EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking : recent Belgian criminal cases

The article introduces international, European and Belgian legislation on trade in endangered species of wild animals and plants and discusses the EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking. Notably, this contribution provides empirical insights in the functioning of the Belgian system for enforcement of wildlife trafficking regulations and provides a first set of empirical data on the effectiveness of criminal charges in this field of EU environmental law. To this extent, the four reviewed Belgian judgments are examples of effective criminal sanctioning of wildlife crime. They also show that wildlife crime is hot and organised, and that Belgium is both a final destination market for live birds and reptiles and a transit point for trafficking of ivory and sea horses to other continents, such as Asia. To meet the targets of the EU Action Plan against Wildlife Trafficking, the fight against wild life trafficking should be stepped up. As regards Belgium, this manuscript highlights that the federal state and the three regions should better coordinate their CITES policy and legislation. In view of the increase of CITES-cases, the training and capacity of the inspection, customs and police services should be strengthened further. More frequent controls at the airports and ports would increase the chance of being caught. The environmental unit of the federal police should be reinforced. Moreover, a federal CITES public prosecutor could be appointed for serious CITES cases in which there are links with terrorism and organised crime. More research capacity and international cooperation would allow to tackle not only the couriers, but the principals and addressees in the countries of origin and destination. Finally, the assignment of CITES cases to specialised sections of the courts would contribute to more efficiency and better continuity in the interpretation and enforcement of CITES regulations

Environmental courts and tribunals: A guide for policymakers

This UNEP 2021 ECT Guide is designed to provide an overview for policymakers, judges, academics, and stakeholders who are interested in improving the adjudication of environmental disputes. It identifies features of ECTs, describes good practices and provides road maps for institution-building to support the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Sustainable Development Goal 16 “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions”, which seeks to promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

Legal assessment of the Proposal for an EU Nature Restoration Law:Report by the Legal Working Group of the Society for Ecological Restoration Europe

This assessment is based on the Commission proposal for a Nature Restoration Law (hereafter referred to as NRL) from 22 June 2022.2 The Legal Working Group is aware that the proposal is currently being discussed by the Council and Parliament. It is therefore not an article-by-article assessment, but a more general assessment of several legal aspects of the law we consider to be particularly important. Our choice of the discussed aspects was based on ongoing political discussions on the law (e.g. in the EU parliament and Council). The note gives legal arguments why certain articles should remain in the law or should be amended or added to the law. Legal arguments include legal certainty for stakeholders, coherence with other EU legislation, legitimate expectations, accepted legal principles, etc. Where relevant, we include concrete suggestions for amending and improving the law proposal.<br/

Actinides: How well do we know their stellar production?

The reliable evaluation of the r-process production of the actinides and careful estimates of the uncertainties affecting these predictions are key ingredients especially in nucleo-cosmochronology studies based on the analysis of very metal-poor stars or on the composition of meteorites. This type of information is also required in order to make the best possible use of future high precision data on the actinide composition of galactic cosmic rays, of the local interstellar medium, or of meteoritic grains of presumed circumstellar origin. This paper provides the practitioners in these various fields with the most detailed and careful analysis of the r-process actinide production available to-date. In total, thirty-two different multi-event canonical calculations using different nuclear ingredients or astrophysics conditions are presented, and are considered to give a fair picture of the level of reliability of the predictions of the actinide production, at least in the framework of a simple r-process model. This simplicity is imposed by our inability to identify the proper astrophysical sites for the r-process. Constraints on the actinide yield predictions and associated uncertainties are suggested on grounds of the measured abundances of r-nuclides, including Th and U, in the star CS 31082-001, and under the critical and questionable assumption of the `universality' of the r-process. We also define alternative constraints based on the nucleo-cosmochronological results derived from the present actinide content of meteorites. Implications to the different above-cited fields, and in particular nucleo-cosmochronometry are discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures; A&A in pres

The Origin of the Heavy Elements: Recent Progress in the Understanding of the r-Process

There has been significant progress in the understanding of the r-process over the last ten years. The conditions required for this process have been examined in terms of the parameters for adiabatic expansion from high temperature and density. There have been many developments regarding core-collapse supernova and neutron star merger models of the r-process. Meteoritic data and observations of metal-poor stars have demonstrated the diversity of r-process sources. Stellar observations have also found some regularity in r-process abundance patterns and large dispersions in r-process abundances at low metallicities. This review summarizes the recent results from parametric studies, astrophysical models, and observational studies of the r-process. The interplay between nuclear physics and astrophysics is emphasized. Some suggestions for future theoretical, experimental, and observational studies of the r-process are given.Comment: typos in Eqs. (30) and (31) correcte

Neutron-induced nucleosynthesis

Neutron--induced nucleosynthesis plays an important role in astrophysical scenarios like in primordial nucleosynthesis in the early universe, in the s--process occurring in Red Giants, and in the $\alpha$--rich freeze--out and r--process taking place in supernovae of type II. A review of the three important aspects of neutron--induced nucleosynthesis is given: astrophysical background, experimental methods and theoretical models for determining reaction cross sections and reaction rates at thermonuclear energies. Three specific examples of neutron capture at thermal and thermonuclear energies are discussed in some detail.Comment: 40 pages (uses kluwer.sty), 2 postscript figures (uses psfig), accepted for publication in Surveys in Geophysics, uuencoded tex-files and postscript-files available at ftp://is1.kph.tuwien.ac.at/pub/ohu/Geo.u