Balancing climate change mitigation and environmental protection interests in the EU Directive on carbon capture and storage

The EU Climate and Energy Package highlights the potential contradictions between the climate change imperative of reducing GHGs emissions and the importance to maintain environmental integrity. While the package supports climate change mainstreaming, it remains to be seen to what extent it succeeds in achieving internal environmental integration between climate change mitigation and other environment- protection objectives. Directive 2009/31/EC on the capture and geological storage of carbon dioxide (hereinafter the CCS Directive) offers a paradigmatic example of this potential conflict. One of the main regulatory challenges arising from the CCS Directive relates to finding the proper balance between the different interests involved and the not-fully-consistent objectives of environmental protection, climate change mitigation, and energy security. The present article will discuss this regulatory challenge and examine how the CCS Directive’s regulatory framework for CCS permits a combination of the various interests at stake and the giving of proper weight to concerns about environmental protection. The role that the precautionary principle in conjunction with the proportionality principle may have in balancing climate change mitigation and environment-protection interests will be considere

From domestic to global? Recent trends in environmental liability from a multilevel and comparative law perspective

The law of environmental liability has already been the object of several comparative endeavours. This article seeks to bring a different perspective to the debate, by examining selected developments in the field through the lens of the emerging global environmental law scholarship. It brings the comparative method of analysis into a multi-level context with a view to identifying the emergence of common legal responses to the problem of liability and reparation for environmental harm across different jurisdictions and regulatory levels. The analysis will focus on a ‘novel’ set of environmental liability regimes, which specifically address damage to the environment and to natural resources, as distinct from more traditional categories of damage to property and other individual rights arising as a consequence of environmental pollution. These include: the United States Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, and the Oil Pollution Act, which constitute a pioneering attempt to envisage a public law-oriented system of liability and restoration for damage to natural resources; the European Union Environmental Liability Directive; and selected, recent international treaty developments. The article argues that, while adopted within different legal orders and regulatory contexts, these environmental liability regimes share common features, which correspond to the ontological aspects of environmental damage and ultimately reflect a common understanding of the environment as a global public good

The evolution of EU legislation and policy in the environmental field: achievements and current challenges

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Il Dibattito Pubblico nella Convenzione di Aarhus e nella Legislazione Europea

Il presente contributo colloca l’analisi del dibattito pubblico nell’ambito dei relativi sviluppi internazionali e di diritto dell’Unione europea. L’analisi verterà soprattutto sul concetto di partecipazione pubblica quale emerge dalla Convenzione di Aarhus, e sull’influenza esercitata da questo strumento nel promuovere e consolidare i diritti di partecipazione pubblica nell’ambito dell’Unione europea. Si cercherà quindi di esaminare in che misura le disposizioni internazionali e di diritto europeo incidono nella definizione del ruolo, applicazione e modalità di svolgimento dei processi partecipativi a livello nazionale, e del dibattito pubblico in particolare. Il contributo cercherà di illustrare come, nonostante la Convenzione di Aarhus non regoli direttamente il dibattito pubblico, ha comunque un’importante valenza normativa e interpretativa nell’orientare la disciplina nazionale a riguardo, soprattutto attraverso il concetto di partecipazione effettiva

Introduction to volume VI

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Role of F-18-FDG-PET/CT in restaging of patients affected by gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GIST)

BACKGROUND: Gastrointestinal stromal tumours (GISTs) are a subset of mesenchymal tumours that represent the most common mesenchymal neoplasms of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract and account for less than 1% of all gastrointestinal tumours. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We retrospectively evaluated 19 patients (6 females and 13 males; median age: 61 years ± 15 standard deviation) affected by GIST histologically documented after surgical intervention or biopsy. RESULTS: F18-FDG-PET/CT had identified pathologic uptakes and was considered positive for neoplastic tissue in 10 patients (53%) and negative in 9 (47%), in concordance with radiological findings. CONCLUSIONS: F18-FDG-PET/CT is a feasible, reliable, and accurate method to restage patients affected by previously histologically confirmed GIST, also in the absence of a staging study. Nuclear Med Rev 2010; 13, 2: 76–8

Introduction

Acknowledging the exponential growth and global dimension of climate litigation, this introductory piece to this Special Section starts by situating this phenomenon in the context of the scholarly debate on polycentric and multi-level climate governance. It highlights both the strategic use of climate litigation as a tool to establish responsibilities and push for a more ambitious mitigation and adaptation agenda, but also as an opportunity to better understand the role of courts in public policy governance. The second part of the article then proceeds to discuss the main findings arising from the various contributions grouped in this section, and concludes by arguing that further research is needed in order to properly understand the role and contribution of climate change litigation to transnational climate governance

Primary breast non-Hodgkin lymphoma. A report of an unusual case

Although lymphomas are generally considered as tumors oflymph nodes about 25-40% arise at extranodal sites. We reporta case of a 60 years old female who developed a right breastB-diffuse large cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2005 treated bychemo/radio-therapy which relapsed at the same breast in 2007and at the other breast in 2010. The patient underwent bothradiologic and nuclear medicine studies.Although lymphomas are generally considered as tumors oflymph nodes about 25-40% arise at extranodal sites. We reporta case of a 60 years old female who developed a right breastB-diffuse large cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2005 treated bychemo/radio-therapy which relapsed at the same breast in 2007and at the other breast in 2010. The patient underwent bothradiologic and nuclear medicine studies

Incidental 18F-FDG PET/CT bilateral breast uptake due to carcinoma

We report a case of 71-year-old female patient, previously treated with chemotherapy and surgical resection of sigmoid tract of the large bowel for adenocarcinoma (pT3N1M0), who underwent a 18F-FDG PET/CT for a suspicious hepatic lesion detected at CT scan during follow-up. 18F-FDG PET/CT showed no abnormal uptake in the liver both at 60 minutes and 120 minutes after injection but revealed a pathological uptake in two breast nodules, (one localized in upper-internal-quadrant of the right breast and the other in the upper-external-quadrant of the left breast). The patient underwent breast MRI, which confirmed the suspicious nature of both lesions; subsequently she underwent a trucut biopsy of both lesions witch demonstrated a bilateral localization of papillary carcinoma (both lesion were classified as pT1c). The patient underwent bilateral mastectomy and the final biopsy confirmed the presence of breast cancer, while bilateral sentinel nodes biopsy showed no lymph-nodes metastases