Marc A. Levy

GRID3

Background Access to healthcare is imperative to health equity and well-being. Geographic access to healthcare can be modeled using spatial datasets on local context, together with the distribution of existing health facilities and populations. Several population datasets are currently available, but their impact on accessibility analyses is unknow...

Access to health care is imperative to health equity and well-being. Geographic access to health care can be modelled by combining different spatial datasets, among others, on the distribution of existing health facilities and populations. Several population datasets are currently available, but their impact on accessibility analyses is unknown. In...

Access to health care is imperative to health equity and well-being. Geographic access to health care can be modelled by combining different spatial datasets, among others, on the distribution of existing health facilities and populations. Several population datasets are currently available, but their impact on accessibility analyses is unknown. In...

Population data represent an essential component in studies focusing on human–nature interrelationships, disaster risk assessment and environmental health. Several recent efforts have produced global- and continental-extent gridded population data which are becoming increasingly popular among various research communities. However, these data produc...

Population data represent an essential component in studies focusing on human-nature interrelationships, disaster risk assessment and environmental health. Several recent efforts have produced global and continental-extent gridded population data which are becoming increasingly popular among various research communities. However, these data product...

This textbook accompanies the massive open online course (MOOC) on Environmental Security and Sustaining Peace. Conflicts over natural resources and the environment pose some of the greatest challenges in 21st century geopolitics, presenting serious threats to human security at the local, national, and international levels. Nonetheless, natural res...

Suggested Citation: Wendling, Z. A., Emerson, J. W., Esty, D. C., Levy, M. A., de Sherbinin, A., et al. (2018). 2018 Environmental Performance Index. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy. https://epi.yale.edu/ The world has entered a new era of data-driven environmental policymaking. With the UN’s 2015 Sustainable Development...

There is a troubling mismatch in the world of water data. On the one hand, the global need for information about water is immense and growing. Rising demand for fresh water, coupled with increased volatility in global climate patterns, means that robust and timely information to support decisions about allocating and managing water resources is mor...

In December 2015, COP21, also known as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, aimed to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the objective of keeping global warming below 2°C. Egypt has an important role to play in combatting climate change where the next step of implementing an effective Center of Excellence (CoE) for Clim...

Human pressures on the environment are changing spatially and temporally, with profound implications for the planet's biodiversity and human economies. Here we use recently available data on infrastructure, land cover and human access into natural areas to construct a globally standardized measure of the cumulative human footprint on the terrestria...

Remotely-sensed and bottom-up survey information were compiled on eight variables measuring the direct and indirect human pressures on the environment globally in 1993 and 2009. This represents not only the most current information of its type, but also the first temporally-consistent set of Human Footprint maps. Data on human pressures were acquir...

Supplementary Figures 1-2, Supplementary Tables 1-2 and Supplementary Note 1

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks countries’ performance on high-priority environmental issues in two areas: protection of human health and protection of ecosystems. Within these two policy objectives the EPI scores national performance in nine issue areas comprised of more than 20 indicators (see EPI Framework). EPI indicators measur...

Environmental conditions in North America have significantly improved over time due to investments in policies, institutions, data collection and assessment, and regulatory frameworks. However, in recent years environmental challenges have emerged that are proving harder to manage within existing policy frameworks. These challenges are the result o...

The world is making progress addressing some environmental issues while others have worsened considerably. When measurement is poor or not aligned with proper management, environmental and human health suffer.

This report provides a snap shot analysis of sustainable development variables in the Port-a-Piment watershed of South Department in Haiti in 2010-2012. The analysis is part of ongoing scientific research to understand the elements of fragility undermining sustainable development, environmental restoration and economic growth.

DHS should continue to incorporate climate change into its risk framework. The reasons are simple: climate change is endangering Americans and disrupting our economy, and It threatens to destabilize regions of high national interest. In this light, what the 2014 Quadrennial Homeland Security Review says about climate change is actually far too tame...

The scientific case for including a goal on peace and governance is overwhelming, and its presence among the SDGs constitutes a major improvement on the MDGs. These are not easy goals to advance, and progress will require multifaceted efforts and willingness to experiment and learn. Yet SDG 16 is not formulated in a manner conducive to such innovat...

Long-term scenarios play an important role in research on global environmental change. The climate change research community is developing new scenarios integrating future changes in climate and society to investigate climate impacts as well as options for mitigation and adaptation. One component of these new scenarios is a set of alternative futur...

Key Messages: 1) Two distinct sorts of climate risks are worrisome over the next decade: extreme events of the sort we are familiar with, and shifts in climate dynamics that are novel. 2) Policy responses to climate change can also be destabilizing and are therefore an indirect threat to instability. 3) The evidence that climate stress can elevate...

Environmental indicators are increasingly being used in policy and management contexts, yet serious data deficiencies exist for many parameters of interest to environmental decision making. With its global synoptic coverage and the wide range of instruments available, satellite remote sensing has the potential to fill a number of these gaps, yet th...

The world has embarked on a search for what may emerge as the most ambitious set of global governance mechanisms since the post-World War II period. That period ushered in the institutions that helped drive the advances in peace and prosperity which, while incomplete, remain one of humanity's greatest achievements. The world we face today is as dif...

This report describes the results of a climate vulnerability mapping in Mali, West Africa. The analysis finds higher levels of vulnerability in the north, and climate projections under RCP4.5 and 8.5 suggest that vulnerability levels will increase with a southward progression over the next four decades. The study employs statistical methods such as...

Policy Brief #4 Key Messages: 1. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) require appropriate institutional support to integrate them effectively into institutions and practices, to coordinate activities, and to mobilize resources for implementation. The High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) can be a lead " orchestrator of or...

Definition and Scope of Human Security There are many definitions of human security, which vary according to discipline. This chapter defines human security, in the context of climate change, as a condition that exists when the vital core of human lives is protected, and when people have the freedom and capacity to live with dignity. In this assess...

Forest cover change directly affects biodiversity, the global carbon budget, and ecosystem function. Within Latin American and the Caribbean region (LAC), many studies have documented extensive deforestation, but there are also many local studies reporting forest recovery. These contrasting dynamics have been largely attributed to demographic and s...

Full text open access available at: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-013-0931-0 This paper discusses the role and relevance of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and the new scenarios that combine SSPs with representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (IAV) research....

The potential for altered ecosystems and extreme weather events in the context of climate change has raised questions concerning the role that migration plays in either increasing or reducing risks to society. Using modeled data on net migration over three decades from 1970 to 2000, we identify sensitive ecosystems and regions at high risk of clima...

The number of international environmental institutions, goals and agreements has increased greatly since the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972. However, the results of this proliferation for environmental protection have been mixed. The upcoming “Rio +20” conference (2012), offers world leaders an opportunity to reaffirm th...

Main messages: 1) The scale, spread and rate of change of global drivers are without precedent. Burgeoning populations and growing economies are pushing environmental systems to destabilizing limits. 2) Patterns of globalization – links between trade, finance, technology and communication – have made it possible for trends in drivers to generate in...

Donors talk about aid reform in Haiti, but action remains weak. Aid remains inadequately coordinated, poorly linked to Haiti's geographical conditions, and overly reliant on short-term project financing.

The scale, spread and rate of change of global drivers are without precedent. Burgeoning populations and growing economies are pushing environmental systems to destabilizing limits. The idea that the perturbation of a complex ecological system can trigger sudden feedbacks is not new: significant scientific research has explored thresholds and tippi...

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) pose a significant threat to human health, global economies, and conservation (Smolinski et al. 2003). They are defined as diseases that have recently increased in incidence (rate of the development of new cases during a given time period), are caused by pathogens that recently moved from one host population to a...

Change in woody vegetation (i.e., forests, shrublands) is a major component of global environmental change: it directly affects biodiversity, the global carbon budget, and ecosystem function. For several decades, remote sensing technology has been used to document deforestation in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), although mostly at local to r...

The Environmental Performance Index compares nations on 25 metrics including environmental health, air quality, water resource management, biodiversity and habitat, forestry, fisheries, agriculture, and climate change. The presentation will review the development of the Index and directions for future research.

This chapter consider new methods of component extraction and identification for the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI) - an aggregation of environmental variables created as a measure of overall progress towards environmental sustainability. Principally, the authors propose and illustrate a parametric version of Independent Component Analysi...

Why do socioeconomic scenarios matter? Vulnerability to climate impacts depends on both climate exposure and underlying social and economic conditions. A rich country at peace will be able to cope better with a climate disaster than a poor country at war. In the analysis of climate impact vulnerability, there is a great need to look at climate scen...

In this paper we provide an empirically-based way to address the general question of the broad-scale spatial relationship between poverty occurrence and areas of interest to those seeking conservation of large wild areas. We address the question of the spatial relationship between poor people and areas less impacted by human activity by asking thre...

We describe the compilation of a spatially explicit data-set detailing infant mortality rates in over 10,000 national and subnational units worldwide, benchmarked to the year 2000. Although their resolution is highly variable, subnational data are available for countries representing over 90% of the non-OECD population. Concentration of global infa...

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are a significant burden on global economies and public health. Their emergence is thought to be driven largely by socio-economic, environmental and ecological factors, but no comparative study has explicitly analysed these linkages to understand global temporal and spatial patterns of EIDs. Here we analyse a dat...

We consider three sorts of diagnostics for random imputations: displays of the completed data, which are intended to reveal unusual patterns that might suggest problems with the imputations, comparisons of the distributions of observed and imputed data values and checks of the fit of observed data to the model that is used to create the imputations...

Eritrea has a successful malaria control program, but it is still susceptible to devastating malaria epidemics. Monthly data on clinical malaria cases from 242 health facilities in 58 subzobas (districts) of Eritrea from 1996 to 2003 were used in a novel stratification process using principal component analysis and nonhierarchical clustering to def...

Norway has a great stake in the effectiveness of global management of environmental problems, and therefore the trend toward less effective global environmental management is cause for alarm. Norway's traditional strategy of heavily supporting global governance should be revisited, with more attention paid to unilateral provision of public goods an...

A comprehensive study of morphology of Reaction-Induced Vapor Phase Stain Etched porous silicon was performed in order to inspect samples for fractal structure and to estimate their potential for sensing applications. A new dual fractal structure is found in porous silicon layer obtained by Reaction-Induced Vapor Phase Stain Etch. The layer consist...

This paper provides an overview of what the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) calls “indirect and direct drivers” of change in ecosystem services at a global level. The MA definition of a driver is any natural or human-induced factor that directly or indirectly causes a change in an ecosystem. A direct driver unequivocally influences ecosystem p...

Abstract We investigated the relationship between water availability and internal war outbreak. This work constitutes the first test of climate-security connections utilizing global subnational time series data. We created harmonized spatial time series databases on a subnational global grid ofinternal war, renewable freshwater surface water resour...

"This paper provides an overview of what the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) calls 'indirect and direct drivers' of change in ecosystem services at a global level. The MA definition of a driver is any natural or human-induced factor that directly or indirectly causes a change in an ecosystem. A direct driver unequivocally influences ecosystem...

Using two complementary methods in a framework that allows incorporating both environmental and household-level factors, we explore the correlates of underweight status among children. We use individual children as the units of analysis in 19 African countries, and subnational survey strata in 43 African, Asian and Latin American countries. We cons...

This paper reports on a collection of recent efforts to integrate global spatial datasets and survey microdata to investigate drivers of hunger and infant mortality. They were motivated by a desire on the part of the United Nations Millennium Project to understand the conditions under which the world's poor and hungry live, for the purpose of impro...

Assessments and early warning systems should integrate environmental variables more completely and effectively. The international system has little capacity to monitor and assess conflict and cooperation on environmental issues because: there are few incentives to carry out high-quality assessments or monitoring exercises; the necessary data are no...

In this article we offer an initial critical assessment of the partnership strategy, based largely on an examination of the partnerships that emerged from the WSSD. The analysis starts with an overview of theoretical conjectures on the role of partnerships in global governance. It then proceeds to evaluate empirically the patterns of WSSD partnersh...