Science-Based Policy Implementation

🌍 We Can’t Afford to Get Climate Policy Wrong—A Look at the Data Behind What Really Works 🌍 In the race against time to combat climate change, bold promises are everywhere. But here’s the critical question: Are the policies being implemented actually reducing emissions at the scale we need? A groundbreaking study published in Science, cuts through the noise and delivers the insights we desperately need. Evaluating 1,500 climate policies from around the world, the research identifies the 63 most effective ones—policies that have delivered tangible, significant reductions in emissions. What’s striking is that the most successful strategies often involve combinations of policies, rather than single initiatives. Think of it as the ultimate teamwork: when policies like carbon pricing, renewable energy mandates, and efficiency standards are combined thoughtfully, the impact is far greater than any one policy could achieve on its own. It’s a powerful reminder that for climate solutions the whole is indeed greater than the sum of its parts. Moreover, the study’s use of counterfactual emissions pathways is a game changer. By showing what would have happened without these policies, it provides a clear, quantifiable measure of their effectiveness. This is exactly the kind of rigorous evaluation we need to ensure that every policy counts, especially when we’re working against the clock. If we’re serious about meeting the Paris Agreement’s targets, we need to focus on what works—and this research offers a clear roadmap. Let’s champion policies that have proven to make a difference, because we don’t have time to waste on anything less. 🔗 Full study in the comments #ClimateAction #Sustainability #PolicyEffectiveness #ParisAgreement #NetZero #ClimateScience

🌍 UNESCO’s Pillars Framework for Digital Transformation in Education offers a roadmap for leaders, educators, and tech partners to work together and bridge the digital divide. This framework is about more than just tech—it’s about supporting communities and keeping education a public good. 💡 When implementing EdTech, policymakers should pay special attention to these critical aspects to ensure that technology meaningfully enhances education without introducing unintended issues:  🚸1. Equity and Access Policymakers need to prioritize closing the digital divide by providing affordable internet, reliable devices, and offline options where connectivity is limited. Without equitable access, EdTech can worsen existing educational inequalities.  💻2. Data Privacy and Security Implementing strong data privacy laws and secure platforms is essential to build trust. Policymakers must ensure compliance with data protection standards and implement safeguards against data breaches, especially in systems that involve sensitive information.  🚌3. Pedagogical Alignment and Quality of Content Digital tools and content should be high-quality, curriculum-aligned, and support real learning needs. Policymakers should involve educators in selecting and shaping EdTech tools that align with proven pedagogical practices.  🌍4. Sustainable Funding and Cost Management To avoid financial strain, policymakers should develop sustainable, long-term funding models and evaluate the total cost of ownership, including infrastructure, updates, and training. Balancing costs with impact is key to sustaining EdTech programs.  🦺5. Capacity Building and Professional Development Training is essential for teachers to integrate EdTech into their teaching practices confidently. Policymakers need to provide robust, ongoing professional development and peer-support systems, so educators feel empowered rather than overwhelmed by new tools. 👓 6. Monitoring, Evaluation, and Continuous Improvement Policymakers should establish monitoring and evaluation processes to track progress and understand what works. This includes using data to refine strategies, ensure goals are met, and avoid wasted resources on ineffective solutions. 🧑🚒 7. Cultural and Social Adaptation Cultural sensitivity is crucial, especially in communities less familiar with digital learning. Policymakers should promote a growth mindset and address resistance through community engagement and awareness campaigns that highlight the educational value of EdTech. 🥸 8. Environmental Sustainability Policymakers should integrate green practices, like using energy-efficient devices and recycling programs, to reduce EdTech’s carbon footprint. Sustainable practices can also help keep costs manageable over time. 🔥Download: UNESCO. (2024). Six pillars for the digital transformation of education. UNESCO. https://lnkd.in/eYgr922n  #DigitalTransformation #EducationInnovation #GlobalEducation

📢 New Resource: Data Governance Without the Jargon: 30 Questions and Answers to Clarify Terms and Trends 🤔 Data governance is everywhere; and yet often poorly understood. The term is used to describe everything from metadata and quality to privacy, compliance, and now AI policy. When concepts remain blurry, responsibilities blur as well; and decisions stall. 👉To help demystify the field, Begoña Glez. Otero and I have drafted a new resource: “What Is Data Governance? 30 Questions and Answers.” Rather than adding another definition, the guide: 🔹 Clarifies how data governance relates to data management, stewardship, privacy, and AI governance 🔹 Uses a practical, field-tested definition developed through the Broadband Commission’s Data Governance Toolkit 🔹 Breaks governance into four core questions any organization must answer: Why – What purpose should data and governance serve? How – Which principles guide decisions? Who – Who is responsible, and with what legitimacy? What – Which policies, processes, and tools operationalize data governance (across the data life-cycle)? The Q&A also explores: • Legitimacy, participation, and accountability • Indigenous data sovereignty and Digital Self-Determination • Lifecycle practices and cross-border data flows • Emerging trends in AI- and data-intensive environments Why this matters now: Organizations face growing pressure to use data more intensively...while navigating expanding legal, ethical, and geopolitical constraints. Governance is no longer a back-office concern; it is central to trust, collaboration, and responsible reuse. We see this as a living document and would greatly value feedback: 💬 Which concepts remain unclear? 💬 Which questions are missing? 💬 Which tools or case studies have helped you operationalize governance? If you have insights, critiques, or examples, please share them—we hope this can contribute to a more practical and shared language for governing data in ways worthy of public trust. 👉 Access the resource here: https://lnkd.in/ecYhr7ZD 💻 Read the blog introducing the resource here: https://lnkd.in/ecDFVtwv ➡️ Data Governance Toolkit: https://lnkd.in/eW-Pwcwt #DataGovernance #DataStewardship #AIgovernance #DigitalPolicy #PublicInterestTech #DataForGood

Around 200 years ago, writers vividly captured the astonishing abundance of marine life off the British coast. They recounted scenes of vast herring columns, stretching for miles and “so dense that the water itself seemed to bulge and shift as if pushed from below” (William Yarrell, 1836). The sea appeared black with their numbers, a living expanse “teeming with multitudes of fish” (Thomas Pennant, 1766), as far as the eye could see. These immense shoals of herring were trailed by schools of enormous cod, porpoise, spurdog, tope and smooth hound, along with majestic longfin and bluefin tuna. Among them swam the ocean’s formidable predators: blue, porbeagle, thresher and mako sharks, and even the occasional great white. And just beyond this astonishing spectacle, within sight of the shore, pods of fin and sperm whales breached and spouted, a reminder of “the treasures of the deep” and the sea’s great abundance and rich biodiversity (Thomas Pennant, 1766). Today, much of this incredible spectacle of life has disappeared, a result of relentless overfishing and habitat destruction. However, hope remains: marine ecosystems can recover swiftly if we give them a chance. Here’s how we can accelerate this recovery: 1. Expand & Enforce Marine Protected Areas (MPAs): Increase the number and size of MPAs, ban bottom trawling within them (how is this allowed?!) and ensure strict enforcement to safeguard vital ecosystems, allowing marine life to rebound. 2. Promote Sustainable Fishing Practices: Implement and enforce sustainable fishing quotas and methods to prevent overfishing, reduce bycatch and minimise habitat destruction. 3. Restore Key Marine Habitats: Focus on restoring critical habitats like kelp forests, seagrass meadows and oyster reefs, which are essential for supporting diverse marine species (this is a focus for us at Earthly). 4. Reduce Pollution: Combat marine pollution, particularly plastic and chemical runoff, by improving waste management and reducing the use of harmful substances. 5. Address Ocean Warming/Acidification: Mitigate climate change by reducing carbon emissions, helping to slow ocean warming and acidification, both pose a significant threat to marine life. By taking these actions, we can revive the once-thriving marine ecosystems around the British Isles and beyond, and with hope, restore within the coming decades the breathtaking natural spectacles of abundant biodiversity that were once common sights. (Photo: Midjourney) #Biodiversity #Marine #Ecosystem

Finally, friends! Some data to help us tackle the big question we all want answered - are Africa's grids actually ready for a shift to electric vehicles???? My latest research with colleagues from University of Massachusetts Amherst | Research was just published in Nature Portfolio Scientific Reports. It is the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of electric vehicle fleet expansion on electricity grids in African cities. We build granular models that simulate traffic patterns, EV charging, and transformer utilization, to analyze the effects of progressively higher rates of EV adoption on bulk electricity supply and transformer overloading, key indicators of grid stability. We sourced vehicle ownership data from USAID, power consumption & transformer data from KPLC, and hourly traffic data from Uber. Taking Nairobi, Kenya as a prime case, we find that adoption of electric vehicles across the public transportation and commercial fleet sectors generally improves grid conditions in the city by adding consumption during periods when the grid is otherwise significantly below peak capacity. However, widespread conversion of private vehicles – the largest vehicle class in Nairobi – can substantially exacerbate peak electric demand, leading to the accelerated overload of transformers, forcing both an increase in electricity outages as well as very expensive early equipment replacement costs. Introducing coordination logic into the charging model reveals that even at moderate of fleet conversion, coordinated charging could reverse the situation, instead representing an avoided cost saving from early equipment replacements. These findings demonstrate the critical nature of a managed and coordinated transition to electric mobility in Africa. Improved planning, and engagement across key stakeholders including the electric utility, the municipal transport authority, regulators, and national policy makers is key! The first EV study of such granularity for Africa, our model can be replicated to explore grid dynamics in other African cities. Please check out our paper if you are following trends in electric mobility and watch out for more! What other questions about EVs and the grid would you like us to research? Share your ideas below! https://lnkd.in/dURjyv5E

A marine protected area can ban fishing boats. It cannot stop drifting gear Marine protected areas are built around a simple promise: draw a boundary, set rules inside it, and reduce the pressure on wildlife and habitats. That promise can work, especially where protection is strong, well funded, and enforced. A recent Science Advances paper (https://lnkd.in/g89jDaPN) shows where the model becomes harder to defend. The study focuses on drifting fish aggregating devices, or dFADs, used by tuna fleets to gather fish around floating rafts fitted with satellite buoys and echosounders. These devices can be deployed outside a protected area, drift across its boundary, and continue moving without the vessel ever entering restricted waters. The authors found that dFADs have likely interacted with 53% of the global marine protected area network by area and stranded in 174 protected areas. Those sites are home to at least 490 at-risk species. The hotspots include the central Pacific, the western Indian Ocean, and the Caribbean. This matters because dFADs blur the line between fishing activity and marine debris. While active, they help fleets locate tuna. Once lost, abandoned, deactivated, or broken apart, they can entangle marine wildlife, damage coral reefs, block nesting beaches, sink into poorly monitored habitats, or add plastic and electronic waste to places set aside for conservation. The problem is not only ecological. It is also administrative and financial. When a dFAD washes ashore in a remote protected area, the cleanup often falls to local managers, conservation groups, or island communities. They may need boats, fuel, staff time, safe access, and disposal capacity. The fleet that benefited from the catch may be far away. The owner of the device may be hard to identify. There has been progress. Fisheries bodies and industry groups have moved toward non-entangling and biodegradable designs. Some retrieval partnerships now use buoy data to intercept dFADs before they hit reefs. Spatial planning could also reduce strandings by limiting deployments in high-risk drift corridors. But the larger lesson is about governance. MPAs can reduce activities inside their boundaries. They are less able to manage mobile industrial gear released outside them. Stronger rules are needed upstream: fewer devices, full-life tracking, better labeling, no-deployment buffers near vulnerable protected areas, retrieval deposits, and clear financial responsibility when damage occurs. Protected areas are more effective when they aren’t cleanup sites for other people’s fishing gear. 🦈 Full piece: https://lnkd.in/gFtqTx56

The Commission recently proposed a decisive step towards a more integrated, competitive, and resilient European single market for capital. The market integration package is a central pillar of our flagship project to build a genuine Savings and Investments Union (SIU). This is essential if the EU is to finance its strategic priorities – the green transition, innovation, and security and defence. Public budgets alone cannot meet these needs, and bank financing is often ill-suited for innovative companies. What the EU needs are deep, liquid, and truly integrated capital markets that can provide equity and long-term financing at scale. As Commissioner Albuquerque has underlined, the guiding principle is pragmatism. The EU needs reforms that deliver real results for citizens, companies, and strengthen our strategic autonomy. The political urgency is clear: maintaining the status quo means lower investment, slower growth, and a gradual loss of the EU’s economic and geopolitical standing. Today, EU capital markets remain fragmented and underdeveloped, which discourages corporate listings and deters investor participation. The figures are stark: EU stock market capitalisation stands at around 73% of GDP, versus 270% in the US, with IPO activity roughly three times lower in the past decade. Obviously, there is no need for the EU to copy the US, but there are clearly important benefits from having more dynamic and integrated capital markets.  As highlighted in the Draghi and Letta reports, financial markets are a business of scale. A genuine single market for capital would be far more beneficial for the EU and all its Member States than the sum of its national parts. It will benefit both EU citizens, by giving them more opportunities to get better returns on their hard-earned savings, and EU companies, by giving them access to more financing options at a lower cost.  This is precisely what this package seeks to achieve: removing obstacles to integration in the trading, post-trading and asset management sectors. As we move towards deeper integration, also barriers of a supervisory nature must be removed. The proposals are now with the European Parliament and Council. The Commission stands ready to work closely with co-legislators to ensure swift adoption of this coherent package. The discussion will not be easy – but it’s one we must have. It’s time to match pro-SIU rhetoric with concrete action. Financial integration is a “must have”: the alternative is losing more and more geopolitical and economic relevance. Europe has shown before that it can take bold steps towards integration, such as the creation of the euro or the Single Supervisory Mechanism. We can do so again, putting the EU’s common interest first and building a financial system that works better for every EU citizen, business and Member States, large or small. 

Only 10-15% of workforce training transfers to workplace practice: what we can do about it. Recent research states that only 10-15% of what people learn in formal training actually transfers to workplace practice. Those of us building skills for improvement & change in health & care can relate to this. Health & care organisations invest massively in improvement training, yet it frequently fails to translate into practical improvements in care delivery. The transfer problem is not primarily the training itself or participant capability. The primary determinant of successful learning transfer is work environment. As leaders, we hold the key to unlocking the 85-90% of learning that might be failing to translate into improved care. Actions we can take based on the research findings: 1) Create support structures. People need identified peer supporters & line managers who understand their role in enabling application of new skills. This support directly affects transfer through impact on motivation & determination to overcome obstacles. 2) Align learning with organisational priorities. When we connect improvement training & individual learning goals explicitly to strategic goals we get more learning transfer. 3) Provide time, resources & opportunity to apply learning. Improvement work needs protected space, not an expectation it will happen alongside unchanged operational demands. 4) Suggest transfer projects that address genuine organisational problems. Projects should be strategically aligned, resourced & accompanied by clear agreements about outcomes. 5) Foster knowledge networks & social exchange. Create conditions for knowledge sharing through communities of practice & regular opportunities for peer exchange. 6) Build a positive error culture. A culture that allows experimentation without fear of blame is a predictor of informal learning AND a facilitator of transfer. Improvement requires testing changes & testing requires psychological safety to learn from what does not work as well as what does. 7) Move evaluation beyond end-of-course feedback. We should track whether participants are applying improvement methods, whether teams are adopting new approaches & whether changes are producing better care outcomes. 8) Integrate three forms of learning. Combine formal improvement training with informal learning through experimentation & reflection & self-regulated learning where people set their own goals and monitor their progress. We should support individual learning journeys rather than treating training as a one-off event. The evidence is clear: successful learning transfer is a system property, not an individual responsibility. When we create the environmental conditions that enable transfer, improvement training can fulfil its potential to transform care for the people & communities we serve. https://lnkd.in/eAk9upKZ. By Simone Kauffeld & colleagues. Sourced via John Whitfield MBA.

EU simplification will fail without better governance: three necessary reforms to make sure it doesn’t fail My latest policy brief for ECRI - European Credit Research Institute and CEPS (Centre for European Policy Studies) 🌍 The fading “Brussels Effect” The EU has long been seen as a global regulatory power, exporting its standards across the world through what’s commonly known as the Brussels Effect, with the GDPR being a prime example. However, newer frameworks such as the AI Act and the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) have failed to set international benchmarks – especially in the US. ⚖️ The problem The EU is suffering from: • a growing number of Level 1 legislative mandates 🏛️ • high granularity of Level 2 and 3 measures 📑 • goldplating practices even in Council negotiations ✍️ • a lack of a mechanism to test the quality or necessity of regulations across their lifecycle ⏳ • no embedded secondary objective, like competitiveness, to better inform primary ones 📉 🚨 The risk There is no shared understanding of what simplification means, no agreement on the scope of intervention, and no clear coordinator. Without addressing the EU’s fundamental governance deficiencies, current simplification initiatives will remain fragmented and ineffective. 💡 Three necessary reforms for a better simplification agenda 1️⃣ Defining ‘regulatory simplification’ The European Council must establish clear principles that distinguish between simplification (reducing complexity whilst maintaining regulatory objectives) and deregulation (eliminating objectives altogether). Good regulation requires internal balance: rules should not pursue a single objective in isolation but include structured secondary goals to ensure coherence, proportionality and internal discipline. Simplification must be a continuous governance commitment, strengthening both ex-ante and ex-post evaluation mechanisms. This framework should include quantifiable metrics that go beyond the current 25–35% reduction targets, and a political mandate from the European Council and the European Parliament to limit Level 2–3 growth and avoid goldplating practices. 2️⃣ The need for granular coordination mechanisms The Commission should appoint dedicated coordinators for highly technical areas that suffer from fragmented oversight. Each coordinator would maintain comprehensive oversight of interventions within their remit, working directly with European agencies and ensuring coordination with NCAs. 3️⃣ A fundamental rethink of EU governance structures The current hybrid system that preserves national prerogatives whilst seeking uniform outcomes generates the very pressures that drive regulatory complexity. Genuine internal market integration requires transferring greater powers to European authorities. More here 👇 https://lnkd.in/dm_gPTte

Governance and Quality of Care Quality failures are governance failures. The Lancet Commission on High-Quality Health Systems showed back in 2018 that countries rarely fail to improve quality because they don’t know what good care looks like. They fail because governance arrangements don’t support it: Misaligned incentives, fragmented accountability, and systems that don’t learn from harm. That much is settled. The real challenge is that governance often remains abstract. After working with countries for more than two decades, I’ve found the key question isn’t whether governance matters — it’s how to govern for quality, day to day: How do you assess current capacity? Where do you start? How do you build governance for quality over time? Two tools have been especially useful in making this practical. 1. WHO’s Six Governance Behaviours, which describe what governing for quality actually involves: Deliver strategy — quality protected in budget decisions, not just policy documents Build understanding — turning data on harm and outcomes into improvement, not just compliance Enable stakeholders — giving frontline teams time and authority, not just expectations Foster relations — building collaboration, not just hierarchy Align structures — making financing, regulation, and mandates pull in the same direction Nurture trust — creating conditions where problems can be reported honestly 2. The WHO Governance Progression Pathway, which recognises that capacity develops in stages: Ad hoc → Deliberate → Embedded → Mature Most countries are at different stages across different behaviours. You might be strong on strategy but weak on trust. Have sound data systems but misaligned incentives. That’s normal. The point isn’t perfection. It’s understanding: Where are you now Which governance behaviour is holding quality back What moving one stage forward would require Used together, these tools help teams: Diagnose their current state Identify real leverage points Sequence reforms realistically and track progress over time Quality doesn’t improve through strategies alone. It improves when governance creates the conditions for learning, coherence, and trust. If useful, I’ve written this up in more detail, with a one-page summary you can use as a reference. #HealthGovernance #QualityOfCare #HealthSystems #UHC I have also written an extended essay about this topic for my latest Substack post. Blerta Maliqi Margaret E. Kruk