Climate Change and the Right to Development. Himalayan Glacial Melting and the Future of Development on the Tibetan Plateau

human development, climate change

Securing Greater Social Accountability in Natural Resource Management

The world is experiencing a historic convergence of increasing demand for natural resources from emerging economies, prices at record levels across various commodity groups, a downward trend in resource supply, serious trends of ecological instability, and the rise of inequality between those who develop and profit from such resources and the communities that host them. As the world convenes in 2012 for the Rio+20 Earth Summit and marks 50 years since the passage of the UN Declaration on Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources, natural resources are once again changing the geopolitical landscape of countries around the world. Three and a half billion people?half of the global population?live in 56 resource-rich and resource-dependent developing countries, representing less than one third of the 193 members of the UN. (?)Securing Greater Social Accountability in Natural Resource Management

Locating nature: Making and unmaking international law

This article explores the relationship between international law and the natural environment. We contend that international environmental law and general international law are structured in ways that systemically reinforce ecological harm. Through exploring the cultural milieu from which international environmental law emerged, we argue it produced an impoverished understanding of nature that is incapable of responding adequately to ecological crises. We maintain that environmental issues should not be confined to a disciplinary specialization because humanity\u27s relationship with nature has been central to making international law. Foundational concepts such as sovereignty, development, property, economy, human rights, and so on, have evolved through understanding nature in ways that are unsuited to perceiving or observing ecological limits. International law primarily sees nature as a resource for wealth generation to enable societies to continually develop, and environmental degradation is treated as an economic externality to be managed by special regimes. Through tracing the co-evolution of these assumptions about nature alongside seminal disciplinary concepts, it becomes evident that such understandings are central to shaping international law and that the discipline helps universalize and normalize them. By comprehending more broadly the relationship between nature and international law, it is possible to see beyond law\u27s potential to correct environmental harm and identify the disciplinary role in driving ecological degradation. Venturing beyond the purview of international environmental lawyers, this article considers the role of all international lawyers in augmenting and mitigating ecological crises. It concludes that disciplinary solutions to environmental problems require radical departures from existing disciplinary tenets, necessitating new formulations that encapsulate rich and diverse understandings of nature. © 2014 Foundation of the Leiden Journal of International Law

Solar aid

Rarely has the world seen the intensity and severity of change being experienced today in the Middle East. Among the record 60 million forcibly displaced people today around the world (the first time this level has been reached since World War II), more than 20 million are now suffering as refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and forced migrants in the Middle East. This includes approximately eight million IDPs in Syria and four million Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Jordan, two million IDPs in Iraq, and large and growing numbers in Yemen. The level of forced displacement is higher than ever before, re-shaping the nature of development challenges in the region, including challenges of energy security