Deliberation and Legitimacy in Transnational Governance: The Case of Environmental Impact Assessments

This paper begins by recognising that transnational environmental governance structures have been the subject of criticism as lacking democratic legitimacy. The author suggests, however, that instead of using the traditional liberal view of democracy where decisions are made by majority agreement, deliberative democracy may provide a solution. This approach focuses not on the aggregation of fixed interests within a given territory but on a continual process of dialogue between decisionmakers and all those affected, a process of mutual justification by the exchange of reasons. The author examines the possible application of this theory, using environmental impact assessments carried out pursuant to environmental conventions as an example of the theory in practice. The author shows how a deliberative democratic approach brings a range of advantages to decisionmaking concerning crossborder environmental harm, concluding that this approach has the potential to enhance the legitimacy of environmental decisionmaking beyond the state

Process and Reconciliation: Integrating the Duty to Consult with Environmental Assessment

As the duty to consult Aboriginal peoples is operationalized within the frameworks of government decision making, the relevant agencies are increasingly turning to environmental assessment (EA) processes as one of the principal vehicles for carrying out those consultations. This article explores the practical and theoretical dimensions of using EA processes to implement the duty to consult and accommodate. The relationship between EA and the duty to consult has arisen in a number of cases and a clear picture is emerging of the steps that agencies conducting EAs must carry out in order to discharge their constitutional obligations to Aboriginal peoples. The article examines the implementation of the duty to consult through various stages of EA processes, identifying the EA practices that are best able to satisfy the legal requirements and the aspirations of the duty to consult, as well as to identify areas that are likely to present challenges moving forward. The article also considers a broader approach to EA that is more likely to contribute to the overarching goal of reconciliation, arguing that greater attention must be paid to the deliberative and justificatory qualities of EA

Process and Reconciliation: Integrating the Duty to Consult with Environmental Assessment

As the duty to consult Aboriginal peoples becomes operationalized within the frameworks of government decision-making, the agencies responsible for these decisions are increasingly turning to environmental assessment (EA) processes as one of the principal vehicles for carrying out those consultations. This article explores the practical and theoretical dimensions of using EA processes to implement the duties to consult and accommodate. The relationship between EA and the duty to consult has arisen in a number of cases and a clear picture is emerging of the steps that agencies conducting EAs must carry out in order to discharge their constitutional obligations to Aboriginal peoples. The paper examines the implementation of the duty to consult through various stages of the EA processes, identifying the EA practices that are best able to satisfy the legal requirements and the aspirations of the duty to consult, as well as to identify areas that are likely to present challenges moving forward. The paper also considers the broader approach to EA that is more likely to contribute to the overarching goal of reconciliation. Here the central claim is that greater attention must be paid to the deliberative and justificatory qualities of EA

Environmental Cooperation in the (Partially) Disaggregated State: Lessons from the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

On August 20 and 21, 2007, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, US President George W. Bush, and Mexican President Felipe Calder6n met in Montebello, Quebec to discuss the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America ( SPP ), a trilateral initiative that has as its objective enhanced regulatory cooperation between the three North American states in order to improve continental security and regional competitiveness. Despite being described in prosaic terms by government officials and industry supporters as a primarily technical exercise, the SPP has attracted trenchant criticism across the political spectrum. The SPP has been described variously as integration by stealth, the creation of a North American European Union with none of the safeguards on the environment and social rights, and (most floridly) as a [u]nion that will bury America under more than 100 million, mostly poor Mexicans, and tens of millions of Canadians, used to their lavish social welfare benefits and socialized medicine. 3 Still others have dismissed the SPP altogether as a disappointing much ado about nothing, noting that it is little more than a grocery list of bureaucratic minutiae that ignores the pressing trade and social imperatives affecting the region. And so opens another front in the fight over globalization. From a governance perspective, the SPP appears to adopt on a grand scale what international legal and international relations scholars have identified as a trend towards international regulation through informal arrangements negotiated directly by domestic agencies with their foreign counterparts. In this regard, Anne-Marie Slaughter has written extensively about a new world order based on overlapping networks of regulators who seek to coordinate transnational activity and achieve common goals through direct agency-to-agency interactions. In some cases, the form of cooperation is quite minimal, such as sharing information on best regulatory practices or extending notice of regulatory activities to regulators in potentially impacted jurisdictions. However, informal cooperation efforts may evolve into more substantively prescriptive arrangements, such as regulatory harmonization, mutual recognition arrangements, and cooperative enforcement mechanisms. What distinguishes these governance structures from traditional forms of international cooperation is that network arrangements are not negotiated through central agencies such as foreign affairs departments, nor do they revolve around a formally binding treaty. Instead, cooperating regulators directly interact with one another with a view to developing shared guidelines or frameworks for cooperation to institutionalize their cooperative efforts. To use Professor Slaughter\u27s phrase, the state as a relevant international actor is increasingly disaggregating into its separate, functionally distinct parts, as opposed to operating as a single, indivisible unit. [CONT

Climate Law and Policy in North America: Prospects for Regionalism

This Article surveys the current bilateral and trilateral initiatives aimed at GHG emission reductions in North America with a view to assessing the nature and potential role of regional climate change law and policy within a broader global framework. In this context, by regional cooperation, we mean cooperation organized on a North American scale. In pursuit of this objective, this Article seeks to identify, first, how climate change mitigation may be regulated usefully on a regional scale, and second, the governance structures and institutions that may be drawn upon to create and implement regional cooperation on climate change. Particular consideration is also given to the capacity of regional approaches to climate change cooperation to meet the different climate change objectives that Mexico has identified, given the less developed state of its economy

Designing Procedural Mechanisms for the Governance of Solar Radiation Management Field Experiments: Workshop Report

The unexpected ocean fertilization experiment off the west coast of Canada in 2012 highlights the reality that non-governmental actors can already initiate small- to medium-scale environmental experiments and solar radiation management (SRM) field experiments with no government funding or approval. Without careful consideration and development of a governance framework for these types of experimentation, governments could be caught out having to respond ad hoc to situations driven by non-governmental actors. This two-day workshop considered and evaluated governance mechanisms that may be useful for managing proposed SRM field experiments. Two specific procedural mechanisms were under consideration: environmental impact assessments and research registries. To ensure discussions were as realistic as possible, participants used a set of recently published SRM field experiment proposals as hypothetical examples when considering and evaluating both mechanisms. The workshop operated under the Chatham House Rule, and no attempts were made to forge consensus positions or to generate policy recommendations. Rather, this workshop was exploratory in nature, with discussions ranging widely along with personal opinions on some topics

Eye-closure & the retrieval of item-specific information in recognition memory

© 2019 Elsevier Inc. Two experiments investigated the effect of eye-closure on visual and auditory memory under conditions based on the retrieval of item-specific information. Experiment 1 investigated visual recognition memory for studied, perceptually similar and unrelated items. It was found that intermittent eye-closure increased memory for studied items and decreased memory for related items. This finding was reflected by enhanced item-specific and reduced gist memory. Experiment 2 used the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm to assess auditory recognition memory for studied, related and unrelated words that had (vs. had not) been accompanied by pictures during encoding. Pictures but not eye-closure produced a picture superiority effect by enhancing memory for studied items. False memory was reduced by pictures but not eye-closure. Methodological and theoretical considerations are discussed in relation to existing explanations of eye-closure and retrieval strategies