Oxfam America

ABSTRACT It's an incredibly important moment to focus on work-family scholarship – and to consider research related to ‘just’ work and care in unsettling and challenging times. Against this backdrop, the 2022 WFRN theme was established. The conference gathered members from around the world toward building impactful scholarship for practices and policy. In this Voices piece, we draw upon WFRN presidential panelists' voices. The first plenary, ‘The Meanings of Work-Family Justice’, provided opportunities for panelists to consider different ways to conceptualize and expand this idea as labor markets, workplaces, and many aspects of people's lives are in flux, with new understandings about how to think expansively about creating ‘work-family justice’, The second plenary – ‘Work-Family Justice on the Ground’ – featured panelists from leading non-profits who discuss how they've met challenges and succeeded in implementing and building policies that create a more just world of work and care. They discuss barriers and some ideas for overcoming difficulties. We conclude by considering the evolving meanings and practices of work-family justice. In all, the voices presented here help us focus on creating more ‘just’ worlds of work and care – a distinct and vital – if sometimes precarious – possibility in this moment.

ABSTRACT The literatures on Macroeconomics and Human development and capabilities have been described as constituting “two different worlds” that never intersect despite the importance of macroeconomics for human development (Nayyar [2012]. “Macroeconomics and Human Development.” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 13 (1): 7–30.). This paper explores the barriers that keep the two worlds apart in policy making. It considers the case of national strategies for one is implementing UN Agenda 2030 (better known as the SDGs) with a commitment to equity and inclusion; the majority of which rely on social protection and neglect macroeconomic policies. This paper proposes four systemic barriers in the policy making processes: institutional silos and gaps, informational deficits, ideology, and interests. We highlight how these barriers play out in mutually reinforcing ways to construct resilient barriers: narrowly defined mandates of central banks and other economic agencies are reinforced by ideological commitments and the influence of vested interests to neglect inclusion, equity and sustainable development as policy objectives, and in policy research agendas. This in turn creates a vicious circle of information deficits with respect to policy alternatives. The paper discusses how these barriers play out differently in different policy making contexts for different stakeholders.

Abstract As we look 25–50 years, or more, into the future, we must also keep in mind how very different tomorrow’s world will inevitably look. Three big, inevitable changes stand out, with serious implications for AFS and AVC innovations.

Abstract A key implication of the abundance of promising technologies in various stages of development is that AFS transformation is less likely to be limited by science-based discovery than by human agency. What key players do in response to the wealth of options they face will ultimately determine the path(s) we follow.

Abstract The complex pathways from innovation to impact mean that unintended spillover effects on non-target objectives are always likely. This generates a third reason—in addition to accelerators and complementarity in pursuit of target objectives—why socio-technical bundles are important. Herrero et al. (2020, 2021) demonstrated that food systems innovations can have mostly neutral or positive effects on the food systems SDGs (left-hand panel of Fig. 1).

<h2>Summary</h2> Agriculture is fundamental to all three pillars of sustainability, environment, society, and economy. However, the definition of sustainable agriculture and the capacities to measure it remain elusive. Independent and transparent measurements of national sustainability are needed to gauge progress, encourage accountability, and inform policy. Here, we developed a Sustainable Agriculture Matrix (SAM) to quantify national performance indicators in agriculture and to investigate the trade-offs and synergies based on historical data for most countries of the world. The results reveal priority areas for improvement by each country and show that the trade-offs and synergies among indicators often differ. Exceptions to common economic-versus-environmental trade-offs, for example, offer opportunities to learn from countries with synergistic pathways for multiple sustainability indicators. These SAM indicators will improve as data become more available, but this version offers a useful starting point for evaluating progress, identifying priorities for improvement, and informing national policies and actions toward sustainable agriculture.

ABSTRACT Who finances government, and how, is foundational to realising human rights for all, without discrimination. This is especially pertinent during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is only exacerbating health and economic disparities. This article reviews what a national human rights-aligned tax policy would look like, and then dissects how the international tax rules currently impede individual States, and particularly low- and middle- income countries, to bring their national tax policies in line with human rights. The authors then discuss how international human rights law, including the UN Guiding Principles on Human Rights Impact Assessments of Economic Reforms, can provide a stronger normative foundation to curb harmful tax competition and help resolve disputes over the right to tax multinational companies. Given the paucity of practical tools to embed human rights norms into the process and substance of reforming international tax policies, the authors then develop a set of assessment questions to help operationalise human rights norms into current efforts to re-write the international tax rules.

Abstract Organizational evaluation systems become sustainable through being networked, use‐focused, and by undertaking processes aligned with agreed‐upon quality standards. Through being sustainable, organizational evaluation systems can more effectively contribute to the aims and values of sustainable development by undertaking evaluation processes that enable the understanding of complexity, and generate process use, learning loops, and networks of practice. The importance of developing networks of evaluation practice is specifically highlighted in this chapter as it has received less coverage than the importance of use and quality in the literature on evaluation systems.