Narrowing the Accountability Gap: Toward a New Foreign Investor Accountability Mechanism

An ever-increasing number of standards, guidelines, principles, norms, and best practices have been adopted to address the environmental and social impacts of multinational enterprises (MNEs). This increase in standards and norms corresponds to a rise in MNE sensitivity to the environmental and social impacts that their activities have on local communities in developing countries. These standards and norms are considered voluntary by definition because they are typically not state-sponsored or the product of public regulation. They fill a normative gap located between the state-centered focus of international law and the often inadequate or unenforced standards of the developing country hosts for MNE activities, but relatively little attention has been paid to mechanisms for ensuring compliance with them. This article proposes a new Foreign Investor Accountability Mechanism (“the Mechanism”). The Mechanism will narrow the accountability gap by providing communities affected by foreign investment projects with an avenue for voicing their concerns and for holding MNEs accountable both to local and national laws that may apply. The Mechanism will also allow affected communities to enforce the various promises that MNEs make during project design, approval, and preconstruction phases, or to gain financing or the ‘social license to operate.’ These promises may include: commitments to follow international, industry-wide, or sectoral standards and norms; commitments made as part of corporate-wide social and environmental policies; and project-specific commitments made to secure host government approval or financing from financial institutions, such as the International Finance Corporation, export credit agencies, or private commercial banks

Narrowing the Accountability Gap: Toward a New Foreign Investor Accountability Mechanism

An ever-increasing number of standards, guidelines, principles, norms, and best practices have been adopted to address the environmental and social impacts of multinational enterprises (MNEs). This increase in standards and norms corresponds to a rise in MNE sensitivity to the environmental and social impacts that their activities have on local communities in developing countries. These standards and norms are considered voluntary by definition because they are typically not state-sponsored or the product of public regulation. They fill a normative gap located between the state-centered focus of international law and the often inadequate or unenforced standards of the developing country hosts for MNE activities, but relatively little attention has been paid to mechanisms for ensuring compliance with them. This article proposes a new Foreign Investor Accountability Mechanism (“the Mechanism”). The Mechanism will narrow the accountability gap by providing communities affected by foreign investment projects with an avenue for voicing their concerns and for holding MNEs accountable both to local and national laws that may apply. The Mechanism will also allow affected communities to enforce the various promises that MNEs make during project design, approval, and preconstruction phases, or to gain financing or the ‘social license to operate.’ These promises may include: commitments to follow international, industry-wide, or sectoral standards and norms; commitments made as part of corporate-wide social and environmental policies; and project-specific commitments made to secure host government approval or financing from financial institutions, such as the International Finance Corporation, export credit agencies, or private commercial banks

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Human Rights Litigation Under the ATCA as a Proxy For Environmental Claims

Suing corporations in U.S. courts for environmental harms abroad may soon be possible under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). Mhile several cases have been brought alleging environmental torts under the ATCA, no case has yet yielded corporate liability. Until courts accept environmental principles as part of the law of nations, and therefore actionable under the ATCA, plaintiffs should use remedies available for human rights claims as proxies for their environmental claims. Because corporate international environmental law violations are frequently linked to human rights abuses, well-established human rights causes of action should be used to usher in the emerging justiciability of environmental claims

The trehalose glycolipid C18Brar promotes antibody and T-cell immune responses to Mannheimia haemolytica and Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae whole cell antigens in sheep

Bronchopneumonia is a common respiratory disease in livestock. Mannheimia haemolytica is considered the main causative pathogen leading to lung damage in sheep, with Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae and ParaInfluenza virus type 3, combined with adverse physical and physiological stress, being predisposing factors. A balance of humoral and cellular immunity is thought to be important for protection against developing respiratory disease. In the current study, we compared the ability of the trehalose glycolipid adjuvant C18Brar (C18-alkylated brartemicin analogue) and three commercially available adjuvant systems i.e., Quil-A, Emulsigen-D, and a combination of Quil-A and aluminium hydroxide gel, to stimulate antibody and cellular immune responses to antigens from inactivated whole cells of M. haemolytica and M. ovipneumoniae in sheep. C18Brar and Emulsigen-D induced the strongest antigen-specific antibody responses to both M. haemolytica and M. ovipneumoniae, while C18Brar and Quil-A promoted the strongest antigen-specific IL-17A responses. The expression of genes with known immune functions was determined in antigen-stimulated blood cultures using Nanostring nCounter technology. The expression levels of CD40, IL22, TGFB1, and IL2RA were upregulated in antigen-stimulated blood cultures from animals vaccinated with C18Brar, which is consistent with T-cell activation. Collectively, the results demonstrate that C18Brar can promote both antibody and cellular responses, notably Th17 immune responses in a ruminant species