ACTION 2: Medicaid Reform. Congress should reform Medicaid requirements to ensure that recipients, like all Americans, have access to the full range of safe, voluntary reproductive health care in a confidential manner. In addition, Medicaid reform should allow women who qualify as a result of pregnancy to receive family planning benefits for up to five years after birth, in contrast to the current 60-day limit.

ACTION 3: Private Health Insurance Coverage of Family Planning. The federal government should urge private health insurance companies to cover all family planning methods (surgical and nonsurgical) and related reproductive health care services.

ACTION 4: Contraceptive Research. Congress should fund, both in federal medical research laboratories and in private-public partnerships and other innovative arrange- , increased research in basic and applied reproduction- health sciences, including research into alternative birth control technologies, to expand the range of medically safe contraceptives available to women and men. Particular attention should be given to woman- controlled barrier methods, methods that protect against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), post-ovulatory methods, and improved male methods.

ACTION 5: New Contraceptive Technologies. The federal government should develop procedures to ensure expedited approval of all medically sound methods of contraception, such as appropriate contraceptives for emergency post-coital use. Organizations and educational institutions responsible for training physicians, nurses, and reproductive health providers should also educate these individuals in the use of new contraceptive technologies, including oral contraceptives and other methods for emergency contraception.

ACTION 6: Men's Participation. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should set aside 20 percent, or as much as is deemed appropriate, of Title X Service Delivery Improvement Grant funds for research efforts that will enhance the provision of contraceptives and family planning information and services for men in settings they will use. In addition, the federal government should encourage- age and fund research and demonstration projects that study how best to provide contraceptives and family planning services for women and men.

ACTION 7: Professional Education and Curriculum. The American Medical Association (AMA) and American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) should be encouraged to increase their educational programs for medical students at the undergraduate and graduate levels to enhance the training of future health care providers in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitudes for reproductive health, family planning, and all contraceptive methods.

ACTION 8: Public Education Messages. The federal government should fund public education efforts, including the development and marketing of public service announcements (PSAs), to create awareness and provide information on sexual responsibility. These PSAs will be developed for a broad audience-adults as well as adolescents-and should therefore cover topics including abstinence, contraceptives, unintended pregnancy and STDS, the importance of responsible sexual behavior, and the responsibilities of parenthood.

ACTION 9: Entertainment and Advertising. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services should establish a cooperative working group with representatives of all branches of the entertainment and advertising industry to discuss opportunities and strategies for introducing appropriate messages and story lines about responsible sexual behavior.

ACTION 2: Community-Based Programs. The federal government should continue to fund community-oriented, peer-based, and adult-mentoring programs for young people at the highest risk of pregnancy and STD and HIV infection, and to fund research into the programs that are most effective in preventing adolescent pregnancy.

ACTION 3: Educational Programs. All educational cunicula and programs, including vocational education, should benefit both boys and girls, and health education should emphasize the role and responsibility of males in family planning. The federal government should augment funding for local school districts to develop comprehensive, age-appropriate sexuality education that stresses abstinence, and age-appropriate, medically accurate information- nation about family planning.

ACTION 4: Service Availability. The federal government should sufficiently fund programs that provide family plan- services to adolescents, including Title X.

ACTION 5: Educational Environment. Educational providers should be encouraged to improve the educational environment of adolescents through innovative partnerships focusing on improving gender relations and on eliminating violence, sexual harassment, and drugs in schools. In addition, efforts should be undertaken to develop creative programs where teens can continue their education during and after pregnancy.

ACTION 2: Eliminate Discrimination in Public Policy. Evidence indicates that, with access to information, services, education, and equitable economic opportunities, women voluntarily have smaller families. Therefore, coercion (for example, forced contraception) or punitive measures (such as conditioning financial resources like AMC on a particular family size) should not be used to influence women's childbearing and contraceptive decisions.

ACTION 3: Increase Opportunities for Women. The public and private sectors should work in partnership to ensure that women are not penalized for childbearing decisions in terms of their jobs and professional advancement. This partnership should further progress toward ensuring equal pay for comparable work among women and men. Similarly, child care should be accessible, safe, and affordable enough to enable parents to maintain employment. Lending institutions should also ensure that women have opportunities equal to those of men.

ACTION 2: Improve Information Technology. The technology to collect data for empirical research on U.S. migration and the environment should be improved.

ACTION 3: Research. The federal government should fund research into the environmental and economic effects of migration to the United States-and of population growth in general-to inform immigration and other demographic policies.

ACTION 4: Illegal Immigration. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform is encouraged to pursue its work on illegal immigration with due attention to the human rights and general welfare of those affected.

ACTION 5: Legal Immigration. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform should put legal immigration into a larger demographic context, considering the effect of migration coupled with natural increase and the impact on sustainability of continued population growth.

ACTION 6: Foreign Policy. The Task Force endorses the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform's recommendation that U.S. foreign policy and international economic policy give greater attention to the causes of migration to the United States, including the push factors in countries of origin. People leave their home countries for a variety of reasons, including lack of employment, low wages, and poor working conditions; political, social and religous- oppression; civil conflict; and other similar problems, and an effective strategy to prevent unlawful migration must address these factors.

ACTION 7: Development Assistance. The United States should adopt the United Nations' humanitarian aid target of 0.7 percent of GNP/GDP each year, targeting these funds at long-term job creation and income-generation activities. The focus should be on women who would otherwise rely on remittances, and on men in rural areas who would otherwise migrate to urban areas or other countries.

ACTION 8: Trade Policy. Active measures should be adopted to ensure that U.S. trade and investment policies result in a decrease, not an increase, in rural poverty and landlessness, since these are two factors that directly contribute to emigration.

• Transportation Policy
• Tax Policy
• Standardization of Environmental Compliance
• Development Policy
• Land Use Policy

ACTION 2: Imposing Taxes on "Bads." Simultaneously, taxes on consumptive activities that diminish overall economic welfare, especially activities that are disruptive of environmental quality and sustainable resource use over the long term, should be introduced in a revenue-neutral fashion.

ACTION 3: Progressivity. During the transition toward consumption taxes, the progressivity of the tax system should be enhanced by relaxing income and payroll taxes on individuals at the lower end of the income scale.

ACTION 4: Investment Incentives. Investment patterns that enhance prospects for sustainable development should be encouraged, particularly through incentives for businesses and investments with a long-range planning horizon (for example, 20 years or more).

ACTION 2: Phasing Out Harmful Subsidies. The President should propose phasing out subsidies with aggregate effects that distort economic efficiency and damage the environment, while preserving subsidies that promote overall social welfare. Specifically, consideration should be given to eliminating subsidies that cannot clearly be shown to benefit society so much that the net additional benefit is substantially greater than the cost of the subsidy.

ACTION 2: Third-Party Certification. The federal government should support the development of a third-party certification program capable of certifying that products meet predetermined environmental standards and authorized to award a national seal of approval.

ACTION 3: Preventing Deceptive Claims. The Federal Trade Commission and other appropriate federal agencies should establish the necessary means to prevent deceptive environmental marketing claims and ensure the integrity of a national eco-labeling program.

ACTION 2: Recycled Products. Each agency of the federal government should purchase, to the maximum extent practicable, recycled products in the 26 categories already established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

ACTION 3: Buy Only "Green." After the federal government has established criteria and standards for appropriate product categories, based on life-cycle analysis and assessment, and a third-party entity has certified environmentally superior products, the Federal Procurement Council should take the necessary steps to prohibit the sale of products that do not meet environmentally preferable standards.

ACTION 2: Mass Media. The media industry-through innovative partnerships with government, business, and the nonprofit sector-should be encouraged to incorporate sustainable lifestyle practices into storylines and advertisements.

ACTION 3: Advertising Responsibility. To ensure that consumers are receiving accurate information on which to make informed sustainable choices, the print and television advertising community should be encouraged to adopt an ethic that insures the accuracy claims regarding the environmental impact of products.

ACTION 4: Financial Literacy. Education departments and educators should reform their K- 12 home economics and related curricula to place a greater emphasis on time and money management, in order to help Americans better understand the importance of saving and to give them the tools for sound financial management and for living within their means.

ACTION 5: Work Patterns. The U.S. Department of Labor, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Commerce, should analyze working trends in the United States and recommend options for greater flexibility and reduced hours of work. The report should explore ways that private industry could offer workers the option wage increases in the form of time, rather than money.

ACTION 6: Community-Based Education. Municipal governments, utility companies, local businesses, and community based citizen groups should expand efforts to develop information, financial incentives, educational materials, and programs to educate citizens at the community level in recycling, composting, water conservation, energy conservation, ride-sharing, and other aspects of sustainable ways of living.

ACTION 7: Stewardship Ethic. Religious and cultural organizations, consumer groups, environmental groups, and others should investigate the nature, role, and application of a stewardship ethic and highlight its importance in all their public education materials and programs. In conjunction with representatives of labor, business, academia, and philanthropy, these groups should be bold in sparking a new national discussion about the "good life," affirming the many aspects of our economy and culture that are already inherently satisfying while pointing to the need for greater balance in the pursuit of material and non-material needs.

ACTION 2: Retail Return of Packaging. Policy options for Extended Product Responsibility in the area of packaging should include the collection by and return of packaging materials to manufacturers and the ability of consumers to return packaging to retail establishments.

ACTION 3: Packaging Certification. Policy options should also include public-private partnerships, financed by manufacturers, that certify manufacturers' packaging on the basis that it is designed for materials efficiency, reuse, recycling, and remanufacture. Once certified, a packaging design could receive a "stamp of approval" akin to eco- labeling that tells consumers the packaging is being handled sustainably. Manufacturers should finance this partnership through fees, graduated by material type to reflect the different levels of reuse, recycling, and remanufacturing possible among glass, paper, and plastics.

ACTION 4: Graduated Targets. Policy options should establish graduated targets for: (a) the proportion of all packaging of various kinds being recovered under the program; (b) the proportion of all packaging material of various kinds that is reused; and (c) the proportion recycled. These targets should be designed to track with the development of markets for each material, to avoid glutted markets and illegal dumping of materials.

ACTION 2: Incentives. An interagency working group led by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should explore possible federal incentives to states and localities for adopting the EPA's model program. Possibilities include grants or tying development of such programs to highway or other grants, or to permission to export trash out of state. The working group should submit a report to the EPA within two years of its creation.

ACTION 3: Legislation. The Executive Branch should, within one year of the submission of the working group to the EPA, develop and propose to Congress, legislation incorporates the best of the schemes explored by the interagency working group.

ACTION 2: Deposit/Return Program. As with existing bottle bills, the deposit/return program would be implemented throughout the marketplace, with manufacturers providing incentives through prices and deposit/return systems and distributors acting as agents to redeem the used toxic products.

ACTION 2: Research and Development Tax Credits. The federal government should revise the federal tax code to allow preferential tax credits to industry for research and development activities targeted at environmentally sustainable technologies.

ACTION 3: Private-Public Research Consortia. The federal government should support partnerships that bring private firms, federal laboratories, and universities together to plan and carry our research aimed at the development of environmentally sustainable technologies.