Legal Levers For Cleaner Air in Kolkata: An Assessment of Local Legal Authority

Air pollution in India results in significant adverse health and environmental outcomes. Only 16% of the population lives in an area that meets India’s national air quality standards, and less than 1% lives in an area that meets international guidelines for air quality. In 2015, air pollution resulted in 1.1 million deaths nation-wide. If the World Health Organization’s air quality standard was met, Indian life expectancy would increase by 5.2 years. The state of West Bengal, wherein Kolkata is located, faces some of the highest exposures to air pollution in the country, making local interventions there critical. In recent years, the central government has taken steps to improve air quality, creating, for example, the National Clean Air Programme in 2019. Kolkata was the first city in West Bengal to be named out of compliance with national air quality standards under the program, even after the Air Quality Monitoring Committee developed a clean air plan for Kolkata in 2018. Despite some developments, including actions to curb one of the Kolkata’s lead causes of air pollution by banning open burning of coal and firewood, the city still has steps to take to enhance air quality

Migrants Can Make International Law

Migrants have the power to make international law as norm creators. The nation-state enjoys a monopoly on violence in domestic jurisgenesis, but international law’s constraint on the use of force provides non-state actors the opportunity to participate in the formation of international legal doctrine without the threat of violence. Scholars have overlooked this nonstate jurisgenerative potential, bound by a state-centric conception of law. This Article applies the claim that non-state actors have the power to influence international law to the transnational issue of climate-induced migration. Climate change intensifies slow- and sudden-onset events, and sudden-onset disasters already displace millions annually. Yet international law grants nation-states the right to largely exclude foreigners such that climate migrants have no right to enter another country, resettle, or be protected against forcible return when they are displaced across borders. While liberal scholars defend this right to exclude as necessary for the preservation of sovereignty, the majority of nation-states participate in free movement agreements – regional trade agreements that promote migration—demonstrating that sovereignty and exclusion are not mutually constitutive. Ultimately, I leverage the challenge of climate-induced migration to ask who has the power to change international law. My response proceeds in two parts. First, the Article challenges the state-centric focus of international law to call attention to non-state actors’ ability to create legal norms. Second, I draw on diasporic theory to argue that the Global South diaspora – Global Southerners living in the Global North – should leverage their hybrid positionality to create legal norms that reconstitute sovereignty through admission. International migration theorists reproduce the paradigmatic image of a Global North and Global South border contest, and foreclose the possibility of migrant’s jurisgenerative capacity. This Article intentionally shifts the frame to highlight the power that a territorially-unbounded Global South people have to shape international legal norms

Free Movement Agreements & Climate-Induced Migration: A Caribbean Case Study

Climate-induced migration is a global challenge. Climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of disasters, thereby increasing the number of people displaced by extreme weather events. Adverse climate change impacts are already exacerbating patterns of human mobility, and will do so in greater magnitude in the future. Yet no comprehensive framework governs climate-induced migration, and international law guarantees no protection to climate migrants who fall outside the definition of international refugee law. Given this protection gap, policy solutions that address climate-induced migration are critical. This paper proposes Free Movement Agreements (FMAs) as a protection framework for climate-induced migration in the absence of a governing legal framework and guaranteed legal rights. FMAs are provisions within (sub-)regional trade agreements that liberalize the movement of people between participating states. Two Caribbean FMAs within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and Organisation for Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) provided people displaced during the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season rights of entry, work, and resettlement. Given that 120 countries worldwide participate in FMAs, FMAs could be useful in other regional contexts. FMAs are particularly well-suited to address the climate-induced migration protection gap because they grant access to territory and safety regardless of the drivers of movement, which are often difficult to disaggregate. FMAs also provide a regional response to a regional challenge, build economic resilience at the structural and individual level, and are more easily amended than global multilateral agreements

Envisioning a Way Forward: Climate Displacement Legal Strategy Convening

This synthesis report presents key strategic points that were discussed in a convening on climate displacement that took place on October 25-26, 2022. It highlights how much work must be done to create an equitable legal framework that responds to the needs of the most marginalized people and potential future projects that may address these needs

Women and Youth Entrepreneurship in Botswana

The study on women and youth entrepreneurship in Botswana investigated the environmental factors that affect the performance of Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) with specific focus on microenterprises (defined as those that employ less than 6 people including owner and annual turnover of less than P60,000) and the extent to which the microenterprises have utilized the government institutional credit and capacity building programmes to expand their enterprises.

Toxicity effect of radiographic developer effluent on giant African snail (Achatina fulica)

Background: The decline in the population of snails, a source of protein of people living in the high forest zone due to environmental pollution and the hazard caused by the disposal of radiographic developer effluent into streams, bushes or forests and public sewer systems makes the assessment of the effect on giant African snails (Achatina fulica) from environmental pollution due to radiographic developer effluent very important.Materials and Methods: Ninety 5 months old, 12 months old and 24 months old giant African snails were randomly divided into 6 groups of 15 snails for each age group based on the dose of developer effluent to be administered. One group from each age group was designated the control and the remaining, the experimental group. Range finding test was performed at effluent concentrations of 100 %, 50 %, 25 %, 12.5 %, 6.25 %, 3.125 %, 1.6 % and 0 % (control) in 150 ml of distilled water. The effluent solution was administered on the feed and soil of the experimental snails only.Results: Behavioural changes occurred between 0.2 – 1.0 % concentration and mortality at 24 – 96 hours exposure to the effluent solutions. The percentage (%) mortality of the giant African snails increased as the effluent concentration increased from 0.2 - 1.0 % and at increased exposure time of 24 – 96 hours. The estimated 96 hours LD50 for the 5, 12 and 24 months old giant African snails were 0.20 0.23, 0.23 0.25 and 0.30 0.26 respectively.Conclusion: Radiographic developer effluent is harmful to the giant African snails, with the % mortality increasing with increase in concentration and exposure time to the developer effluent. Legislation is recommended to ensure safe disposal of radiographic developer effluents into the Nigerian environment considering the importance of giant African snails (Achatina fulica) to the ecosystem and the economy

Global Southerners in the North

Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholarship contends that international law privileges nation-states in the Global North over those in the Global South. The literature primarily draws on a Westphalian conception of the North-South divide in analyzing asymmetrical issues of power in the global political economy. Given the expansion of global capitalism, however, the nation-state-based mode of analysis misses the fact that there are Global Souths in the geographic North and Global Norths in the geographic South. This Essay makes two theoretical claims. First, it argues that racial capitalism renders expendable populations across the geographic North and South, destabilizing the Westphalian North-South structure. Global Southerners, defined by their positionality as capitalism’s externalities, exist across the North-South schema. The Essay uses climate displacement as an example. The adverse effects of carbon pollution combine with postcolonial legacy and contemporary imperialism to transmogrify the lives, livelihoods, and homelands of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) around the world into the hidden cost of industrialization. Climate change, an issue that challenges strict notions of national borders, serves as germane material in the Essay’s work to deterritorialize the notion of the North-South divide. Second, this Essay names the existence of Global Southerners in the geographic North as a heretofore unnamed site of resistance for reordering the North-South divide in international law. It leverages the author’s deterritorialized view of the Global South to claim that Global Southerners are political agents with the capacity to shift the global political economy of international law. Although others have begun to reimagine the Global South beyond geographical lines in order to articulate a theory of resistance in international law, this Essay seeks to break new ground by highlighting the particular power of Global Southerners residing in the geographic North. As such, this Essay reinvigorates the central TWAIL question of how to shift power along the North-South divide

Migrants Can Make International Law

Migrants have the power to make international law as norm creators. The nation-state enjoys a monopoly on violence in domestic jurisgenesis, but international law’s constraint on the use of force provides non-state actors the opportunity to participate in the formation of international legal doctrine without the threat of violence. Scholars have overlooked this nonstate jurisgenerative potential, bound by a state-centric conception of law. This Article applies the claim that non-state actors have the power to influence international law to the transnational issue of climate-induced migration. Climate change intensifies slow- and sudden-onset events, and sudden-onset disasters already displace millions annually. Yet international law grants nation-states the right to largely exclude foreigners such that climate migrants have no right to enter another country, resettle, or be protected against forcible return when they are displaced across borders. While liberal scholars defend this right to exclude as necessary for the preservation of sovereignty, the majority of nation-states participate in free movement agreements—regional trade agreements that promote migration—demonstrating that sovereignty and exclusion are not mutually constitutive. Ultimately, I leverage the challenge of climate-induced migration to ask who has the power to change international law. My response proceeds in two parts. First, the Article challenges the state-centric focus of international law to call attention to non-state actors’ ability to create legal norms. Second, I draw on diasporic theory to argue that the Global South diaspora—Global Southerners living in the Global North—should leverage their hybrid positionality to create legal norms that reconstitute sovereignty through admission. International migration theorists reproduce the paradigmatic image of a Global North and Global South border contest, and foreclose the possibility of migrant’s jurisgenerative capacity. This Article intentionally shifts the frame to highlight the power that a territorially-unbounded Global South people have to shape international legal norms

Effective Teaching of Citizenship Education in Primary Schools in Ghana

This paper discusses the effective ways of teaching Citizenship education in Ghanaian primary schools. The paper indicates that effective teaching of citizenship education requires extra commitment on the part of the teacher to go through a process of identifying the problem of the topic, formulating concept of the problem, and breaking up the concept into content frames bearing in mind the philosophy and the general objectives of the subject. A good citizenship education teacher must have a grasp of the citizenship education syllabus and be a master of the various topics therein. He/ she should be able to integrate the goals and the attributes of the subject in teaching. Key words: Concept, content frame, methods, strategies, techniques

A Study of Internal Control Systems at the Ghana Prisons Service

The study examined internal control systems and practices at the Ghana Prisons Service. The Headquarters of the Service was used as a case study. Questionnaires and in-depth interview guide were used as research instruments. Simple random and purposive sampling techniques were adopted by the study for data collection. The study found out that personnel of the Ghana Prisons Service had adequate knowledge of internal control systems and practices. It was further revealed that internal control systems were fully operationalized and effective at the Ghana Prisons Service with the view to assuring the attainment of set organizational objectives and also enhancing optimal performance. More so, respondents indicated that there were few challenges associated with internal control systems, including noncompliance to rules and procedures of the service, ignorance of most officers on the existence of the policies, poorly designed guidelines, financial and logistical constraints, unavailability of skilled personnel to perform the required task, officers unwillingness to comply with control measures, and lack of understanding of control measures. The study thus recommended that Management of the Ghana Prisons Service should streamline financial and procurement policies and also strengthen internal audit and monitoring and evaluation units in enforcing internal controls. Additionally, management should endeavour to organize more capacity building workshops and seminars on internal control systems at the Ghana Prisons Service where information would be given to personnel, showing how each area of work relates to each other and to the overall success of the organization. Key words: Internal Control, Control environment, Control activities, Monitoring Activities, Organization. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/14-16-09 Publication date:August 31st 202