A Legal Perspective on the Value of Scotland's EU Membership for the Agro Environment

This submission provides legal evidence in support of a positive evaluation of Scotland’s EU membership, in the form of an assessment of the EU’s regime for sustainable agriculture and an assessment of the possible impacts of ‘Brexit’ on the agro environment. Agriculture-focussed Brexit-discussions have emphasised the social and economic worth of the UK and Scotland’s EU membership for the countryside. However, with farmers acting as custodians to around 80% of Scotland’s land surface, their management decisions are of great significance to the state and future of Scotland’s natural heritage. Questions regarding the role of law in fostering and impeding agro environmental stewardship should thus be a part of Scotland’s debates on Brexit and its impacts

Naar een Europees actierecht voor milieuorganisaties? De wenselijkheid van een handhavingsrol voor milieuorganisaties op Europees niveau beoordeeld aan de hand van Nederlandse en Amerikaanse ervaringen

This LLM dissertation was published by the Dutch Association for Environmental Law and was awarded with the Piet Gilhuis for the best dissertation from a Dutch university in environmental law (2012-2013). The thesis argues that environmental NGOs should be awarded private enforcement rights under EU law, based upon a critical comparison of the functioning of and experiences with action rights for environmental NGOs in Dutch and American civil procedure laws respectively

Early Influences on Cardiovascular and Renal Development: the Generation R Study

Cardiovascular disease is common in the general population, affecting 40-60% of adults older than 60 years of age. Many lines of evidence indicate an important role of early life events in influencing later susceptibility to cardiovascular disease. Barker and Osmond demonstrated that areas of Britain with the highest neonatal mortality rates early in the 20th century also tended to have the highest rates of coronary heart disease many decades later.After this, observational studies showed that low birth weight and weight at one year were associated with an increased risk of later cardiovascular disease, especially in subjects who show a postnatal catch-up growth and become obese as adults. The most commonly studied risk factors for cardiovascular disease include blood pressure and total cholesterol levels. Several studies showed small but consistent effects. These observations resulted in the “fetal origins of adult disease” hypothesis. More recently, this hypothesis has been transformed to a more general “developmental plasticity hypothesis”, which suggests that an organism may develop in various ways, depending on the particular environment or setting. In this process, adverse environmental exposures in fetal and early postnatal life lead to adaptations that permanently program the fetus’ structure, physiology and metabolism. These adaptations may be beneficial in the short term but have adverse consequences at birth and in postnatal life, leading to both low birth weight and cardiovascular disease in adulthood. Thus, cardiovascular disease may at least partly originate in early fetal life

Environmental Protection and Law

Environmental protection has been held to be a ‘wall breaker’ for the EU, as already in the 1970s it pushed the EU project beyond its economic foundations to include broader concerns of human wellbeing. Since then, over 200 secondary legislative instruments on a wide range of environmental topics have been adopted. Additionally, the EU has increasingly integrated environmental considerations into other areas of EU law. It is estimated that nowadays 70-80% of national environmental legislation in the Member States is of EU origin. This chapter will first briefly introduce the fundamental elements of EU environmental law (and its basis in the Treaties). It will then discuss three different aspects of EU environmental regulation, which have made significant contributions to environmental protection in the UK. Against this backdrop, it will discuss the implications of Brexit for environmental protection in the UK and Scotland, concluding that despite risks of lowering protection levels, there are also opportunities for more ambitious approaches and for the recognition of local needs

Synthesis Report – National Desk Studies : Capacity-building to promote integrated implementation of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the Convention on Biological Diversity at the national level

This report provides a synthesis of the desk studies prepared by nine pilot countries(Belarus, Burkina Faso, China,Ecuador, Malaysia, Malawi, Mexico, Republic of Moldova, Uganda)within the framework of the project ‘Capacity-building to promote integrated implementation of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the Convention on Biological Diversity at the national level’. The project aims to strengthen the capacity of the nine pilot countries to develop and test practical measures to promote the integrated implementation of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and to mainstream biosafety into national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs) and other sectoral and cross-sectoral legislation, policies and institutional frameworks. In their national desk study, each pilot country provides an overview of the national legal, policy and institutional framework relevant to biosafety and an analysis of the extent to which these frameworks address biosafety. The desk studies also provide an analysis of lessons learnt, remaining gaps, as well as recommendations to improve the mainstreaming of biosafety in existing frameworks. The project was implemented from February to December 2016 with the financial support of the Government of Japan, through the Japan Biodiversity Fund

Study for the European Commission on 'Possible Ways to Address Digital Sequence Information –Legal and Policy Aspects' : Consultancy project conducted for the European Commission: ENV.F.3/SER/2019/6175145

In 2016, the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity ('CBD') recognised for the first time the relevance of, and potential issues surrounding, digital sequence information on genetic resources ('DSI') for the achievement of the CBD's three objectives: namely, the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components and, notably, the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources. In light of the need for a coordinated and non-duplicative approach, the issue was simultaneously raised by the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meetings of the Parties ('COP-MOP') to the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing ('the Nagoya Protocol'). An Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group (AHTEG) was established and multiple studies have been undertaken or are currently being conducted to shed light on the highly technical and complex issue of how DSI relates to the scope and workings of the international regime on access and benefit-sharing ('ABS). DSI has been debated during the 2018 COP and COP-MOP, and it is expected that DSI will remain a critical topic at the CBD COP15 as well as in other international fora. Specifically, DSI is also being discussed under the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework (PIP Framework) of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) as well as current UN negotiations for a legally binding instrument on marine biodiversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ)

Optimizing quality of life in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a devastating, progressive and ultimately fatal lung disease. The combination of poor prognosis, uncertainty of disease course and severe symptom burden heavily impacts patients' and their families' quality of life. Though new antifibrotic drugs have been shown to decrease disease progression, the effect on health-related quality of life (HRQOL) has not been convincingly demonstrated. In a relentless disease such as IPF, striving to optimize HRQOL should complement the endeavour to prolong life. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of interventions improving symptoms and functionality for patients with IPF, and research focusing on symptom improvement, and assessing and optimizing HRQOL, is limited. This review summarizes the most recent insights into measuring and improving quality of life for patients with IPF, and discusses challenges in the management of this devastating disease. Moreover, we postulate a new model for continuous care in IPF - 'the ABCDE of IPF care': Assessing patients' needs; Backing patients by giving information and support; delivering Comfort care by focusing on treating symptoms and taking into account Comorbidities; striving to prolong life by Disease modification; helping and preparing patients and their caregivers for the eventual End-of-life events that are likely to occur