Navigating the Confluence: Sources of Reconciliation Flowing Between the Human Right to Water and Economic Efficiency

The purpose of this research is to identify the confluence of the law and economics disciplines, using these distinct channels of scholarship not as an empirical vessel to determine the “value” or “valueless” nature of water, but rather as a means to reconcile externalities among interested parties and to identify management strategies that embrace sentiments of economic efficiency throughout the arena of global hydrocommerce. The various perspectives on water, particularly with regards to an increasing global population and demand for freshwater, elicits an intricate mosaic of tensions concerning the availability, accessibility, provision, and protection of this fundamental natural resource. Billions of individuals around the world lack access to basic water and sanitation services. Despite the prevalence of these atrocities, access to water is both an individual human right and necessary for human survival. The legal basis for the human right to water, in terms of availability, quality, and accessibility, was adopted by the U.N. in its General Comment No. 15. Despite recognition by the U.N., more than 1.1 billion people do not have sufficient access to clean water, while 2.6 billion people have no provision for sanitation. Against this tragic and inexcusable backdrop, the public sector either lacks the financial resources to provide water or continues to operate water distribution schemes with undesirable inefficiency. From a pragmatic standpoint—and to ensure that citizens have access to clean water—there exist circumstances, both in reality and in the text of the General Comment, whereupon governments should be compelled, or at least be encouraged, to solicit capital investment from the private sector in order to construct adequate water infrastructure and manage water distribution services. Researchers estimate that over the next twenty years almost $22 trillion (USD) will be necessary to fully modernize global water delivery and wastewater systems. Water scarcity, an individual’s lack of access to clean water, arises due to economic and physical constraints, while being influenced by managerial, institutional, and political factors. At its core, the primary challenge for nations concerning their respective water distribution schemes is a lack of adequate financial resources. In developing countries, an estimated ninety-seven percent of all water distribution is managed by public-sector suppliers. The inept realities concerning these water distribution systems in developing countries, and the fact that over a billion people still lack access to this essential resource, suggests that governments retain at least some responsibility in the persistence of the global water crisis. Reconciliation is the next step in the human right to water argument—from its theoretical origins to its pragmatic implementation—and may be realized through a law and economics analysis in support of private-sector participation in the delivery of water and funding for the provision of adequate infrastructure. Much like distinct tributaries to a mighty river, the legal and economic disciplines maintain differences in methodology, scientific approach, and objectives; but as these disciplines converge, their tributaries form the river’s main stem, with potential to influence an entire watershed of jurisprudence

Living Outside the Law: How the Informal Economy Frustrates Enforcement of the Human Rights Regime for Billions of the World\u27s Most Marginalized Citizens

Failures to establish coherent legal regimes and workable market systems, often in developing countries and those transitioning from non-market economies, have led to thriving informal economies. In such, the costs are simply lower for the individual to remain outside of the law. By analyzing the informal phenomenon, its consequences, and effects upon many of the most important human rights, it is demonstrated that virtually the entire human rights corpus is frustrated by the idea of people living outside of the law. When people do not participate in the formal legal system in any meaningful way and have no real legal protections, human rights guarantees become little more than unfulfilled promises

Effects of physicochemical properties and macrohabitat on the foraging ecology and condition of the centrarchid assemblage of the Atchafalaya River Basin, Louisiana

The Atchafalaya River Basin (ARB), Louisiana supports a diverse centrarchid assemblage, characterized by abundant populations of largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides, black crappie Pomoxis nigromaculatus, warmouth Lepomis gulosus, bluegill Lepomis macrochirus, redspotted sunfish Lepomis miniatus, longear sunfish Lepomis megalotis and redear sunfish Lepomis microlophus. This dynamic floodplain ecosystem is comprised of a mosaic of macrohabitats, including natural bayous, shallow lakes, dead-end and open pipeline canals. I conducted an extensive feeding ecology study to determine the influence of these macrohabitats on foraging activity through stomach content and stable isotope analyses. I collected 2,036 centrarchids with electrofishing efforts in the summers of 2011 and 2012. Canonical correspondence analysis of prey items revealed evidence of resource partitioning within the assemblage, as suggested by limited dietary overlap and significant separation of diets among the seven species (F = 8.6516, P = 0.01). Multivariate analysis of stable nitrogen (δ15N) isotopes revealed evidence of trophic specialization (F = 24.29, P = 0.0001) within the assemblage, despite moderate overlap in foraging habitat suggested by carbon (δ13C) signatures (F = 2.76, P = 0.0147). Results of the generalized linear mixed model (F = 1.06, P = 0.3907) and multivariate analyses of stable isotopes (P = 0.86) indicated that macrohabitat did not have an overall effect on diets or isotope values. Traditional dietary indices, such as index of relative importance values, indicated specialization in prey preference for each species, suggesting a limited degree of competition between centrarchids. In summary, despite physicochemical differences among macrohabitats, these results suggest that prey selection was species specific and independent of macrohabitat type.Condition (relative weight) was also investigated to discern the potential influence of macrohabitat and physicochemical properties. Associations were species specific, indicating disparate manners of habitat utilization that may influence niche separation, although parameters such as dissolved oxygen differential were positively associated with multiple species. Although water quality and physical habitat characteristics differed among macrohabitats, trends in centrarchid condition suggest that while habitats within the ecosystem differ regarding their overall suitability as sunfish foraging habitat, all of the centrarchid species are generally able to flourish within the permanent waterbodies of the ARB floodplain

Collaboration and Reflexivity in Wildland Fire Risk Governance in the Western United States

This dissertation presents both quantitative and qualitative analysis on different aspects of wildland fire risk management in the western United States. Each of these chapters is framed by and examines the sociological concept of reflexivity, which describes a process of individual and/or collective reflection. This reflexivity is needed to identify and enact alternative management strategies that contend with the expected increases in the number and severity of wildland fires in the future due to the combined effects of even-aged forest growth after years of timber extraction, a legacy of fire suppression, climate change, and increasing human development in the wildland-urban interface. The first chapter in this dissertation is a general technical report that outlines theories and methods about the social dynamics of wildland fire risk management. The second chapter is a qualitative analysis of twenty semi-structured interviews conducted with members of a wildland fire management social network in northcentral Washington. In these interviews, participants described both opportunities and barriers to collaboration. The third chapter of this dissertation is a mixed-methods analysis of a proposal to fund restoration of northern Arizona ponderosa pine forests through registered carbon offsets. Results demonstrate potential carbon benefits from restoration but also illuminate administrative, technical, and theoretical barriers to registering these benefits as carbon offsets. And finally, the fourth chapter is an autoethnographic essay. These findings are important since wildland fire management will need to be even more collaborative in the future due to expected increases in the number and severity of wildland fires, which will also exacerbate the need for increased funding for forest restoration. Moreover, these results speak to the complex and contested nature of human values at risk in these fire-prone landscapes, which will also need to be incorporated into wildland fire risk management in order to achieve better outcomes in the face of an uncertain future

Detection of malicious content in JSON structured data using multiple concurrent anomaly detection methods

Web applications and Web services often use a data format known as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) to exchange information. An attacker can tamper with these exchanges to cause the Web service or application to malfunction in a way that is detrimental to the interests of the owners of the Web application or service. Many such applications or services are involved in processes critical to safety or are vital to business interests. Unfortunately, such critical applications cannot always be relied upon to validate the data sent to them. This creates a need for protection external to the applications themselves. This need has been addressed by researchers in other contexts, but there has been little specific focus on JSON and the use of multiple concurrent anomaly detection methods. Some previously proposed solutions involved the detection of known signatures of attacks, but this reduces the chance that new attacks will be recognized. To increase the ability to detect newly created attacks, this research focuses on anomaly detection using general characteristics, rather than the recognition of specific attacks. The detection method this research employs is the Random Forest ensemble algorithm. Metrics such as Shannon entropy, n-gram analysis, JSON structure similarity, character string length, and JSON attribute values are utilized. A goal of this research was the detection of attacks at a rate at least better than chance expectation. This goal was met and exceeded as experimental results using simulated attacks showed considerably better performance. Furthermore, a mathematical model of the interaction of classifier configuration parameters was developed

Come and “Take” It: Whooping Cranes, Texas Water Rights, Endangered Species Act Liability, and Reconciling Ecological Scientific Testimony Within the Context of Proximate Causation

Tension between science and the law is a pervading feature of Endangered Species Act (ESA) jurisprudence. Incorporating the scientific discipline of ecology within the legal landscape presents distinct challenges, particularly in comparison with more traditional laboratory sciences. Within the realm of Endangered Species Act liability, the intricacies of nature exacerbate already complicated links of causation, challenging the ability to prove violations of the “take” prohibition. Because uncertainties permeate scientists’ ability to understand complex ecosystem processes, courts should rely on the overarching practicality of common law principles when reviewing ecological testimony. When evaluating claims that allege violations of the “take” prohibition, the proximate causation standard operates as a threshold to prevent assigning liability to a party or entity that otherwise may be just one insignificant link in an attenuated ecological chain. The proximate causation standard advanced by the Supreme Court in Babbitt v. Sweet Home demonstrates the practicality of maintaining established legal principles, specifically as a limit to relying on scientific testimony as a means of proving causation. More recently, the reasoning in Aransas Project v. Shaw, where an environmental group alleged that the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality caused the “take” of endangered whooping cranes,illustrates the challenges associated with proving the cause of ecological injuries. Although the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas assigned ESA liability based on scientific testimony, the Fifth Circuit reversed the lower court because this attenuated chain of causation lacked the required proximate cause analysis. In the context of ESA liability, where judges must understand complex ecosystem processes, this dichotomy reflects the reliability of proximate causation as a foundation to ensure equitable results

Living Outside the Law: How the Informal Economy Frustrates Enforcement of the Human Rights Regime for Billions of the World\u27s Most Marginalized Citizens

Failures to establish coherent legal regimes and workable market systems, often in developing countries and those transitioning from non-market economies, have led to thriving informal economies. In such, the costs are simply lower for the individual to remain outside of the law. By analyzing the informal phenomenon, its consequences, and effects upon many of the most important human rights, it is demonstrated that virtually the entire human rights corpus is frustrated by the idea of people living outside of the law. When people do not participate in the formal legal system in any meaningful way and have no real legal protections, human rights guarantees become little more than unfulfilled promises

An Analysis of Retail Sales in Micropolitan Areas in the Year 2000

In this paper retail sales will be used to help understand the consumer spending habits of micropolitan areas in the year 2000. The year 2000 was a big year for American consumers, it was at the turn of the century, some said that the world was ending; others said it was just the begging of a new technological era. This paper will take a look at many factors that could have affected the retail sales (i.e. consumer spending) in micropolitan areas, as well as be able to help explain the consumer confidence in the year 2000. Areas such as population growth, wages, sales tax, and poverty among many other things will help explain their effects on consumer spending. This paper will first take a look at what is consumer spending and consumer confidence, and then lead into a statistical model with multiple tests in order to analyze the numbers behind consumer spending in this year. Ordinary least squares regression will be used to help explain statistically what effected retail sales in the year 2000. The data used is from the US Census Bureau, and includes 554 micropolitan areas in the lower 48 states of America. Most studies previously conducted only analyze America as a whole of Metropolitan areas, this study is significant in finding effects on retail sales in micropolitan areas only. This study was rather inconclusive to the existing data. The model found that only sales tax and national amenity scale were significant to the study. In this paper we find that micropolitan areas have a hard time being measured based off retail sales alone. I would recommend further studies be conducted, however some findings in this model do exist