The School of Public Policy will host a virtual presentation and discussion Wednesday, April 28 at noon, with Gus Greenstein, a third-year doctoral candidate and David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellow in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University. He will discuss the issues developing countries are facing as agencies struggle to implement the strong environmental policies their governments have adopted.

Greenstein describes his talk as follows:

“Although many governments in developing countries have adopted strong environmental policies, their agencies often struggle to implement them. Yet comparatively few researchers seeking to explain environmental outcomes in the developing world have focused on the internal functioning of environmental agencies. Addressing this gap, I combine an in-depth comparative case study with econometric analysis to explore the relationship between administrative structure and management effectiveness in Brazil’s Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation. This federal agency oversees one of the world’s largest protected area networks. Based on more than sixty interviews with teams that manage protected areas in the Amazon region, other agency personnel, and civil society observers, I find that team size and stability strongly influence performance.’