Combating desertification in central Asia : finding new ways to regional stability through environmental sustainability?

This article appraises the Central Asian Countries' Initiative on Land Management (CACILM) as an innovative experience of regional cooperation to implement the Convention on Desertification. Despite high initial expectations, the actual implementation process has suffered drawbacks. The Central Asian countries' commitment and capacity to sustain this process depends heavily on international support. Moreover, the process' low political profile and the weak capacities of the Central Asian authorities to engage in meaningful transnational cooperation are significant hurdles to be tackled. At the same time, national and regional efforts to combat soil degradation and desertification have not yet been properly mainstreamed with other more consolidated processes for the sustainable management of natural resources, such as the IFAS. It is argued that this may be a possible solution for the future of CACILM

Constitutionalising secondary rules in global environmental regimes : non-compliance procedures and the enforcement of multilateral environmental agreements

Due to its remarkable success, the model of the Montreal Protocol's non-compliance procedure (NCP) has been adopted in other environmental regimes, whose primary norms differ considerably. Hence, this article distinguishes different types of global environmental regimes and assesses the performance of NCPs therein as endogenous enforcement mechanisms. In fact, the reciprocal nature of the main conventional obligations in some more recent environmental regimes seems to hamper the effectiveness of compliance procedures. On this basis, the article puts forward some tentative considerations from a constitutional perspective. Drawing from the experience gained under environmental regimes in the region of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), it explores the feasibility of transplanting some aspects of the model of the Aarhus Convention NCP into the more complex global context. Further, it reflects upon the potential of enhancing synergies between NCPs and national and international judiciaries as a step towards the consolidation of international public law in this area

Monitoring and compliance mechanisms

This chapter provides a general perspective of monitoring and compliance mechanisms in multilateral environmental agreements related to the protection of biodiversity. Starting with the specificities that explain the emergence of endogenous enforcement solutions in these sorts of treaty, it makes a conceptual distinction between monitoring and compliance mechanisms. On this basis, it appraises their institutional design and procedural outline, as well as the nature of the measures that these mechanisms issue in order to elicit compliance and enforce treaty obligations. It concludes with an overall assessment of these mechanisms’ performance, providing a final reflection on new and remaining research directions

Jurisprudencia ambiental en la Unión Europea

Jurisprudencia ambiental en la Unión Europe

El procedimiento de no cumplimiento del Protocolo de Cartagena sobre Seguridad de la Biotecnologia : un mecanismo eficaz?

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety foresees the establishment of 'procedures and institutional mechanisms to promote compliance with the provisions of this Protocol and to address cases of non-compliance' (article 34). On this basis, taking the non-compliance procedure of the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer as a model, the first Meeting of the Parties to the Cartegena Protocol adopted such a procedure in 2004 (decision BS-I/7), as an autonomous mechanism to promote compliance with the Parties' commitments. The assisting functions that are inherent to this mechanism have been entrusted to a subsidiary body to the Meeting of the Parties, the Compliance Committee, with exerts its powers according to a simple and cooperative procedure. Nevertheless, to the date, no Party has resorted to this mechanism in order to solve any issues of non-compliance. Based on the formal assessment of the mechanism, this article tries to elucidate the causes for this situation, paying particular attention to inherent structural deficiencies, as well as the vis atractiva of exogenous enforcement mechanisms

Jurisprudencia ambiental en la Unión Europea

Jurisprudencia ambiental en la Unión Europe

JURISPRUDENCIA AMBIENTAL DE LA UNIÓN EUROPEA

JURISPRUDENCIA AMBIENTAL DE LA UNIÓN EUROPE

The temporal evolution of the energy flux across scales in homogeneous turbulence

A temporal study of energy transfer across length scales is performed in 3D numerical simulations of homogeneous shear flow and isotropic turbulence. The average time taken by perturbations in the energy flux to travel between scales is measured and shown to be additive. Our data suggests that the propagation of disturbances in the energy flux is independent of the forcing and that it defines a `velocity' that determines the energy flux itself. These results support that the cascade is, on average, a scale-local process where energy is continuously transmitted from one scale to the next in order of decreasing size.Comment: Accepted for publication as a Letter in Physics of Fluid

JURISPRUDENCIA AMBIENTAL DE LA UNIÓN EUROPEA

JURISPRUDENCIA AMBIENTAL DE LA UNIÓN EUROPE

Jurisprudencia ambiental en la Unión Europea

Jurisprudencia ambiental en la Unión Europe