A Funny Thing Happened to the Common Heritage on the Way to the Sea

In December 1970, with no dissenting votes, the United Nations General Assembly declared that the resources of the sea bed beyond national jurisdiction are the common heritage of mankind. We dreamed of pooling these resources for the service of mankind, and they include an estimated 2.25 trillion barrels of oil (possibly amounting to half of the total world reserves) and enough nodules containing manganese, cobalt, copper and nickel to supply the world for thousands of years. In 1970, after several years of preliminary backing and filling, the United Nations decided to call a world conference, generally known as the Law of the Sea Conference, for the purpose of implementing this dream. Almost 150 nations met in Caracas, Venezuela, from June 20 to August 29, 1974. The results were amazing

How child‐centred education favours some learners more than others

Debates on how best to educate young children have been raging over the last 100 years—more often fuelled by ideological preferences rather than empirical evidence. To some extent this is hardly surprising given the difficulty of examining pupil progress in a systematic and comparative way. However, the introduction of a new child‐centred curriculum in Wales provides the opportunity to undertake just such an examination. The Foundation Phase curriculum, introduced in 2008, is designed to provide all 3‐ to 7‐year‐olds with a developmental, experiential, play‐based approach to learning. Evidence from a major 3‐year evaluation of this intervention finds that, overall, pupil progress and well‐being is fostered in those settings where the principles of the Foundation Phase have been most closely followed. However, the evidence also suggests that even within these contexts, progress is uneven and that some kinds of children seem to gain more from this approach than others. The ‘losers’ appear to be boys and those living in poverty. Drawing on the theories of Basil Bernstein, the paper explores why this may be the case and examines the relative significance of teacher dispositions, teacher–learner dynamics and the availability of resources. The paper concludes by arguing that these issues will need to be addressed if the benefits of child‐centred approaches are to benefit all

The undebated issue of justice: silent discourses in Dutch flood risk management

Flood risk for all types of flooding is projected to increase based on climate change projections and increases in damage potential. These challenges are likely to aggravate issues of justice in flood risk management (henceforth FRM). Based on a discursive-institutionalist perspective, this paper explores justice in Dutch FRM: how do institutions allocate the responsibilities and costs for FRM for different types of flooding? What are the underlying conceptions of justice? What are the future challenges with regard to climate change? The research revealed that a dichotomy is visible in the Dutch approach to FRM: despite an abundance of rules, regulations and resources spent, flood risk or its management, are only marginally discussed in terms of justice. Despite that the current institutional arrangement has material outcomes that treat particular groups of citizens differently, depending on the type of flooding they are prone to, area they live in (unembanked/embanked) or category of user (e.g. household, industry, farmer). The paper argues that the debate on justice will (re)emerge, since the differences in distributional outcomes are likely to become increasingly uneven as a result of increasing flood risk. The Netherlands should be prepared for this debate by generating the relevant facts and figures. An inclusive debate on the distribution of burdens of FRM could contribute to more effective and legitimate FRM