International regulatory responses to global challenges in marine pollution and climate change

Marine pollution, also referred to as \u27pollution of the marine environment\u27, may occur as a result of different activities. Examples are land-based activities, vessel-related activitiese, dumping at sea, atmospheric and offshore hydrocarbon exploration, seabed mining, and so on. As discussed in Chapter 4, these types of marine pollution are often transboundary in nature and are harmful to human health and marine ecosystem. Similarly, climate change is a global issue involving the interests of all States. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), finalized and published in 2014, has further confirmed the existence of global warming when compared with the previous IPCC reports. It indicates that climate change has negatively affected natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans, and asserts that 280substantial and sustained reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would contribute to the tackling of climate change. 1 International issues need international responses. Both the marine pollution and climate change are issues with international dimensions, and thus require the global regulation by the international community

GA4GH: International policies and standards for data sharing across genomic research and healthcare.

The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) aims to accelerate biomedical advances by enabling the responsible sharing of clinical and genomic data through both harmonized data aggregation and federated approaches. The decreasing cost of genomic sequencing (along with other genome-wide molecular assays) and increasing evidence of its clinical utility will soon drive the generation of sequence data from tens of millions of humans, with increasing levels of diversity. In this perspective, we present the GA4GH strategies for addressing the major challenges of this data revolution. We describe the GA4GH organization, which is fueled by the development efforts of eight Work Streams and informed by the needs of 24 Driver Projects and other key stakeholders. We present the GA4GH suite of secure, interoperable technical standards and policy frameworks and review the current status of standards, their relevance to key domains of research and clinical care, and future plans of GA4GH. Broad international participation in building, adopting, and deploying GA4GH standards and frameworks will catalyze an unprecedented effort in data sharing that will be critical to advancing genomic medicine and ensuring that all populations can access its benefits