Brexit and Environmental Law: the layers of the onion

Dans le cadre des saisons croisées France-Afrique du Sud, Shamil Jeppie et Mauro Nobili, chercheurs en poste à l'université de Cape Town et membre de l'équipe du Projet Manuscrits de Tombouctou, seront accueillis au moins de juin à paris au CERI de Sciences-Po et au laboratoire CEMAF de l'Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. Ils étudieront un certain nombre de documents manuscrits de Tombouctou et donneront deux séminaires aux dates suivantes: - Vendredi 14 juin à 12h, CERI, 56 rue Jacob: « ..

Intergrated Water Resources Management and Reform of Flood Risk Management in England

This analysis relates the global environmental imperative of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) to the policies and regulatory approaches underlying flood risk management in England. Specifically, the discussion engages with selected points of debate between the House of Commons, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and the Government, arising from the Committee’s 2016 Report on Future Flood Prevention. The Committee and the Government took markedly different positions on the ‘new governance model’ for flood risk management (proposed by the Committee) and the potential for greater use of ‘natural flood management’. This debate is reviewed and contrasted with the positions that might have been reached by applying IWRM to these issues. The opinion offered is that the neglect of water integration is a matter of concern. It is proposed that there should be a duty to have regard to IWRM in water policy and decision-making, and a review of the highly fragmented state of water legislation to identify the scope that exists for greater integration

Brexit and the United Kingdom Water Environment

This paper notes the UK’s impending departure from the European Union, following the Brexit Referendum in 2016, and investigates the implications of this for environmental laws generally and, more particularly, for water protection legislation. At the time of writing, the UK Government’s Brexit White Paper is the focus of attention, setting out plans to repeal the European Communities Act 1972 and to replace existing EU law by corresponding national legislation. Taking the EU Water Framework Directive as a case study, the later part of the paper examines the inherent difficulties in this strategy in the particular context of water protection. It is suggested that there are major difficulties in finding national law counterparts for many of the EU obligations. Moreover, the exercise of trying to address environmental quality concerns through a purely national framework neglects the essentially transboundary character of many environmental problems and the need for a coordinated supra-national response

Going with the Flow: Integrated Water Resources Management, the EU Water Framework Directive and Ecological Flows

This paper seeks to relate broad structural themes in water regulation to the practicalities of imposing legal measures to protect aquatic ecosystems. Specifically, a contrast is drawn between the global imperative of Integrated Water Resources Management and the sectoral (issue-by-issue) approach to water regulation that has traditionally prevailed in both regional and national legislation. The intuitive attractions of ‘integration’ are contrasted with the challenge of interrelating the diverse purposes for which water legislation is adopted, both for human needs and for ecological purposes. These challenges are well illustrated in the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) which claims to adopt an ‘integrated’ approach, is actually concerned with water quality, largely to the exclusion of other water-related concerns. Insofar as the Directive does seek to secure integration between water quality and water quantity concerns in surface water this is only done in a secondary or incidental way. Water flow becomes relevant only where specified environmental objectives under the Directive are not being met. The legally contingent status of flow has been bolstered markedly by recent guidance under the WFD Common Implementation Strategy on Ecological Flows. The significance of this guidance is discussed and related to the implementation challenges that it raises. In relation to the UK, and particularly England, it is argued that the response to addressing water flow issues arising under the WFD had been dilatory and inadequate. Concluding observations reflect on the global, regional and national challenges for integration of water legislation as they have been illustrated by the discussion of regulating for ecological water flows

Noise Induced Hearing Loss in Children: Preventing the Silent Epidemic

Noise-induced hearing loss and related tinnitus are often unrecognized problems, especially in non-occupational settings. Research indicates that increasing numbers of children and adolescents have or are acquiring noise induced hearing losses. Noise induced hearing loss can almost completely be prevented with simple precautionary measures. Educational programs rarely exist outside of those mandated in occupational settings. Health Communication theory can be applied to hearing health for developing effective loss prevention programs. Dangerous Decibels is one example of an effective multi-disciplinary effort to develop and disseminated prevention strategies