The Price of Failure:

Summaries This article examines the development of monetary policy in Russia since prices were liberalised in 1992. It traces events from the monetary overhang which preceded that step, through sharp inflation and the monetary contraction with which stability was restored, to the present crisis of illiquidity and demonetisation. The article argues that, far from easing the way to flexible, market?based policies, this chain of events has left policymakers as severely boxed in as at the start. While any reform strategy was fraught with danger, it would have been better to take a less cavalier attitude to prices and concentrate from the beginning on building the financial and legal institutions required for macro?economic policy to work

Pathways to Sustainable Energy – Accelerating Energy Transition in the UNECE Region

Energy underpins economic development and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and has a critical role to play in climate change mitigation. The recognition of the role that energy plays in modern society is highly significant, however, there remains an important disconnection between agreed energy and climate targets and the approaches in place today to achieve them. Only international cooperation and innovation can deliver the accelerated and more ambitious strategies. Policies will be needed to all the persistent gaps to achieve the 2030 Agenda. If the gaps are not addressed urgently, progressively more drastic and expensive measures will be required to avoid extreme and potentially unrecoverable social impacts as countries try to cope with climate change. This report uniquely focuses on sustainable energy in the UNECE region up to 2050 as regional economic cooperation is an important factor in achieving sustainable energy. Arriving at a state of attaining sustainable energy is a complex social, political, economic and technological challenge. The UNECE countries have not agreed on how collectively they will achieve energy for sustainable development. Given the role of the UNECE to promote economic cooperation it is important to explore the implications of different sustainable energy pathways and for countries to work together on developing and deploying policies and measures

Learning Within

This chapter “lifts the lid” to reveal the workings inside the Expert Group as it developed indicators for the UNECE Strategy for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD); as far as possible, this chapter seeks to tell the story of the Expert Group in their own words. Its purpose is to share some of the learning that this process engendered with those who may develop mandates for, or participate in, similar processes in future, in particular, the proposed UNECE Expert Group on ESD Competences. Beyond this primary audience, the analysis of the experts’ remarks may have relevance for students of international policy while the set of suggestions may prove useful to a wider audience of participants and managers of similar processes. Following these introductory remarks, the chapter is divided into four sections. Section one provides the background to the process, with particular reference to the mandate, the selection of experts and working arrangements. The second section focuses on the development of the outputs from the first draft of the indicators through the pilot testing process to the development of additional tools to facilitate the understanding and use of indicators. Section three looks at the Expert Group as a “learning arena” and shows how the positive group dynamics contributed to the success of the work and led to the development of ideas and actions beyond the indicator framework itself. These three sections lead logically to section four that suggests guidelines for similar processes. The chapter refers to a number of key documents relating to the process but more significantly, it draws upon correspondence with 10 Expert Group (EG) members, (all group members were invited to respond). Follow-up interviews were conducted with three EG members

Environmental Impact Assessment and Strategic Environmental Assessment in the UK after leaving the European Union

The United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union and, until the terms of the ‘Brexit’ are negotiated, this has led to considerable uncertainty over the future practice of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) in the UK. Here we show that multiple obligations exist outside the scope of the EU which mean that EIA and SEA will continue to be required in the long-term, but that their future compliance with the Directives remains unclear. We consider three scenarios for Brexit and present the implications of each; these are: signing up to the European Economic Area (EEA) Agreement; membership of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), but not EEA, or negotiate a separate agreement. The implications of no longer being subjected to the obligations of the Directives under some scenarios are discussed and include opening the door for increasing diversity of application across the regions of the UK, and the probability of raised screening thresholds so as to reduce the burden of assessment on developers

Transition in kyrgyzstan:

Summaries This article attempts to move away from macrolevel analyses and descriptions of the process of transition. It thus not only explores the social effects of transition in Kyrgyzstan in three distinct local contexts, but also considers the impact on children. It underlines the need for both localised studies of transitional economies as well as disaggregated research on particular social groups

Scoring and ranking farmland conservation activities to evaluate environmental performance and encourage sustainable farming

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Kathleen Lewis, John Skinner, James Finch, Tina Kaho, Marguerite Newbold, and Keith Bardon, ‘Scoring and ranking farmland conservation activities to evaluate environmental performance and encourage sustainable farming’, Sustainable Development, Vol. 5 (2): 71-77, version of record online 4 December 1998. The final, published version is available online at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1099-1719(199708)5:2%3C71::AID-SD61%3E3.0.CO;2-F/pdf © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.The University of Hertfordshire, in collaboration with two UK agricultural establishments ADAS and IACR-Rothamsted are developing a computerised decision support system for environmental management of arable agriculture. Part of this system is aimed towards encouraging sound farmland conservation to protect existing plants and animals, to encourage greater biodiversity and to help the farming community adopt more sustainable practices. The software aims to assess performance, help identify areas where improvements to existing habitats can be made and highlight the potential for new habitat creation. The assessment routines used determine a numerical eco-rating and textual description of performance by comparing actual practices with best practice.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Use of in Vitro HTS-Derived Concentration–Response Data as Biological Descriptors Improves the Accuracy of QSAR Models of in Vivo Toxicity

BackgroundQuantitative high-throughput screening (qHTS) assays are increasingly being used to inform chemical hazard identification. Hundreds of chemicals have been tested in dozens of cell lines across extensive concentration ranges by the National Toxicology Program in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health Chemical Genomics Center.ObjectivesOur goal was to test a hypothesis that dose–response data points of the qHTS assays can serve as biological descriptors of assayed chemicals and, when combined with conventional chemical descriptors, improve the accuracy of quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) models applied to prediction of in vivo toxicity end points.MethodsWe obtained cell viability qHTS concentration–response data for 1,408 substances assayed in 13 cell lines from PubChem; for a subset of these compounds, rodent acute toxicity half-maximal lethal dose (LD50) data were also available. We used the k nearest neighbor classification and random forest QSAR methods to model LD50 data using chemical descriptors either alone (conventional models) or combined with biological descriptors derived from the concentration–response qHTS data (hybrid models). Critical to our approach was the use of a novel noise-filtering algorithm to treat qHTS data.ResultsBoth the external classification accuracy and coverage (i.e., fraction of compounds in the external set that fall within the applicability domain) of the hybrid QSAR models were superior to conventional models.ConclusionsConcentration–response qHTS data may serve as informative biological descriptors of molecules that, when combined with conventional chemical descriptors, may considerably improve the accuracy and utility of computational approaches for predicting in vivo animal toxicity end points

Defining a common set of indicators to monitor road accidents in the European Union

BACKGROUND: currently road accidents are mostly monitored through mortality and injury rates. This paper reports the methodology and the results of a project set forth by the European Union (EU) and coordinated by the WHO aimed at identifying and evaluating a core set of indicators to monitor the causal chain of road accident health effects. The project is part of the ECOEHIS (Development of Environment and Health Indicators for European Union Countries). METHODS: a group of experts (WG), identified 14 indicators after a review of the information collected at the EU level, each of them representing a specific aspect of the DPSEEA (Driving, Pressure, State, Exposure, Effect, Action) model applied and adapted to the road accidents. Each indicator was scored according to a list of 16 criteria chosen by the WG. Those found to have a high score were analysed to determine if they were compatible with EU legislation and then tested in the feasibility study. RESULTS: 11 of the 14 indicators found to be relevant and compatible with the criteria of selection were proposed for the feasibility study. Mortality, injury, road accident rate, age of vehicle fleet, and distance travelled are the indicators recommended for immediate implementation. CONCLUSION: after overcoming the limitations that emerged (absence of a common definition of death by road accident and injury severity, underestimation of injuries, differences in information quality) this core set of indicators will allow Member States to carry out effective internal/external comparisons over time

A GIS model-based assessment of the environmental distribution of g-hexachlorocyclohexane in European soils and waters

The MAPPE GIS based multimedia model is used to produce a quantitative description of the behaviour of γ-hexachlorocyclohexane (γ-HCH) in Europe, with emphasis on continental surface waters. The model is found to reasonably reproduce γ-HCH distributions and variations along the years in atmosphere and soil; for continental surface waters, concentrations were reasonably well predicted for year 1995, when lindane was still used in agriculture, while for 2005, assuming severe restrictions in use, yields to substantial underestimation. Much better results were yielded when same mode of release as in 1995 was considered, supporting the conjecture that for γ-HCH, emission data rather that model structure and parameterization can be responsible for wrong estimation of concentrations. Future research should be directed to improve the quality of emission data. Joint interpretation of monitoring and modelling results, highlights that lindane emissions in Europe, despite the marked decreasing trend, persist beyond the provisions of existing legislation. An spatially-explicit multimedia modelling strategy was applied to describe the historical distribution of γ-HCH in European soils and surface waters