roundwater is a vital resource in California, providing approximately 38% of the state's water supply in normal years and at least 46% in dry years (DWR 2014). During the recent drought (water years 2011-2012 through 2015-2016), the majority of groundwater wells (90%) experienced a drop in groundwater levels of at least 10-50 ft (3-15 m) while some wells (8%) showed declines in groundwater level of more than 50 ft (>15 m) (DWR 2017). Groundwater overdraft persisted for most of the 20th century but the rate has dramatically increased since 2000 to about 7.2 million acre-feet (ac-ft), or 8.9 cubic kilometers (cu km) per year between 2006 and 2010 (Faunt 2009; Scanlon et al. 2012). State legislation now requires the implementation of groundwater sustainability plans to ensure that all groundwater basins are managed sustainably by 2040 (SWRCB 2014). Managed groundwater recharge on agricultural lands in winter, when surplus surface water often is available, is one promising strategy for replenishing RESEARCH ARTICLE Managed winter flooding of alfalfa recharges groundwater with minimal crop damage Over 90% of the water applied to sites in Davis and Scott Valley percolated to recharge groundwater, making this a viable practice on highly permeable soils.

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The Christchurch earthquakes have highlighted the mismatch in expectations between the engineering profession and society regarding the seismic performance of buildings. While most modern buildings performed as expected, many buildings have been, or are to be, demolished. The ownership, occupancy, and societal costs of only targeting life-safety as the accepted performance standard for building design are now apparent in New Zealand. While the structural system has a significant effect on the seismic performance of the entire building, including the contents, it is only about 20% of the total building cost. Hence, structural engineers should view the seismic performance in a wider context, looking at all the systems of the building rather than just the damage to structural items and life-safety. The next generation of performance-based seismic design procedures, outlined in the FEMA P-58 document, provide engineers with the tools to express the seismic performance of the entire building in terms of the future life loss, facility repair cost and repair time. This paper will outline the FEMA P-58 procedure and present the results of a comparative study of six different structural systems for a three storey commercial and laboratory building: moment frame; buckling restrained braced frame; viscously damped moment frame; Pres-Lam timber coupled-walls; cast-in-place reinforced concrete shear wall; and base isolated braced frame. Each system was analysed as a fully non-linear structure and the calculated drifts and floor accelerations were input into the FEMA P-58 PACT tool to evaluate the overall building performance. The PACT tool performs loss calculations for the expected casualties, repair cost, and repair time from which a QuakeStar or SEAONC rating for the building can be obtained.

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Seismic isolation with energy dissipation is a technology that has been used in New Zealand since 1978 for bridges and buildings. During this period it has seen limited use, tending to be applied mainly to historically significant buildings, or buildings that have special functional requirements. Seismic isolation has the ability to significantly improve the seismic performance of existing buildings through a seismic retrofit, or to create new earthquake-resilient buildings. Both of these applications are of greater relevance throughout New Zealand following the Canterbury earthquakes. Consequently, the consideration of seismic isolation is no longer limited to those buildings at the top end of the Importance Level spectrum. This paper examines the broad technical issues associated with isolation and energy dissipation. It discusses the benefits and costs of seismic isolation, and presents guidelines for cost estimation at the feasibility stage of projects. We will explore the cost-benefits for building owners, and discuss whether base isolation can replace earthquake insurance for the building and its contents, and business interruption insurance.

This paper addresses the issues of whether the linking of core labor standards with multilateral or bilateral trade agreements is an effective way of promoting the improvement of labor standards. We review the determinants of core labor standards over time and conclude that efforts to improve these standards have to be tailored to the economic and social circumstances prevailing in a country at a specific time. Legalistic means to prod governments into revising their domestic laws or enforcing them will therefore be unsuccessful unless economic incentives can be changed to erode prevailing social norms and ease the way for the acceptance of new norms that will meet with public approval and be consonant with the distribution of political power. Moral suasion from both domestic and external sources may work more slowly than more legalistic means but is preferred because it contributes to altering the social norms that underlie and will reinforce the acceptance and effectiveness of labor standards.

In this paper, we first describe the characteristics of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that are the basis of the framework of the multilateral trading system. We then provide an overview of concepts of fairness in trade agreements. Thereafter, we offer a critique of the efficiency criterion in assessing multilateral trade agreements, taking issue with T.N. Srinivasan's (2006) analysis and then elaborate on our conception of fairness as reflected in agreements covering market access. We also address considerations of distributive justice, in contrast with Srinivasan's contention that distributive justice has no role to play in the design and negotiation of multilateral trade agreements. Finally, we question bilateral trade agreements from the standpoint of fairness, drawing on the example of the U.S. bilateral FTA negotiated in 2005 with Central America and the Dominican Republic.

How are we to assess the fairness of the global trading system as embodied in the GATT/WTO? Opinions about what constitutes fairness differ widely, and there is surely no incontrovertible yardstick. But can we be clearer about the criteria that are appropriate and what they mean in more operational terms? In this paper, we first discuss why fairness is a condition of the agreements among governments that form the global trading system. We then suggest that fairness can best be considered within the framework of two concepts: equality of opportunity and distributive equity. We observe that the efficiency criterion is not a primary yardstick of fairness, and though it is relevant in choosing among alternative ways of realizing fairness, it is not without its own limitations. We thereafter discuss what equality of opportunity and distributive equity mean when applied to the commitments that governments make in the global trading system. For this purpose, we divide these commitments into four categories: those relating directly to market access; those concerning supporting rules designed to prevent cheating in market access commitments or to facilitate trade flows; those relating to procedures for the settlement of disputes or the use of trade remedy measures; and those relating to governance of the system. (We say nothing in this paper about the issue of fairness in the context of the last category.) Finally, we make some comments about fairness in the Doha Development Round, first reviewing some proposals made by Stiglitz and Charlton, and then making some observations about the central issue of market access.