UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item The Political Economy of Social Markets: How Voluntary Standards Emerge, Compete, and Segment International Policy-making.(2014) Helou, Rabih; Haufler, Virginia A; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)How do we make sense of the tangled web of voluntary standards that have recently proliferated across the globe? There are over 430 different social and environmental voluntary standards in the world today. Prior to 1990 there were twelve. Most of these voluntary standards exist within industries that contain several other standards and ecolabels. Behind the scenes of this veritable industry of industry standards, we observe a vibrant and yet faintly understood political landscape. In some markets, as in the forest industry, industry actors revolt against NGO-initiated standards to form competing standards. In other markets, as in the diamonds industry, industry actors, advocacy groups and even states align to create the dominant voluntary standard system for the planet. While still in others, as in the coffee industry, there is such a diversity of standards originating from a variety of actors that few patterns have yet to be discovered. This research explores the logic behind voluntary standards, and proposes a framework to explain and predict the pattern of emergence and competition of standards within an industry. Drawing from existing research in norms evolution, non-state market drive governance, voluntary clubs and corporate social responsibility, I develop two principle arguments. The first, the logic of market integration, suggests that when social movement norms are increasingly institutionalized within markets, the movement itself will gradually take on the forms, character and procedures of market actors. The second extends this logic in order to understand how, why and when multiple voluntary standards emerge, and seemingly compete, within the same industries. Based on the in-depth case analysis of the coffee market, as well as an extended analysis of ten other markets, I highlight how this phenomenon of multiple standards may be understood by examining change along two factors: Industry Political Centralization and Differentiation. The overarching thesis is that standards proliferate where power is more decentralized, and opportunities for differentiation along market segments are highest. Further, that differentiation also follows a pattern: higher, more stringent standards, will occupy higher end market segments, while lower, less stringent standards occupy mainstream market segments.Item An Ecological Perspective of the Energy Basis of Sustainable Bolivian Natural Resources: Forests and Natural Gas(2008-04-29) Izursa, Jose-Luis; Tilley, David R.; Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Bolivia, traditionally known for being a country rich in natural resources, has suffered from a constant exploitation of its natural resources benefiting only small groups in and outside the country. The devastation of natural resources that occurred for many years was of concern to the latest government, rural communities and indigenous groups. As a result, Bolivia has a more sustainability-oriented forest law that has a strong orientation towards the utilization of natural resources at a national level and encompasses a fast-growing forestry industry than in previous years. In this dissertation, the wealth of Bolivia's national system was evaluated using solar emergy. Emergy (spelled with "m") is the sum of all energy of one form needed to develop a flow of energy of another form, over a period of time. The basic idea is that solar energy is our ultimate energy source and by expressing the value of products in solar emergy units, it becomes possible to compare different kinds of energy, allowing to express the value for the natural resources in Emergy Dollars. It was found out that Bolivia relies heavily in its natural resources and that its emergy exchange ratio with its international trading partners changed from 12.2 to 1 in 2001 to 6.2 to 1 in 2005. This means that Bolivia went from export 12.2 emdollars of goods for each $1 it received in 2001 to export 6.2 emdollars of products for each $1 it received in 2005. The study also showed that under forest certification practices less emergy is removed from forests (1.49E+19 sej/yr) compared to the amount of emergy removed (2.36E+19 sej/yr) under traditional uncertified practices, reflecting that forest ecology does better under certification. The "Ecologically-based Development for the Bolivian Industrial Forestry System" (DEBBIF) simulation model constructed during this study, compared four different scenarios: the Reference Scenario, the Increased Export Scenario, the Increased Domestic Use Scenario and the National Industrialization Scenario. Using two different levels of increment for each scenario, the outcomes of six variables were analyzed: soil, wood, natural gas, assets, money and debt. It was found that if the country doubles its use of natural resources to generate finished products, this will build more assets for Bolivia, and represent more income for the country and a better rate of emergy per person.