us simply don’t understand the conflict.

[T]he idea of a regional or comprehensive solution based on Arab stability today is chimerical.

A futile search for alternatives

And so it is for all other Plan B’s. Several years ago, my Princeton graduate students embarked on an effort to find a viable alternative to the two-state solution; and they told me at the outset that they intended to prove that such an alternative existed. In the end, they failed and returned to the idea that the only viable solution was to partition the land into two states. Others, too, have tried to find alternatives, and some retain the hope that their policy proposal might win the day. I wish them well—for I really do believe in peace, whether it’s via two states or otherwise. But I have no confidence they will succeed.

[T]he idea of “conflict management” or even “conflict mitigation”—staple products of those who support maintaining the status quo until somehow things change—is pernicious, for it rests on an assumption that the rest of us simply don’t understand the conflict.

And so we are back to the thought experiment. This would take as a starting point what Israeli Minister Uri Ariel told my students several years ago: we (Israel) have won, and the land of Israel is ours. Under this scenario, Israel would:

• Formally annex the territories it occupied in 1967, basing its legal argument on its belief that these are “disputed” rather than “occupied” territories. 
• In connection with this act of annexation, Israel would offer full citizenship rights to all the Palestinians living in the territories. While Israel would probably want to include only the West Bank in this arrangement, excluding Gaza would make it impossible to secure any support internationally, in that Gaza is as much a part of Resolution 242 as is the West Bank.
• Those Palestinians who accept citizenship would then enjoy equal rights with all other Israelis; those Palestinians who reject citizenship would be offered permanent residency, a status that would include certain rights and privileges but not full citizenship rights (for example, voting in national elections). 
• Israel would then approach the United Nations Security Council to argue that these measures constituted an act of self-determination, and that the outcome represented an end of the conflict in accordance with Resolution 242. I am not a lawyer and I assume that many—including Palestinians and Arabs—would dispute this Israeli argument. But the process would change the status quo fundamentally and offer a real alternative to the two-state solution.

Could this work, and is it a real Plan B for the conflict? This is but a thought experiment. I suppose most Israelis will hate this idea for it exposes the most significant weakness of the Israeli right wing and the settlements movement, namely that it undercuts fundamentally the idea of a permanent Jewish majority state. Similarly, most Palestinians will also hate this idea because it forecloses the possibility of a real act of self-determination culminating in an independent state and forces Palestinians to confront the emptiness of the slogans that their leaders have employed over the years in the context of the Arab-Israeli dispute. 

The thought experiment is thus not very sound. Perhaps, then, it will scare everyone enough for leaders to get serious about peace.

      

On May 17, Egyptian President Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi did something Egyptian presidents have done many times before: he urged Israel and the Palestinians to renew negotiations for peace, this time by backing an international conference promoted by the French foreign minister.

But what made Sissi’s call particularly interesting is that he called on not just the leaders but also political "parties" to seize what he called “a real opportunity to find a long-awaited solution.” Sissi's call offered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an opportunity to accommodate Israel's newest best friend, Sissi, rather than the French themselves. It would not have brought peace, of course: though an international conference would offer a glimmer of hope to change some of the worst aspects of the current diplomatic deadlock, it would not solve any of the outstanding substantive issues between Israelis and Palestinians.

Sissi's reference to political parties was no coincidence: it fit perfectly with the domestic political needs of Netanyahu and of Opposition Leader Isaac Herzog, who were angling to bring the Zionist Union joint list into the government and give Netanyahu a much-needed parliamentary cushion beyond his current razor-thin coalition. 

Herzog first had to convince his own highly-reluctant party of the need to join its rival Netanyahu—and if peace was about to break out, how could they refuse? For about 48 hours it seemed like Herzog was indeed about to announce his decision to join the coalition, face the battle in his party, and become Israel's foreign minister.

Then something else happened. Rather than appointing Herzog as foreign minister, Netanyahu is now poised to bring back Avigdor Lieberman, a former foreign minister and Israel's least diplomatic politician. Lieberman won't be returning to diplomacy, however. Instead, he will get a significantly more powerful position, second only to the prime minister: minister of defense. In response, current Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon today resigned from the cabinet and the Knesset, refusing to take another cabinet position. He gave a scathing speech, saying that "[E]xtremist and dangerous forces have taken over Israel and the Likud movement."

In what can only be considered brilliant politicking—and reckless policy—Netanyahu jettisoned Ya’alon and Herzog in favor of his former associate and bitter personal rival, Lieberman.

In what can only be considered brilliant politicking—and reckless policy—Netanyahu jettisoned Ya’alon and Herzog in favor of his former associate and bitter personal rival, Lieberman. Herzog is left wounded and humiliated, played for a fool—the gravest sin in Israeli political culture. Netanyahu finds himself at the helm of an enlarged coalition (Lieberman brings with him five members of Knesset, after one member of his faction left the party today in protest of the move), safer from parliamentary shocks and from attacks from the right (the whole right wing is now inside the coalition. Lieberman will still likely criticize Netanyahu from within the government, but not quite as fiercely). 

A cynics’ cynic

Lieberman's pending appointment has been met with astonishment by the opposition in Israel, by many in the military which he will oversee, and indeed here in Washington—and with good reason.

Just these past few months, Lieberman has viciously attacked both Netanyahu and the military brass for what he claimed was a weak response to terrorist attacks. In but one example of many, Lieberman came to the defense of a soldier who the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had decided to prosecute for killing a Palestinian assailant who had already been thoroughly subdued. The contrast to current Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon is striking: Ya’alon defended the military's decision and stressed the importance of ethical norms and of rules of engagement in the military. Ya’alon is very right wing on the Palestinian issue, but he has consistently shown an honorable stance in the face of attacks on democratic norms. 

Lieberman is ostensibly less right-wing on the Palestinian issue—sometimes. Though he is a settler himself, he has endorsed a two-state solution in very general theory, noting he would even move if peace necessitated it. His endorsement, however, has always been couched in the toughest language possible and in utter mistrust of Palestinian intentions or the chances of peace ever materializing. On the niceties of democratic norms, including military law, he is a cynics' cynic. Benny Begin, another former Likud minister and an avowed hawk, has called Lieberman's appointment “delirious.”

As minister of defense, these positions will be highly consequential. Not only will he be in charge of the military brass and its promotion, but he will have statutory authority over many affairs in the West Bank, which is under military rule. Any attempt to improve the daily lives of Palestinians (such as a project just announced to streamline checkpoints for Palestinians) will be under his purview. His open calls to bring down Hamas through a ground invasion of Gaza if there is another round of fighting with Hamas—voiced even while he was a cabinet member during the last round of fighting—will now carry the weight of the minister of defense.

What was Herzog thinking? 

For the past year, since Netanyahu formed his fourth government, Herzog had denied time and again that he was aiming to join Netanyahu rather than replace him. He bemoaned the cynicism of those who simply would not believe him. This week the masks came off. Negotiations between the sides were accelerated and Herzog began a difficult intra-party fight to justify such a move. "National unity" governments are quite common in Israel, starting with the emergency cabinet of 1967, on the eve of the Six-Day War, when a sense of imminent doom swept the country. 

These governments, however, are usually justified by either an acute crisis, like in 1967, or in order to resolve a political deadlock, such as between Shimon Peres' Labor and Yitzhak Shamir's Likud in 1984. Peres and Shamir even "rotated" the post of prime minister. Though the government was incapable of any meaningful diplomatic advances, on which it was divided, it succeeded in tackling hugely important challenges in the economy—bringing inflation down from an annual rate of over 444 percent (not a typo) in 1984, and in defense—extricating Israel from most of Lebanon, following the first Israeli Lebanon War. 

What would be the logic this time? Herzog was promising three things to his party members: a host of portfolios (jobs and titles but also influence on a range of domestic policy issues); a veto on some aspects of policy which Labor finds most damaging, including remote settlement construction and legislation seen as limiting democratic discourse in Israel; and a leading role in any negotiations with the Palestinians, staring with the French peace conference. 

The jobs for Labor would have been real. A veto on policy could have been important—Tzipi Livni, Herzog's non-Labor partner in the Zionist Union, played a crucial role in protecting democratic norms as minister of justice in Netanyahu's previous government. 

On peace, however, Herzog was offering fool's gold. Put it this way: if you think Herzog would have real autonomy to run negotiations with the Palestinians while Netanyahu is prime minister, I have two suggestions. First, ask Tzipi Livni, who had that exact task in the previous government and was accompanied to every negotiation by Netanyahu’s personal lawyer, Yitzhak Molcho. Livni, incidentally, was strongly opposed to joining Netanyahu this time around. 

Second, I have some great real-estate in a swamp in Florida I'd like to discuss with you.

Herzog had a political rationale as well. He is a natural minister and backroom politician: smart, hardworking and prone to pragmatic compromises. He is not a natural public politician. As Leader of the Opposition he has wowed no one with his charisma or ability to stand up to Netanyahu and offer a bold alternative. Better to be in the halls of power than in the open arena. With the prospects of a fierce leadership challenge in his own Labor Party, moreover, he would have bolstered his bona fides as a national leader and therefore give himself a bit more time—the most a politician in Israel can really hope for. 

If there was a political benefit to Herzog personally, the outlook for his Labor Party would have been dismal.

If there was a political benefit to Herzog personally, the outlook for his Labor Party would have been dismal. Having joined Netanyahu, it would have been very hard to present the party as an alternative to his rule. 

What now?

Netanyahu can now feel slightly more secure in his coalition, though once again at the mercy of the mercurial Lieberman. Lieberman will enjoy a powerful post that usually bestows its occupant with new popularity in Israel (the converse is true of the finance ministry). Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon will enjoy a wider coalition to pass his domestic legislation and budget; indeed he'd been pushing for enlarging the coalition since it was formed. 

In the opposition, Herzog is weaker than ever. After being led on by Netanyahu for months, breaking his own word on the negotiations and then losing his gamble, he is severely exposed to challenges within Labor. His party's image has taken a serious hit as well.

Herzog's weakness will allow others in the opposition to claim the mantle of alternative to Netanyahu. Already, Yair Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party is the main beneficiary, but others may emerge as well, especially from the ranks of former generals like Gabi Ashkenazi. 

Most importantly, Israel's actual policy may be affected significantly by this move. Of all the governmental posts, defense is the one that has the most effect on the crucial questions of security for Israelis (and on the daily lives of Palestinians). Instead of grand peace plans Herzog was selling, Netanyahu's political brilliance has wrought one of the most hardline governments Israel has ever had.

       

In a lively and wide-ranging debate that aired earlier this month on Al Jazeera English, Brookings Executive Vice President Martin Indyk sparred with Head to Head presenter Mehdi Hasan about American efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the United States’ relationship with Israel.

Indyk began by stressing that American support for Israel is what gives the United States an influential role in the peace process and the leverage to encourage Israel to move towards peace. Indyk added that this does not mean that the United States should act as “Israel’s attorney” in the negotiations, and cited a promise he made to Palestinian leaders during the 2013-2014 peace talks led by Secretary of State John Kerry that Washington would not coordinate positions with Israel in advance. 

Brookings Executive Vice President Martin Indyk in a Head to Head interview with Al Jazeera English's Mehdi Hassan.

He pointed out that the United States has traditionally relied on its close relationship with Israel to encourage its leaders to take steps for peace and make offers to the Palestinians, and that no other potential mediator has been able to produce serious offers from Israel. “[The United States is] not neutral, we don't claim to be neutral. We have an alliance with Israel,” Indyk said. “But in order to achieve another interest that we have, which is peace in the region…and a settlement that provides for the legitimate national rights of the Palestinians, we need to be able to influence Israel.”

In responding to questions from Hasan and the audience, Indyk explained that he believes that both Israelis and Palestinians had made important concessions for peace, citing Israel’s acceptance of the Clinton Parameters in 2000, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s historic recognition of Israel as part of the Oslo Accords. Indyk also described the dramatic shifts in the way the United States has addressed the Palestinian issue over the past few decades, “from treating it only as a refugee issue and insisting that it be dealt with through Jordan to recognizing Palestinian national rights.” 

When asked about U.S. support for Israel at the United Nations, Indyk responded that this support is definitely warranted given the history of hostility towards Israel at the UN. However, he added that he personally wouldn’t oppose a carefully-worded resolution condemning Israeli settlements “so that the settlers in Israel understand that [settlement expansion] isn’t cost free.” Indyk rejected the notion that Israel has turned from a U.S. strategic asset in the Middle East into a burden, but explained that “making progress on the Palestinian issue enhances America’s credibility in the region and failing to make progress…hurts America’s credibility in the region.” 

Indyk concluded the discussion by reiterating his commitment to achieving Israeli-Palestinian peace and emphasizing that he would “never give up on trying to resolve this conflict in a way that meets Palestinian legitimate national aspirations to an independent and viable contiguous state living alongside Israel, a Jewish state, in peace.” 

       

       

Many proposals to accelerate and improve medical product innovation and regulation focus on reforming the product development and regulatory review processes that occur before drugs and devices get to market. While important, such proposals alone do not fully recognize the broader opportunities that exist to learn more about the safety and effectiveness of drugs and devices after approval. As drugs and devices begin to be used in larger and more diverse populations and in more personalized clinical combinations, evidence from real-world use during routine patient care is increasingly important for accelerating innovation and improving regulation.

First, further evidence development from medical product use in large populations can allow providers to better target and treat individuals, precisely matching the right drug or device to the right patients. As genomic sequencing and other diagnostic technologies continue to improve, postmarket evidence development is critical to assessing the full range of genomic subtypes, comorbidities, patient characteristics and preferences, and other factors that may significantly affect the safety and effectiveness of drugs and devices. This information is often not available or population sizes are inadequate to characterize such subgroup differences in premarket randomized controlled trials.

Second, improved processes for generating postmarket data on medical products are necessary for fully realizing the intended effect of premarket reforms that expedite regulatory approval. The absence of a reliable postmarket system to follow up on potential safety or effectiveness issues means that potential signals or concerns must instead be addressed through additional premarket studies or through one-off postmarket evaluations that are more costly, slower, and likely to be less definitive than would be possible through a better-established infrastructure. As a result, the absence of better systems for generating postmarket evidence creates a barrier to more extensive use of premarket reforms to promote innovation.

These issues can be addressed through initiatives that combine targeted premarket reforms with postmarket steps to enhance innovation and improve evidence on safety and effectiveness throughout the life cycle of a drug or device. The ability to routinely capture clinically relevant electronic health data within our health care ecosystem is improving, increasingly allowing electronic health records, payer claims data, patient-reported data, and other relevant data to be leveraged for further research and innovation in care. Recent legislative proposals released by the House of Representatives’ 21st Century Cures effort acknowledge and seek to build on this progress in order to improve medical product research, development, and use. The initial Cures discussion draft included provisions for better, more systematic reporting of and access to clinical trials data; for increased access to Medicare claims data for research; and for FDA to promulgate guidance on the sources, analysis, and potential use of so-called Real World Evidence. These are potentially useful proposals that could contribute valuable data and methods to advancing the development of better treatments.

What remains a gap in the Cures proposals, however, is a more systematic approach to improving the availability of postmarket evidence. Such a systematic approach is possible now. Biomedical researchers and health care plans and providers are doing more to collect and analyze clinical and outcomes data. Multiple independent efforts – including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Sentinel Initiative for active postmarket drug safety surveillance, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s PCORnet for clinical effectiveness studies, the Medical Device Epidemiology Network (MDEpiNet) for developing better methods and medical device registries for medical device surveillance and a number of dedicated, product-specific outcomes registries – have demonstrated the potential for large-scale, systematic postmarket data collection. Building on these efforts could provide unprecedented evidence on how medical products perform in the real-world and on the course of underlying diseases that they are designed to treat, while still protecting patient privacy and confidentiality.

These and other postmarket data systems now hold the potential to contribute to public-private collaboration for improved population-based evidence on medical products on a wider scale. Action in the Cures initiative to unlock this potential will enable the legislation to achieve its intended effect of promoting quicker, more efficient development of effective, personalized treatments and cures.

What follows is a set of both short- and long-term proposals that would bolster the current systems for postmarket evidence development, create new mechanisms for generating postmarket data, and enable individual initiatives on evidence development to work together as part of a broad push toward a truly learning health care system.

Downloads

• Download paper

      

Legislative proposals to accelerate and improve the development of innovative drugs and medical devices generally focus on reforming the clinical development and regulatory review processes that occur before a product gets to market. Many of these proposals – such as boosting federal funding for basic science, streamlining the clinical trials process, improving incentives for development in areas of unmet medical need, or creating expedited FDA review pathways for promising treatments – are worthy pursuits and justifiably part of ongoing efforts to strengthen biomedical innovation in the United States, such as the 21^st Century Cures initiative in the House and a parallel effort taking shape in the Senate.

What has largely been missing from these recent policy discussions, however, is an equal and concerted focus on the role that postmarket evidence can play in creating a more robust and efficient innovation process. Data on medical product safety, efficacy, and associated patient outcomes accrued through routine medical practice and through practical research involving a broad range of medical practices could not only bolster our understanding of how well novel treatments are achieving their intended effects, but reinforce many of the premarket reforms currently under consideration. Below and in a new paper, we highlight the importance of postmarket evidence development and present a number of immediately achievable proposals that could help lay the foundation for future cures.

Why is postmarket evidence development important?

There are a number of reasons why evidence developed after a medical product’s approval should be considered an integral part of legislative efforts to improve biomedical innovation. First and foremost, learning from clinical experiences with medical products in large patient populations can allow providers to better target and treat individuals, matching the right drug or device to the right patient based on real-world evidence. Such knowledge can in turn support changes in care that lead to better outcomes and thus higher value realized by any given medical product.

Similarly, data developed on outcomes, disease progression, and associated genetic and other characteristics that suggest differences in disease course or response to treatment can form the foundation of future breakthrough medical products. As we continue to move toward an era of increasingly-targeted treatments, this important of this type of real-world data cannot be discounted.

Finally, organized efforts to improve postmarket evidence development can further establish infrastructure and robust data sources for ensuring the safety and effectiveness of FDA-approved products, protecting patient lives. This is especially important as Congress, the Administration, and others continue to seek novel policies for further expediting the pre-market regulatory review process for high-priority treatments. Without a reliable postmarket evidence development infrastructure in place, attempts to further shorten the time it takes to move a product from clinical development to FDA approval may run up against the barrier of limited capabilities to gather the postmarket data needed to refine a product’s safety and effectiveness profile. While this is particularly important for medical devices – the “life cycle” of a medical device often involves many important revisions in the device itself and in how and by whom it is used after approval – it is also important for breakthrough drugs, which may increasingly be approved based on biomarkers that predict clinical response and in particular subpopulations of patients.

What can be done now?

The last decade has seen progress in the availability of postmarket data and the production of postmarket evidence. Biomedical researchers, product developers, health care plans, and providers are doing more to collect and analyze clinical and outcomes data. Multiple independent efforts – including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Sentinel Initiative for active postmarket drug safety surveillance, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s PCORnet for clinical effectiveness studies, the Medical Device Epidemiology Network (MDEpiNet) for developing better methods and medical device registries for medical device surveillance and a number of dedicated, product-specific outcomes registries – have demonstrated the powerful effects that rigorous, systematic postmarket data collection can have on our understanding of how medical products perform in the real-world and of the course of underlying diseases that they are designed to treat.

These and other postmarket data systems now hold the potential to contribute to data analysis and improved population-based evidence development on a wider scale. Federal support for strengthening the processes and tools through which data on important health outcomes can be leveraged to improve evidence on the safety, effectiveness, and value of care; for creating transparent and timely access to such data; and for building on current evidence development activities will help to make the use of postmarket data more robust, routine, and reliable.

Toward that end, we put forward a number of targeted proposals that current legislative efforts should consider as the 2015 policy agenda continues to take shape:

Evaluate the potential use of postmarket evidence in regulatory decision-making. The initial Cures discussion draft mandated FDA to establish a process by which pharmaceutical manufacturers could submit real-world evidence to support Agency regulatory decisions. While this is an important part of further establishing methods and mechanisms for harnessing data developed in the postmarket space, the proposed timelines (roughly 12 months to first Guidance for Industry) and wide scope of the program do not allow for a thoughtfully-, collaboratively-considered approach to utilizing real-world evidence. Future proposals should allow FDA to take a longer, multi-stakeholder approach to identify the current sources of real-world data, gaps in such collection activities, standards and methodologies for collection, and priority areas where more work is needed to understand how real-world data could be used.

Expand the Sentinel System’s data collection activities to include data on effectiveness. Established by Congress in 2007, Sentinel is a robust surveillance system geared toward monitoring the safety of drugs and biologics. In parallel to the program for evaluating the use of RWE outlined above, FDA could work with stakeholders to identify and pursue targeted extensions of the Sentinel system that begin to pilot collection of such data. Demonstration projects could enable faster and more effective RWE development to characterize treatment utilization patterns, further refine a product’s efficacy profile, or address pressing public health concerns – all by testing strategic linkages to data elements outside of Sentinel’s safety focus.

Establish an active postmarket safety surveillance system for medical devices. Congress has already acted once to establish device surveillance, mandating in 2012 that Sentinel be expanded to include safety data on medical devices. To date, however, there has been no additional support for such surveillance or even the capability of individually tracking medical devices in-use. With the recently finalized Unique Device Identifier rule going effect and the ability to perform such tracking on the horizon, the time is now to adopt recent proposals from FDA’s National Medical Device Postmarket Surveillance System Planning Board. With Congressional authorization for FDA to establish an implementation plan and adequate appropriations, the true foundation for such a system could finally be put into place.

These next steps are practical, immediately achievable, and key to fully realizing the intended effect of other policy efforts aimed at both improving the biomedical innovation process and strengthening the move to value-based health care.

      

Event Information

Under the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA) of 2007, the FDA has the authority to require pharmaceutical manufacturers to develop Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) for drugs or biologics that carry serious potential or known risks. Since that time, the REMS program has become an important tool in ensuring that riskier drugs are used safely, and it has allowed FDA to facilitate access to a host of drugs that may not otherwise have been approved. However, concerns have arisen regarding the effects of REMS programs on patient access to products, as well as the undue burden that the requirements place on the health care system. In response to these concerns, FDA has initiated reform efforts aimed at improving the standardization, assessment, and integration of REMS within the health care system. As part of this broader initiative, the agency is pursuing four priority projects, one of which focuses on improving provider-patient benefit-risk counseling for drugs that have a REMS attached.

Under a cooperative agreement with FDA, the Center for Health Policy at Brookings held an expert workshop on July 24 titled, “Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS): Building a Framework for Effective Patient Counseling on Medication Risks and Benefits”. This workshop was the first in a series of convening activities that will seek input from stakeholders across academia, industry, health systems, and patient advocacy groups, among others. Through these activities, Brookings and FDA will further develop and refine an evidence-based framework of best practices and principles that can be used to inform the development and effective use of REMS tools and processes.

Event Materials

• REMS_PBRC_Meeting_Agenda
• REMS BR Speaker Bios
• REMS BenefitRisk Meeting Summary
• REMS BenefitRisk communication white paper

       

Summary

Global education plays an important role in contributing to U.S. foreign policy objectives. In a recent speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted education, along with health, agriculture, security, and local governance as the core areas for U.S. international development investment. She emphasized the importance of education, particularly of girls and youth, in improving global stability, speeding economic growth, and helping global health, all of which advance U.S. interests in the world.

But how effective has the U.S. government been in supporting global education? Unfortunately, its many good education activities and programs are not leveraged for maximum impact on the ground, especially in situations of armed conflict and state fragility. Challenges of U.S. foreign assistance—for example, fragmentation across multiple agencies, lack of policy coherence, diminished multilateral engagement—generally affects its work in education. Luckily some of the core strengths of U.S. assistance have an impact as well, specifically the large amount of resources (in total terms, if not relative terms) devoted to education and the vast breadth and depth of American academic, philanthropic and NGO partners engaged in pioneering work on education in the developing world.

This report analyzes the effectiveness of U.S. government education work specifically in relation to conflict-affected and fragile states. Findings across five domains—global reach, resources, technical expertise, policy and multilateral partnerships—show that U.S. education aid falls critically short of what it is capable of achieving. The U.S. government has substantial strengths in this area, especially in global reach, resources, and technical expertise, demonstrating a real comparative advantage in the field of education in situations of conflict and fragility. However, its fragmented policy across agencies and its limited multilateral engagement prevent it from maximizing its strengths, leaving it punching below its weight on this important issue. In this sense, the U.S. government is a classic underachiever, failing to efficiently deploy its many capabilities and potential for maximum impact.

There has never been a better time for looking at the aid-effectiveness of U.S. government education work. The Obama administration is bringing increased focus on the Paris Principles for Aid Effectiveness to its development initiatives. The U.S. Congress is actively engaged with pending legislative action to modernize foreign assistance and improve U.S. support for universal education. Two major reviews of foreign assistance are underway: the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review led by the Department of State and USAID, and the Presidential Study Directive on U.S. Global Development Policy led by the White House.

Questions about foreign assistance reform asked in these two reviews can be applied to the education sector. For example, how can the U.S. government improve its education assistance by using a “whole-of-government” approach, by focusing on comparative advantages and strengths, and by improving coordination and by increasing multilateral engagement?

Careful analysis and answers to these questions can help propel the U.S. from its current position as an underachiever to being a leader in global education, specifically in contexts of conflict and state fragility.

This report makes nine specific recommendations, many of which could be achieved without any substantial increase in funding, that would enable the U.S. government to greatly increase the effectiveness of its education aid to populations living in contexts of conflict and state fragility.

Downloads

• Download

       

Overview

Increasing educational attainment is likely to reduce conflict risk, especially in countries like Pakistan that have very low levels of primary and secondary school enrollment. Education quality, relevance and content also have a role to play in mitigating violence. Education reform must therefore be a higher priority for all stakeholders interested in a more peaceful and stable Pakistan. Debate within the country about education reform should not be left only to education policymakers and experts, but ought to figure front and center in national dialogues about how to foster security. The price of ignoring Pakistan’s education challenges is simply too great in a country where half the population is under the age of 17.

There has been much debate concerning the roots of militancy in Pakistan, and multiple factors clearly come into play. One risk factor that has attracted much attention both inside Pakistan and abroad is the dismal state of the national education sector. Despite recent progress, current school attainment and literacy levels remain strikingly low, as does education spending. The Pakistani education sector, like much of the country’s public infrastructure, has been in decline over recent decades. The question of how limited access to quality education may contribute to militancy in Pakistan is more salient now than ever, given the rising national and international security implications of continued violence.

The second half of 2009 witnessed not only the Pakistani government stepping up action against insurgents but also the release of a new Pakistan National Education Policy that aspires to far-reaching and important reforms, including a commitment to increase investment in education—from 2 to 7 percent of gross domestic product. Hundreds of millions of dollars in international education aid have been newly pledged by donor countries. This renewed emphasis on education represents a substantial opportunity to seek to improve security in Pakistan and potentially also globally over the medium to long term. Policymakers both inside and outside Pakistan should give careful consideration to whether and how education investments can promote peace and stability, taking into account what we now know about the state of the education sector and the roots of militancy.

This report takes a fresh look at the connection between schools, including but not limited to Pakistan’s religious seminaries, known as “madrasas,” and the rising militancy across the country. Poor school performance across Pakistan would seem an obvious area of inquiry as a risk factor for conflict. Yet to date, the focus has been almost exclusively on madrasas and their role in the mounting violence. Outside Pakistan, relatively little attention has been given to whether and how the education sector as a whole may be fueling violence, over and above the role of the minority of militant madrasas.

Downloads

• Download Full Paper - English

       

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In the face of unprecedented global challenges, effective global cooperation increasingly requires a partnership between state and non-state actors. Many international institutions now involve non-state actors in arenas that were once the exclusive province of states. The paper analyzes the evolution of civil society participation in the governance of international institutions and highlights the shift from a model based on consultation toward a model of multistakeholder governance. The paper argues that consultation is a less effective approach to involving civil society in achieving the mission of these institutions and suggests that more robust forms of multi-stakeholder participation by civil society can foster greater accountability and better deliberation. It analyzes competing claims about the desirability of including civil society in the governance of international institutions and suggests that an emerging constituency model can promote more effective multi-stakeholder governance. Constituency structures are already central features of several global health institutions and are now being contemplated by institutions in other sectors, including by the Education for All—Fast Track Initiative.

Multi-stakeholder approaches to governance are likely to become more widespread in the years to come in order to harness the contributions of a plethora of private actors engaged in responding to a wide range of global challenges. Even with enhanced cooperation between states, it is increasingly clear that non-state actors are essential to responding to key challenges across a wide range of sectors. Although it is possible to imagine expanded cooperation between state and non-state actors without opening up the governance structures of international institutions, it is less likely that these institutions will be successful in the longrun without a shift toward greater multi-stakeholder involvement in the institutions themselves.

Downloads

• Download Full Paper

       

       

Editor’s note: In the "Becoming Brilliant" blog series, experts explore the six competencies that reflect how children learn and grow as laid out by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff in their new book "Becoming Brilliant."

The world is morphing into a place that no one can foresee. How can we prepare students to live and work in that place?

Not long ago, people could learn job skills and use them indefinitely, but now jobs and skill sets are becoming obsolete at an alarming rate. This means that students, and later adults, need to expect and thrive on challenges and know how to turn failures into stepping stones to a brighter future.

When I was a beginning researcher I wanted to see how children coped with setbacks, so I gave 5th graders simple problems followed by hard problems—ones they couldn’t solve. Some hated the hard ones, some tolerated them, but, to my surprise, some relished them. One unforgettable child rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and declared, “I love a challenge!” Another said, “I was hoping this would be informative.” They didn’t think they were failing, they thought they were learning. Although this was years ago, they were already 21st century kids.

I knew then that I had to figure out their secret and, if possible, bottle it. With help from my graduate students, figure it out we did. And we are learning how to bottle it too. 

So, what was their secret?

Our research has shown that these children tend to have a “growth mindset.” They believe that their basic abilities, even their intelligence, can be developed through learning. That’s why they love challenges and remain confident through setbacks. Their more vulnerable counterparts, however, have more of a “fixed mindset.” They believe their basic abilities are just fixed—set in stone­. So their key goal is to look and feel smart (and never dumb). To accomplish this they often seek easy over hard tasks. And when they do encounter setbacks, they tend to feel inept and lose confidence. Research shows that even exerting effort can make them feel unintelligent. If you’re really good at something, they believe, you shouldn’t have to work at it.

These mindsets make a difference. In one study we tracked hundreds of students across the difficult transition to seventh grade, akin to entering a new world with harder work, higher standards, and a whole new structure. Those who entered with more of a growth mindset (the belief that they could develop their intelligence) fared better. Their math grades quickly jumped ahead of those of students with a fixed mindset and the gap became wider and wider over the next two years. This was true even though the two groups entered with equivalent past achievement test scores.

Recently, we were able to study all the 10th-graders in the country of Chile. We found that at every socioeconomic level students with a growth mindset were outperforming their peers with a fixed mindset. What was most striking was that when the poorest students held growth mindsets they were performing at the level of far richer students with fixed mindsets.

What’s exciting is that we have been able to teach a growth mindset to students through carefully designed workshops. In these workshops, students learn that their brain can grow new, stronger connections when they take on hard learning tasks and stick to them. They learn to avoid categorical smart-dumb thinking and instead focus on their own improvement over time. They hear from other students who have benefitted from learning a growth mindset. And they learn how to apply growth mindset thinking to their schoolwork. In these workshops students also do exercises, such as mentoring a struggling peer using what they learned about the growth mindset. Such workshops have been delivered both in person and online and have typically led to an increase in students’ motivation and achievement, particularly among students who are encountering challenges—such as difficult courses, school transitions, or negative stereotypes.

We have also studied how teachers and parents can foster a growth mindset in children. Sadly, many do not—even many of those who hold a growth mindset themselves! This is because adults, in their eagerness to motivate children and build their confidence, can tend to do things that foster a fixed mindset.

Here is what we’ve found:

• Praising children’s intelligence conveys that intelligence is fixed and promotes a fixed mindset and its vulnerabilities. Praising the children’s learning process—their strategies, hard work, and focus—and linking it to their progress conveys a growth mindset.

• Reacting to children’s failures with anxiety, false reassurances, or comfort for their lesser ability (“Don’t worry, not everyone can be good at math”) can foster a fixed mindset. Reacting with compassionate questions and plans for future learning conveys a growth mindset.

• Research shows that how math teachers react to their students when the students are stuck is critical. Teachers can help students develop growth mindsets by sitting with them, trying to understand their thinking, and then collaborating with them on how to move forward and what to try next.

But how can teachers themselves develop more of a growth mindset?

In some quarters, a growth mindset became a “requirement.” This led many educators to claim a growth mindset without really understanding what it is or how to develop it. We have suggested that educators understand, first, that a growth mindset is the belief that everyone can develop their abilities. It is not simply about being open-minded or flexible. Second, they must understand that all people have both mindsets and that many situations, such as struggles or setbacks, can trigger a fixed mindset. Finally, they must learn how their own fixed mindset is triggered so that they can work to stay in a growth mindset more often.

As we prepare students to thrive in the new world, we can influence whether they see that world as overwhelming and threatening or whether they greet it with the confident words “I love a challenge.” The latter are the ones who can make the world, whatever it’s like, a better place.  

      

Employment is down among everyone between the ages of 16 and 64—particularly among teens, but with a great deal of variation by geography, race, and education. The disparity between blacks and whites is especially stark. For example, unemployment among white young adults peaked at 14% in 2010—still considerably lower than unemployment rates for black young adults at any point in the 2008 to 2014 time period. Unemployment for black 20- to 24-year-olds rose to 29.5% in 2010 and fell to 22.3% in 2014, compared to 10.3% among whites in 2014.

While there is no silver bullet, higher levels of education and work experience clearly improve job prospects down the line for young people. There are multiple strategies local and regional leaders can use to build more structured pathways into employment.

Teens and young adults (referring to 16- to 19-year-olds and 20- to 24-year-olds, respectively) are not monolithic populations. Age is an obvious differentiator, but so are a number of other factors, such as educational attainment, skill level, interests, parental support, and other life circumstances.  Schools, families, and neighborhoods all play a role in a young person’s trajectory—both positive and negative. But at the most basic level, a program for a 17-year-old high school student is likely not appropriate for a 23-year-old, regardless of educational attainment. Successful programs integrate education, training, work-readiness, and youth development principles, but the particular blend of these elements and settings vary: more school-based and educationally focused programs for younger youth, and more community-based and career-focused programs with strong ties to education for older youth.

An admittedly non-comprehensive review includes the following types of promising and proven programs:  

For high school students:

• Paid internship programs, such as Urban Alliance and Genesys Works
• High school programs that bridge school and work with occupationally-focused courses and career exposure, such as Career Academies, Linked Learning, High Tech High, Advanced Career, Alamo Academies, and P-Tech, some of which also incorporate post-secondary courses and credentials into their programs
• Youth apprenticeships, such as state programs in Georgia and Wisconsin 

For out-of-school youth and young adults:

• Highly structured programs offering work readiness and technical skills development, often in partnership with community colleges, and coupled with paid internships, such as Year Up, i.c.stars, npower, and Per Scholas
• Programs that offer stipends and combine academics, job training, mentoring, and supportive services while carrying out community improvement projects, such as YouthBuild and Youth Corps

The sobering fact is that promoting employment and economic security among young people is not a straightforward proposition. To succeed in today’s economy and earn middle-class wages, a young person needs to complete several steps: graduate from high school or earn an alternate credential; enroll in and complete some post-secondary education or job training; preferably gain meaningful work experience; and enter the labor market with in-demand skills. (A decent economy and some luck help, too.) There are many points along that path from which a young person can get off-track, particularly young people of color and those from high-poverty neighborhoods. And while high youth unemployment is increasingly in the news these days, the difficulties youth without college degrees face in finding good jobs has been a problem for decades.

Programs such as the ones listed above are part of the solution. But they are not enough, given the magnitude of the problem. In order to produce better employment outcomes at scale, leaders from all sectors and levels of government need to make broader shifts in how education and workforce programs are designed, and how they interact with each other and employers. That is a heavy lift, but it is worth it to address the high costs imposed by the status quo: high unemployment, poverty, and untapped potential.  

      

       

       

During his presentation at the University of Michigan/Urban Land Institute Real Estate Forum, Christopher B. Leinberger discusses the impact walkable urbane places has and will have on metropolitan development patterns, the market reasons for this change and how to strategically manage it.

This video is no longer available

      

       

       

Editor’s Note: The following is a transcript of the House of Representatives’ Special Select Committee hearing on the Benghazi scandal, taking place in a parallel universe not very far away. It is satire, obviously, but perhaps only because of an almost random quirk of fate.

Representative Trey Gowdy: I would like to call this hearing to order. We are gathered today to get to the bottom of the horrific events of March 18 to 25, 2011, when over 100,000 inhabitants of Benghazi were cruelly killed in the worst act of genocide since Rwanda. Libya has since descended into a catastrophic civil war on a par with Syria, and yet Colonel Gadhafi is still in power. Worse, the situation has exacerbated extremism and threatens to spur Islamic terrorism throughout the region. The recent intervention of Russian forces in the Libyan civil war ensures that any chance the United States had of ending Gadhafi’s cruel tyranny has been missed. 

This was the greatest moral and strategic failure of U.S. foreign policy in 20 years. And yet there has been little or no accountability. Former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice was even promoted to Secretary of State, while former National Security Council staffer Samantha Power stepped down, apparently in quiet protest at the president and Secretary Hillary Clinton’s weak and morally vacuous policy. Ms. Power's new sequel "A Problem From Hell" has now been made into the Oscar-winning movie "Hotel Benghazi." This scandal, this moral failing is now seared into the conscience of our nation.

This Special Select Committee was stood up 18 months ago and has been working diligently since that day to build on the work of multiple other congressional inquiries to get at the truth of this national shame. We know that the Obama administration had intelligence about the risk of genocide in Benghazi but it decided not to act. Indeed, the entire world knew. The questions we want answered are: What did the administration know about the approaching genocide? And when did it know it? 

We are joined by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Madam Secretary, we appreciate you taking time off from the campaign trail. I understand you have a short statement. 

Secretary Hillary Clinton: Thank you, Representative Gowdy. This is my fourth time appearing before the U.S. Congress on this issue; 37 members of my staff and family have appeared, and my dog is currently fighting a subpoena. So I will keep this brief.

While we deeply regret the Benghazi genocide, we must remember that we had incomplete information about Colonel Gadhafi's intentions. We were faced with a difficult choice: Should we intervene to stop an uncertain atrocity, committing U.S. troops to an uncertain mission with no exit plan and no vital national interest? Or should we try to shape events without the use of U.S. forces, using the many other tools at our disposal? 

We decided that U.S. military intervention was not prudent. We were worried about a failed state and losing U.S. personnel on the ground. The administration instead sought to mobilize the international community to prevent any genocide and ultimately to bring Gadhafi and his henchmen to justice at the International Criminal Court. 

We continued throughout my tenure as secretary of state—and until this day—to work to bring the civil war to an end and to help the moderate Libyan opposition to overthrow the regime. 

We made some tough calls and we must acknowledge that we were not always right. Knowing what we know now, I wish that we had acted more forcefully. Indeed, I was personally in favor of a no-fly zone to protect Libyan civilians. But hindsight is twenty-twenty and the president decided to stay out. 

Representative Gowdy: Madam Secretary, with all due respect, Gadhafi's intention was quite clear. Just days before the slaughter he said, and I quote: “All of these germs, rats and scumbags, they are not Libyans.” He told them "It's over…We are coming tonight…We will find you in your closets, ” adding: “We will show no mercy.” U.S. NGOs on the ground provided detailed information of troop movements. What more evidence did you need of imminent war crime? Why did you not act? Isn’t the role of the secretary of state to persuade the president? 

If something went wrong, I would be the first to say war is unpredictable and involves risk. I am confident the Congress would have fully supported you.

Secretary Clinton: Congressman, with all due respect, Congress at the time steadfastly opposed our intervention. Had we acted and had the aftermath been messy—as we fully expected—I have no doubt that you would be calling me here to account for that, noting that our own assessments showed we had no capacity to bring stability to Libya. What if we had lost U.S. military personnel or diplomats? What if a U.S. overthrow of the Gadhafi regime merely led to more and different chaos and violence, as we saw in Iraq?

Representative Gowdy: Madam Secretary, the greater shame is clearly inaction in the face of a moral imperative. I can assure you, and I feel confident I speak for all of my colleagues, that had you acted, we would have had your back, come what may. If something went wrong, I would be the first to say war is unpredictable and involves risk. I am confident the Congress would have fully supported you. 

Secretary Clinton: Thank you Congressman, but you will excuse me if I still have some doubts on that score. I guess we’ll never know. 

      

On Thursday, when former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appears before the Senate Benghazi Committee for a new round of hearings, reporters with vivid historical imaginations will be pining for an epic battle. Melodramatic journalists may recall the 1950-1951 Kefauver Committee investigating organized crime, which introduced politicized television dramas to millions of Americans. They may evoke the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, when the aristocratic Boston lawyer Joseph Welch cold-cocked the anti-communist Senator Joe McCarthy by asking: “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” They will yearn for the constitutional grandeur of the 1973 Senate Watergate hearings, which exposed Richard Nixon’s corruption. Alas, most likely, we will endure yet another round of the 1990s’ tawdry Clinton follies, which diminished both parties and helped trigger our current political depression.

Although Hillary Clinton often performs well under pressure and probably has rehearsed a dramatic soundbite or two to rile her partisan base, these hearings are bad news for her campaign. The email server scandal has gotten more traction than the Clintonites would have expected. It stirs fears that both Hillary and Bill Clinton are so convinced of their own goodness, their own idealism, their own contributions to the public good, that they exempt themselves from the rules ordinary Americans must follow. The scandal also reminds many of the Clintons’ moral blindspot, their ethical sloppiness that led them into the cozy, overlapping, ambiguities, and occasional lies behind the Whitewater mess, the Travelgate coverup, the Paula Jones sexual harassment, the Monica Lewinsky obstruction of justice, and a host of lesser Clinton catastrophes.

Many Americans had Clinton fatigue by 2000, despite Clinton’s record high approval ratings. And with our Canadian neighbors just having voted in Justin Trudeau due to Stephen Harper fatigue, Hillary Clinton should remember that American voters want a fresh start after enduring a decade and a half of terrorist fears and economic woes, preceded by a scadal-plagued, hyper-partisan period of peace and prosperity in the 1990s.

Democrats also should worry that Hillary Clinton’s best defense is pretty offensive. She will play the partisan card. In the final question of the Democratic debate, Anderson Cooper asked “Which enemy are you most proud of?” Hillary Clinton answered: “Well, in addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians. Probably the Republicans.” In his presidential announcement-esque I’m-not-running speech Vice President Joe Biden pointedly said: “I don’t think we should look at Republicans as our enemies.” How does a candidate who compares Republicans to Iranians woo centrist voters in crucial swing states? And you can imagine the general campaign commercials asking: How does a president who demonizes her rivals work with them after Election Day?

Republicans should not be too cocky about these hearings either. The male senators pounding away at millions of American women’s best chance at a female president should beware the Anita Hill effect. During the 1991 fight over the sexual harassment allegations during Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination hearings, hostile senators interrogating Thomas’s female accuser looked like bullies who, in the parlance of the time, “just didn’t get it.” For the last six years, the Democrats have cleverly cast the Republicans as the party of no. In the 1990s, the Clintons cleverly cast the Republicans as a party of Ken Starrs, prosecutorial prigs abusing congressional and federal powers to subvert the political process and undermine the Constitution.

Moreover, Hillary Clinton’s defense during the last set of hearings more accurately reflects the public mood. Four brave Americans died. Their Islamist terrorist murderers are the guilty ones, not whatever mistaken spin the Obama administration may or may not have put on it subsequently.

Since the 1990s, gotcha journalism and politics have ruined politicians’ reputations and soured Americans on politics. Unlike the Watergate scandal, which produced heroes defending the Constitution like Judge John Sirica and Senator Sam Ervin, the Clinton scandals, and especially the Monica Lewinsky debacle, tarnished everyone involved. Journalists and Republicans looked like bullies, invading people’s privacy, treating personal indiscretions as high crimes not even misdemeanors. Feminists and Democrats sounded like hypocrites, excusing sexual harassment and the White House as a hostile workplace for women as long as the perpetrator was a pro-choice liberal. The people’s business suffered. In post Watergate America, the Pig-Pen-like cloud shrouding the Clintons, and their supporters’ “everybody does it” defense, had once naïve Americans now cynically grumbling, “they’re all guilty of something.”

Inevitably, after the Thursday hearings, too many Republicans and Democrats will assess the results based on quickie polls suggesting who “won” or “lost” the exchange, and whether Hillary Clinton’s popularity rises or falls. Washington should start tracking a different set of poll results. Back in the 1950s and the 1960s, the vast majority of Americans trusted their government. The most recent Gallup poll has only 19 percent of Americans surveyed agreeing that “you can trust government to do what is right.” Those metrics suggested that both Democrats and Republicans, all the presidential candidates, the president, Congress, and the Supreme Court, have disappointed the American people. A healthy democracy needs citizens with more faith in their government, we don’t need more recriminations, the criminalizing of politics, or more partisan clashes. Perhaps it is time for Senate Republicans to join Democrats in creating a bipartsan committee to investigate that problem, and begin by inviting all presidential candidates to testify about what they will do to make Americans believe in Washington again.

       

Five years have passed since several Arab countries revolted against their repressive regimes, and peace and stability are nowhere in sight. The unraveling of their political systems pushed these countries into challenging transition processes where violence is always a serious possibility. Yemen and Libya’s civil wars present blunt examples of failed transitions, raising concerns about protracted political instability, not only in those two countries, but potentially in neighboring ones as well. Tunisia theoretically managed to complete its transition successfully. It ratified a new constitution, addressing the need for a new social contract, and held two rounds of elections. Tunisia also passed a transitional justice law to provide a framework for adjudicating both victims’ grievances and perpetrators’ crimes of the past political era. Nonetheless, Tunisia finds its stability challenged by increasing levels of polarization between its various societal segments.

The fact of the matter is that political transitions take a long time—years if not decades—and transitioning countries face the risk of violence. Arab Spring societies are unlikely to transition to sustainable peace and stability as long as they are wracked by deep divisions. Therefore, national reconciliation is paramount to reducing the societal polarization that currently cripples Libya and Yemen and threatens Tunisia’s progress. To attain enduring peace and stability, post-revolution states must engage in inclusive national reconciliation processes, including a national dialogue, a truth-seeking effort, the reparation of victims’ past injuries, dealing with the former regime, and institutional reform. Women, civil society, and tribes, among other social forces, can support the transition process. Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia have each taken specific approaches to trying to reconcile their post-revolution societies, raising or diminishing the chances of civil war or a healthy transition.

An inclusive national dialogue is the starting point of a comprehensive national reconciliation process. It gives transitioning societies an opportunity to develop a vision and theoretical framework for their futures, gives legitimacy to transition processes, and encourages negotiation and compromise. Tunisia held a homegrown national dialogue driven mainly by civil society organizations and Yemen completed an eight-month, U.N.-assisted national dialogue conference. Libya’s engagement in U.N.-led negotiations raised questions over whether all parties had representation.

As each society suffered decades of repression and has a number of unanswered questions, investigating—and dealing with—the truth about the past is also essential. Relatedly, determining how to handle former regime elements has profound implications for post-revolution transitions. While Libya opted to purge all those who served in Muammar Qaddafi’s regime through adopting its “Political Isolation Law,” Yemen chose to grant President Ali Abdullah Saleh immunity from prosecution in return for his abdication—sacrificing justice to preserve peace. However, Saleh later returned to politics, allying with the Houthis to take over the state, meaning Yemen ultimately achieved neither justice nor peace. Tunisia, on the other hand, has adopted a transitional justice law that mandates, among other measures, the investigation and prosecution of the state’s crimes since 1955. While the resulting Truth and Dignity Commission has received thousands of complaints from victims of past abuses, progress has otherwise been slow, as the body has struggled to establish an effective organizational structure or execute a clearly defined work plan. Controversy over the selection of commissioners and an overall lack of publicity has also hindered the truth-seeking process.

Reparations are another important part of the pursuit of justice and healing. Done correctly, they can bring previously marginalized and abused segments of society back into the mainstream, where they can make positive contributions to the development of the country. Yemen and Tunisia experienced extensive human rights violations during the decades-long reigns of Saleh and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, while lacking the resources to engage in meaningful and comprehensive rehabilitation of victims of past abuses. This left the two countries’ transition processes struggling with a major component—the victims—feeling further marginalization added to their past traumas. Libya, however, who has the resources to fund a process of thorough rehabilitation of victims of its dictatorship, slid into civil war that prevented the proper addressing of past wounds.

Even if these societies overcome their polarization at the personal level, however, they will not accomplish successful transitions unless their healing is accompanied by institutional reforms. “Regime renovation” rather than “regime change” in Yemen presented a serious obstacle to deep reforms of state institutions, eventually leading to some segments of security units taking part in Saleh-Houthi coup against the transitional government. After the collapse of the Qaddafi regime, revolutionaries and militias demanded a purge as a method of institutional reform—similar to de-Baathification in Iraq. The purge contributed to the outbreak of a civil war. Tunisia, on the other hand, approached institutional reform from a different angle and succeeded in putting together a sound formula, but it is facing serious challenges to implementation.

Ultimately, a variety of actors have played key roles in Libya, Yemen, and Tunisia’s national reconciliation processes. In all three countries, women have been integral to bringing about change, and must continue to be involved in reshaping their countries. As agents of change, women helped to initiate the uprisings in Yemen and Libya, and have already proven to be effective agents of reconciliation. In Yemen and Libya, tribes are key stakeholders that must be incorporated after decades of manipulation and marginalization. Depending on the way they become involved, tribes could play key role in either stabilizing or destabilizing transitions. Domestic civil society groups have been essential to Tunisia’s progress so far, and are fast developing in Yemen and Libya. Their continued involvement—and assistance from international groups—will go a long way toward consolidating new states that honor human and civil rights.

The processes of national dialogue, truth seeking, reparation, accountability, and institutional reform, especially if supported by key agents of reconciliation, including women, civil society, and tribes, can combine to create the momentum needed to bridge divides and help post-Arab Spring societies move toward sustainable peace, stability, and development.

This piece was originally published on the Yale Press Blog.

For more of Ibrahim Fraihat’s analysis on Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia after the Arab Spring, read his new book “Unfinished Revolutions” (Yale University Press).  

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

Rooftop solar is booming in U.S. cities.

One of the most exciting infrastructure developments within metropolitan America, the installation of over a million solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in recent years, represents nothing less than a breakthrough for urban sustainability — and the climate.

Prices for solar panels have fallen dramatically. Residential solar installations surged by 66 percent between 2014 and 2015 helping to ensure that solar accounted for 30 percent of all new U.S. electric generating capacity. And for that matter, recent analyses conclude that the cost of residential solar is often comparable to the average price of power on the utility grid, a threshold known as grid parity.

So, what’s not to like? Rooftop solar is a total winner, right?

Well, not quite: The spread of rooftop solar has raised tricky issues for utilities and the public utilities commissions (PUCs) that regulate them. 

Specifically, the proliferation of rooftop solar installations is challenging the traditional utility business model by altering the relationship of household and utility—and not just by reducing electricity sales. In this respect, the solar boom has prompted significant debates in states like New York and California about the best rates and policies to ensure that state utility rules and rates provide a way for distributed solar to flourish even as utilities are rewarded for meeting customer demands. Increasingly, this ferment is leading to thoughtful dialogues aimed at devising new forms of policy and rate design that can—as in New York—encourage distributed energy resources (DERs) while allowing for distribution utilities to adapt to the new era.

However, in some states, the ferment has prompted a cruder set of backlashes. Most pointedly, some utilities contend that the “net-metering” fees paid to homeowners with rooftop installations for excess solar power they send back to the grid unfairly transfer costs to the utilities and their non-solar customers.

And so in a number of states, utility interests have sought to persuade state regulators to roll back net-metering provisions, arguing they are a net cost to the overall electricity system.  Most glaringly, the local utility in Nevada successfully wielded the cost-shift theory last winter to get the Nevada Public Utilities Commission to drastically curtail the state’s net-metering payments, prompting Solar City, Sunrun, and Vivint Solar—the state’s three largest providers of rooftop panels—to leave the Nevada market entirely. The result: New residential solar installation permits plunged 92 percent in Nevada in the first quarter of 2016.

All of which highlights a burning question for the present and future of rooftop solar: Does net metering really represent a net cost shift from solar-owning households to others? Or does it in fact contribute net benefits to the grid, utilities, and other ratepayer groups when all costs and benefits are factored in? As to the answer, it’s getting clearer (even if it’s not unanimous). Net metering — contra the Nevada decision — frequently benefits all ratepayers when all costs and benefits are accounted for, which is a finding state public utility commissions, or PUCs, need to take seriously as the fight over net metering rages in states like Arizona, California, and Nevada.  Regulators everywhere need to put in place processes that fairly consider the full range of benefits (as well as costs) of net metering as well as other policies as they set and update the policies, regulations, and tariffs that will play a critical role in determining the extent to which the distributed solar industry continues to grow.

Fortunately, such cost-benefit analyses have become an important feature of state rate-setting processes and offer important guidance to states like Nevada.  So what does the accumulating national literature on costs and benefits of net metering say?  Increasingly it concludes— whether conducted by PUCs, national labs, or academics — that the economic benefits of net metering actually outweigh the costs and impose no significant cost increase for non-solar customers.  Far from a net cost, net metering is in most cases a net benefit—for the utility and for non-solar rate-payers.

Of course, there are legitimate cost-recovery issues associated with net metering, and they vary from market to market. Moreover, getting to a good rate design, which is essential for both utility revenues and the growth of distributed generation, is undeniably complicated.  If rates go too far in the direction of “volumetric energy charges”—charging customers based on energy use—utilities could have trouble recovering costs when distributed energy sources reach higher levels of penetration. On the other hand, if rates lean more towards fixed charges—not dependent on usage—it may reduce incentives for customers to consider solar and other distributed generation technologies.  

Moreover, cost-benefit assessments can vary due to differences in valuation approach and methodology, leading to inconsistent outcomes. For instance, a Louisiana Public Utility Commission study last year found that that state’s net-metering customers do not pay the full cost of service and are subsidized by other ratepayers. How that squares with other states’ analyses is hard to parse.

Nevertheless, by the end of 2015, regulators in at least 10 states had conducted studies to develop methodologies to value distributed generation and net metering, while other states conducted less formal inquiries, ranging from direct rate design or net-metering policy changes to general education of decisionmakers and the public. And there is a degree of consensus.  What do the commission-sponsored analyses show? A growing number show that net metering benefits all utility customers:

• In 2013 Vermont’s Public Service Department conducted a study that concluded that “net-metered systems do not impose a significant net cost to ratepayers who are not net-metering participants.” The legislatively mandated analysis deemed the policy a successful component of the state’s overall energy strategy that is cost effectively advancing Vermont’s renewable energy goals.

• In 2014 a study commissioned by the Nevada Public Utility Commission itself concluded that net metering provided $36 million in benefits to all NV Energy customers, confirming that solar energy can provide cost savings for both solar and non-solar customers alike. What’s more, solar installations will make fewer costly grid upgrades necessary, leading to additional savings. The study estimated a net benefit of $166 million over the lifetime of solar systems installed through 2016. Furthermore, due to changes to utility incentives and net-metering policies in Nevada starting in 2014, solar customers would not be significantly shifting costs to other ratepayers.

• A 2014 study commissioned by the Mississippi Public Services Commission concluded that the benefits of implementing net metering for solar PV in Mississippi outweigh the costs in all but one scenario. The study found that distributed solar can help avoid significant infrastructure investments, take pressure off the state's oil and gas generation at peak demand times, and lower rates. (However, the study also warned that increased penetrations of distributed solar could lead to lower revenues for utilities and suggested that the state investigate Value of Solar Tariffs, or VOST, and other alternative valuations to calculate the true cost of solar.)

• In 2014 Minnesota’s Public Utility Commission approved a first-ever statewide “value of solar” methodology which affirmed that distributed solar generation is worth more than its retail price and concluded that net metering undervalues rooftop solar. The “value of solar” methodology is designed to capture the societal value of PV-generated electricity. The PUC found that the value of solar was at 14.5 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh)—which was 3 to 3.5 cents more per kilowatt than Xcel's retail rates—when other metrics such as the social cost of carbon, the avoided construction of new power stations, and the displacement of more expensive power sources were factored in.

• Another study commissioned by the Maine Public Utility Commission in 2015 put a value of $0.33 per kWh on energy generated by distributed solar, compared to the average retail price of $0.13 per kWh — the rate at which electricity is sold to residential customers as well as the rate at which distributed solar is compensated. The study concludes that solar power provides a substantial public benefit because it reduces electricity prices due to the displacement of more expensive power sources, reduces air and climate pollution, reduces costs for the electric grid system, reduces the need to build more power plants to meet peak demand, stabilizes prices, and promotes energy security. These avoided costs represent a net benefit for non-solar ratepayers.

These generally positive PUC conclusions about the benefits of net metering have been supported by research done by a national lab and several think tanks. Important lab research has examined how substantially higher adoption of distributed resources might look.

In a forward-looking analysis of the financial impacts of net-metered energy on utilities and ratepayers, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that while high use of net-metered solar generation may decrease utility shareholders' earnings, it will have a "relatively modest" impact on ratepayers. The report examined solar penetration levels that are "substantially higher than [those that] exist today" — 10 percent compared to today's 0.2 percent — and concluded that “even at penetration levels significantly higher than today, the impacts of customer-sited PV on average retail rates may be relatively modest." The report further said that utilities and regulators "may have sufficient time to address concerns about the rate impacts of PV in a measured and deliberate manner"

Similarly, a growing number of academic and think tank studies have found that solar energy is being undervalued and that it delivers benefits far beyond what solar customers are receiving in net-metering credits:

• For instance, a review of 11 net metering studies by Environment America Research and Policy Center has found that distributed solar offers net benefits to the entire electric grid through reduced capital investment costs, avoided energy costs, and reduced environmental compliance costs. Eight of the 11 studies found the value of solar energy to be higher than the average local residential retail electricity rate: The median value of solar power across all 11 studies was nearly 17 cents per unit, compared to the nation’s average retail electricity rate of about 12 cents per unit.

• A 2015 cost-benefit study of net metering in Missouri by the Missouri Energy Initiative found that even accounting for increased utility administrative costs and the shifting of some fixed expenses, net metering is a net benefit for all customers regardless of whether they have rooftop solar. The study used values for two kinds of costs and two benefits and concluded that net metering’s “net effect” is positive. The typical solar owner pays only 20 percent less in fixed grid costs and costs the utility an estimated $187 per interconnection. Meanwhile, solar owners benefit the system through reduced emissions and energy costs.

• Likewise, a study by Acadia Center found the value of solar to exceed 22 cents per kWh of value for Massachusetts ratepayers through reduced energy and infrastructure costs, lower fuel prices, and lowering the cost of compliance with the Commonwealth's greenhouse gas requirements. This value was estimated to exceed the retail rate provided through net metering.

• In yet another study, researchers at the University at Albany, George Washington University, and Clean Power Research have found that solar installations in New York deliver between 15 and 40 cents per kWh to ratepayers. The study noted that these numbers provide economic justification for the existence of incentives that transfer value from those who benefit from solar electric generation to those who invest in solar electric generation.

In short, while the conclusions vary, a significant body of cost-benefit research conducted by PUCs, consultants, and research organizations provides substantial evidence that net metering is more often than not a net benefit to the grid and all ratepayers.

As to the takeaways, they are quite clear: Regulators and utilities need to engage in a broader and more honest conversation about how to integrate distributed-generation technologies into the grid nationwide, with an eye toward instituting a fair utility-cost recovery strategy that does not pose significant challenges to solar adoption.

From the state PUCs’ perspective, until broad changes are made to the increasingly outdated and ineffective standard utility business model, which is built largely around selling increasing amounts of electricity, net-metering policies should be viewed as an important tool for encouraging the integration of renewable energy into states’ energy portfolios as part of the transition beyond fossil fuels. To that end, progressive regulators should explore and implement reforms that arrive at more beneficial and equitable rate designs that do not prevent solar expansion in their states. The following reforms range from the simplest to the hardest:

• Adopt a rigorous and transparent methodology for identifying, assessing, and quantifying the full range of benefits and costs of distributed generation technologies. While it is not always possible to quantify or assess sources of benefits and costs comprehensively, PUCs must ensure that all cost-benefit studies explicitly decide how to account for each source of value and state which ones are included and which are not. Currently methodological differences in evaluating the full value of distributed generation technologies make comparisons challenging. States start from different sets of questions and assumptions and use different data. For instance, while there is consensus on the basic approach to energy value estimation (avoided energy and energy losses via the transmission and distribution system), differences arise in calculating other costs and benefits, especially unmonetized values such as financial risks, environmental benefits, and social values. In this regard, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council’s “A Regulator’s Guidebook: Calculating the Benefits and Costs of Distributed Solar Generation” and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s “Methods for Analyzing the Benefits and Costs of Distributed Photovoltaic Generation to the U.S. Electric Utility System” represent helpful resources for identifying norms in the selection of categories, definitions, and  methodologies to measure various benefits and costs.

• Undertake and implement a rigorous, transparent, and precise “value of solar” analytic and rate-setting approach that would compensate rooftop solar customers based on the benefit that they provide to the grid. Seen as an alternative to ‘traditional’ net-metering rate design, a “value of solar” approach would credit solar owners for (1) avoiding the purchase of energy from other, polluting sources; (2) avoiding the need to build additional power plant capacity to meet peak energy needs; (3) providing energy for decades at a fixed prices; and (4) reducing wear and tear on the electric grid. While calculating the “value of solar” is very complex and highly location-dependent, ultimately PUCs may want to head toward an approach that accurately reflects all benefits and costs from all energy sources. Value of solar tariffs are being used in Austin, Texas (active use) and Minnesota (under development).

• Implement a well-designed decoupling mechanism that will encourage utilities to promote energy efficiency and distributed generation technologies like solar PV, without seeing them as an automatic threat to their revenues. As of January 2016, 15 states have implemented electric decoupling and eight more are considering it. Not surprisingly, it is states that have not decoupled electricity (such as Nevada) that are fighting net metering the hardest. Typically, decoupling has been used as a mechanism to encourage regulated utilities to promote energy efficiency for their customers. However, it can also be used as a tool to incentivize net metering by breaking the link between utility profits and utility sales and encouraging maximum solar penetration. Advocates of decoupling note that it is even more effective when paired with time-of-use pricing and minimum monthly billing.

• Move towards a rate design structure that can meet the needs of a distributed resource future. A sizable disconnect is opening between the rapidly evolving new world of distributed energy technologies and an old world of electricity pricing. In this new world, bundled, block, “volumetric” pricing—the most common rate structure for both residential and small commercial customers—can no longer meet the needs of all stakeholders. The changing grid calls, instead, for new rate structures that respond better to the deployment of new grid technologies and the proliferation of myriad distributed energy resources, whether solar, geothermal, or other.  A more sophisticated rate design structure, in this regard, would take into consideration three things: (1) the unbundling of rates to specifically price energy, capacity, ancillary services,  and so on; (2) moving from volumetric bloc rates to pricing structures that recognize the  variable time-based value of electricity generation and consumption (moving beyond just peak versus off-peak pricing to  fully real-time pricing); and (3) moving from pricing that treats all customers equally to a pricing structure that more accurately compensates for unique, location-specific and technology specific values.

• Move towards a performance-based utility rate-making model for the modern era. Performance based regulation (PBR) is a different way of structuring utility regulation designed to align a utility’s financial success with its ability to deliver what customers and society want. Moving to a model that pays the utility based on whether it achieves quantitatively defined outcomes (like system resilience, affordability, or distributed generation integration) can make it profitable for them to pursue optimal grid solutions to meet those outcomes. The new business model would require the PUC and utilities to make a number of changes, including overhauling the regulatory framework, removing utility incentives for increasing capital assets and kilowatt hours sold, and replacing those incentives with a new set of performance standard metrics such as reliability, safety, and demand-side management. New York’s Reforming the Energy Vision  proceeding is the most high-profile attempt in the country to implement a PBR model.

Options also exist for utilities to address the challenges posed by net metering:

• Utilities, most notably, have the opportunity to adjust their existing business models by themselves owning and operating distributed PV assets (though not to the exclusion of other providers).  On this front, utilities could move to assemble distributed generation systems, such as for rooftop solar, and sell or lease them to homeowners. In this regard, utilities have an advantage over third-party installers currently dominating the residential rooftop solar industry due to their proprietary system knowledge, brand recognition, and an existing relationship with their customers. Utilities in several states such as Arizona, California, and New York are investigating or have already invested in the opportunity.

• Furthermore, utilities can also push the envelope on grid modernization by investing in a more digital and distributed power grid that enables interaction with thousands of distributed energy resources and devices.

Ultimately, distributed solar is here to stay at increasing scale, and so state policies to support it have entered an important new transitional phase. More and more states will now likely move to update their net-metering policies as the cost of solar continues to drop and more homeowners opt to install solar panels on their homes.

As they do that, states need to rigorously and fairly evaluate the costs and benefits posed by net metering, grid fees, and other policies to shape a smart, progressive regulatory system that works for all of the stakeholders touched by distributed solar.

Utilities should have a shot at fair revenues and adequate ratepayers. Solar customers and providers have a right to cost-effective, reliable access to the grid. And the broader public should be able to expect a continued solar power boom in U.S. regions as well as accelerated decarbonization of state economies. All of which matters intensely. As observes the North Carolina Clean Energy Technology Center and Meister Consultants Group: “How key state policies and rates are adapted will play a significant role in determining the extent to which the [solar PV] industry will continue to grow and in what markets.”