The ecological transition needs a shift in the definition of the role of the state from a market-correcting to a market-steering actor. This transformation inevitably reverberates within private law, whose institutions participate in distributing the social and economic burdens of sustainability policies. Focusing on the housing sector as a paradigmatic site of tension between environmental imperatives and social justice, the paper examines how measures aimed at improving the energy performance of buildings and promoting urban greening can generate regressive distributive effects, including rising housing costs, green gentrification, and heightened risks of indebtedness and displacement for vulnerable groups. Against this background, the paper argues that private law must be reconceptualised as a tool capable of mitigating these structural inequities.
Ahmad Shabib, Munjed A. Maraqa, Fereidoun Rezanezhad
et al.
Abstract The simultaneous presence of pharmaceutical compounds (PCs) and microplastics (MPs) in soil environments poses a significant yet understudied environmental challenge with critical implications for soil health, agricultural sustainability, and human exposure pathways. Despite widespread co-contamination through overlapping input pathways, current risk assessment frameworks treat these contaminants independently, potentially underestimating combined environmental risks. This review was conducted to map research trends and to synthesize current knowledge on PC-MP interactions specifically in soil environments, examining their individual behaviors, interaction mechanisms, and combined effects on soil processes and biological activities. Agricultural soils serve as major reservoirs where PCs exhibit variable persistence ranging from days to years, while MPs alter key soil properties, including water retention and aggregation patterns. While aquatic studies demonstrate that MPs transport PCs via adsorption and co-transport processes, terrestrial research remains limited, with complex and sometimes conflicting results regarding MP influence on PC dissipation rates. Bibliometric analysis revealed that soil-specific studies represent only 19% of PC-MP interaction research, with significant geographic disparities in scientific attention, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions facing acute contamination risks. Critical methodological limitations, including over-reliance on simplified experimental systems, short exposure durations, and single-PC focus, hinder understanding of real-world behavior. Key research priorities include standardized analytical protocols, environmentally relevant exposure scenarios, long-term field studies, and mechanistic exploration across diverse soil types and climatic conditions. Addressing this escalating co-contamination issue requires interdisciplinary efforts to develop integrated risk assessment frameworks and evidence-based policies that protect soil health and ensure agricultural sustainability globally.
Kevin Maebe, Emma Cartuyvels, Frederik Gerits
et al.
Abstract Pollinator decline, driven by various factors such as land use changes, pesticide use, and climate change, poses serious environmental and economic risks, though the specific impacts remain unclear. In response, the European Parliament's Nature Restoration Law (NRL) mandates restoration initiatives and development of standardised pollinator monitoring schemes to determine changes in their abundance. This study evaluates six monitoring techniques for sampling two important pollinator groups, wild bees and hoverflies, as a preparation for the development of a standardised pollinator monitoring scheme in Flanders, northern Belgium (FL‐PoMS). The SPRING Minimum Viable Scheme (MVS), part of the EU Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (EU‐PoMS), served as a baseline, focusing on transect walks and pan traps, while additional protocols were explored to improve sampling performance. We tested these methods at three sites in Flanders (Belgium), assessing their effectiveness in measuring species richness and abundance, cost efficiency and ease of use by volunteers. Pan traps proved most effective for determining bee diversity, and a combined approach of pan traps and transect walks for hoverflies. Factors such as the use of UV‐reflectance, trap installation height and operational time significantly influenced species capture rates. Although transect surveys were generally cheaper, they require expert taxonomic skills in the field. In contrast, pan traps can be deployed by volunteers making them a more cost‐effective option. Furthermore, seasonal variation in pollinator diversity underscores the importance of monitoring throughout the field season. Practical implication. Our findings support the use of a combined approach of pan traps and transect walks to effectively monitor pollinator diversity, especially for bees and hoverflies. However, due to the expertise required, transects are less suitable for large‐scale, volunteer‐based monitoring programmes for these groups. Aligning FL‐PoMS with EU‐PoMS should enable Flanders to evaluate its regional conservation goals and contribute to broader European pollinator monitoring and conservation efforts.
There is increasing agreement among scientists and policy makers that we need transformative change, change at the deepest levels of society, to become sustainable. There is also increasing attention for politics, power relations and justice in studying and governing sustainability transitions. This attention has however largely been limited to human politics, power relations and justice, even though other animals are also stakeholders in these transitions. This article focuses on the inclusion of nonhuman animals in the food system transition in the Netherlands. Through an embodied critical discourse analysis of academic papers and policy texts we show that there is a lack of inclusion of other animals as stakeholders, and how anthropocentric ontological and epistemological assumptions lead to reproducing power inequalities and the perpetuation of practices of nonhuman animal exclusion and oppression. In addition, our analysis demonstrates how terms such as ‘intrinsic value’ serve human rather than nonhuman interests because they are interpreted in such a way that they simultaneously assuage guilt and legitimize continued owning and killing of other animals by humans. We also contribute methodologically by adding the practice of re-embodiment of texts to the close reading method generally used in Critical Discourse Analysis, thereby making this method less anthropocentric. Finally, we propose steps towards the emancipatory inclusion of nonhuman animals in environmental governance.
This Special Section examines the political ecology of drought, focusing on the production of drought in rural areas where regimes of water dispossession, exploitation, and extraction exacerbate drought conditions for rural inhabitants, even as water and energy produced in those impacted rural areas benefit urban areas. This introduction situates the articles in a larger conversation about drought governance practices by tracing four interwoven analytical threads. An initial examination of definitional quandaries over drought paves the way for a discussion of the problematics of governing through drought, in particular, the ways in which, following Urciuoli, "strategically deployable [linguistic] shifters" contribute to consensus-building, and the ways in which legal and regulatory regimes, as well as politics, help shape settler economic practices during droughts. The discussion then turns to social justice and unequally distributed vulnerabilities intensified by groundwater depletion and drought governance practices. The article concludes by critically considering several possible approaches to drought governance that take the coproduction of nature and culture as integral. The introduction argues, and the Special Section articles support this, that a reconfiguration of drought economics and governance, along with a prioritizing of Native American sovereignty in the US, is imperative.
Norbert Chamier-Gliszczynski, Adam Wyszomirski, Cezary Balewski
et al.
The concept of green public transport in Poland is a challenge posed to Polish cities, which reflects the AFIR (Regulation for the Deployment of Alternative Fuels Infrastructure) regulation and the amended Polish Law on Electromobility and Alternative Fuels. The fulfillment of the established prerequisites requires taking steps toward the implementation of the electrification process of the fleet of bus vehicles. The goal of this process is to replace the fleet of buses equipped with internal combustion engines (conventional buses) with zero-emission buses. In the category of zero-emission vehicles, we distinguish between electric-powered buses (electric buses), hydrogen-powered buses (hydrogen buses) and trolleybuses. It is forecast that such exchanges will be spread out over time and may last 16 to 20 years. Thus, an important element in these activities is planning, which, as a process, leads to the establishment of tasks, resources and activities aimed at realizing or achieving the desired goal. It was assumed that the purpose of the article is to present the essence of planning the process of electrification of the bus fleet of vehicles in Polish cities. The content of the article refers to the concept of planning the process of electrification of the bus fleet of vehicles in urban areas, taking into account economic aspects, sources of financing and analysis of the feasibility of this process on the example of a selected Polish city. The planning process was presented using the example of a city integrated with the surrounding nature. The choice of the city is not accidental because the analyzed urban area lies in the green part of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, in the vicinity of which there are four nature reserves. The city is situated on two lakes, which together occupy 11.2% of the city’s area, and there are also numerous green areas in the city. The green nature of the city argued for taking action to reduce local emissions of pollutants generated by public transport. The process of planning the electrification of the bus fleet was carried out based on environmental and economic aspects. In economic terms, an important element is the possibility of obtaining external financing and the analysis of the feasibility of the planned process of electrification of the bus fleet. The conducted research clearly indicated that the presented process of planning the electrification of the bus fleet in the selected urban area allows for a precise interpretation of the considered planning in environmental and economic terms. Such an interpretation is important for the evaluation process of the analyzed planning and the implementation of the concept of green public transport in Polish cities, as well as the transparency of this process to other European cities and beyond.
This paper interrogates the vision and purpose of the nascent and developing field of ‘Earth System Law’ (ESL) with a view to asking how best to describe what ESL is and how it can contribute to scholarship on law in the ‘Anthropocene.’ Drawing on Luhmann’s autopoetic systems theory of law and complex adaptive systems theory, the paper reflects on ESL’s identity, boundaries, and role as a scholarly movement and seeks to draw out both the prospects and limits of its transformational purposes. Such questions are seen as inescapably tied to pragmatic considerations of how law and legal systems change, meaning that ESL would be best served if its scholars embraced a kind of ‘translating’ role to facilitate linkages between law and other domains in search of ways for earth systems considerations to be made relevant to law, rather than becoming vanguards of a normative legal revolution for the Anthropocene. (149 words)
The paper addresses the meaning of the Digest of Justinian 9.2.27.14, which deals with the case of damage caused by contamination of the soil by weeds. The author of this paper concludes that neither Celsus nor Ulpian had any doubt that in the case of the contamination of soil an interdictum quod vi aut clam could be brought, but only within a period of one year following the damage. This interdict is granted to either the owner, and, if the land was subject of the contract of lease, to the tenant (lessee), but only to one of them. Furthermore, an Aquilian action could also be brought, but only one of these two legal instruments could be used. The lawsuit could be brought both by the owner or by the tenant. The actio is granted to both the the owner and the lessee, not as an actio directa, but as an actio in factum ex lege Aquilia. The reason for this cannot be established with certainty.
Extended abstract:Introduction: Following the increasing expansion of cities and urban population, the demand for urban services is also increasing. One of the important services in cities is administrative service that meets the citizens’ daily needs. This type of service has been established by ministries and central organizations with the increase of the number of cities and urban population and consequently, the increase of citizens' service needs. On the other hand, fair and adequate distribution of disciplinary enforcement centers has an effective role in establishing security and tranquility in cities. Therefore, it is necessary to accurately identify the current situation in this field in order to create a more appropriate and equitable distribution of administrative-disciplinary spaces that are needed by today's societies. In this regard, the purpose of this article was to evaluate the spatial pattern of administrative-disciplinary services in Isfahan so as to achieve the effect of the administrative model of administrative-disciplinary services on the desirability of the functional radius of these services and assess the relationship between the spatial distribution of administrative-disciplinary services and population in the related areas. Methodology: This study was of an applied type based on the purpose and a descriptive-analytical research in nature and method. Data collection was based on the library method. After collecting the basic information and data, the spatial distribution of administrative-disciplinary enforcement services was firstly modeled by using the nearest neighborhood analysis method, local Moran index, global Moran index, and hot-spot analysis in Arc GIS software environment. Then, the effect of the spatial distribution pattern of these services on the desirability of their functional radius was evaluated in the same software by using fuzzy membership function. In the next step, by drawing the map of Isfahan neighborhoods in GeoDa software, the spatial autocorrelation of the variable population of Isfahan with the distribution of administrative-disciplinary services in its neighborhoods was determined and analyzed by using Moran’s bivariate index.Discussion: The analysis of the nearest neighborhood showed that the administrative-disciplinary enforcement services in Isfahan were randomly distributed. According to the calculations of the global Moran coefficient, the administrative-disciplinary enforcement services were distributed in clusters in the neighborhoods with a probability of 99%. By calculating the local Moran for the neighborhoods of Isfahan, it was found that 3 neighborhoods in District 13 were significantly located at the High-High clustering level, which indicated establishment of the neighborhoods with more administrative-disciplinary enforcement services nearby and in clusters. One neighborhood in District 10 and one in District 14 were located at the High-Low level. These neighborhoods had a large number of administrative-disciplinary enforcement services, while being surrounded by less record-breaking neighbors. 3 neighborhoods in District 13, which were located at the Low-High clustering level, faced the lack of access to these services, while being adjacent to the neighborhoods with a better access. Other neighborhoods did not have a significant autocorrelation. According to the maps drawn through the hot-spot analysis, the neighborhoods and central areas, especially areas 1, 3, 5, and 6, had formed hot spots and moved to the outskirts of the city due to their high administrative-disciplinary services, especially area 9 and the northeast part of the city. Also, cold spots were forming, which indicated the lack of administrative-disciplinary enforcement services in these neighborhoods. Assessing the effectiveness of the spatial distribution model of these services on the desirability of the functional radius demonstrated the desirability of their functional radius in the central regions, as well as unfavorable areas and neighborhoods around the city. The desirability of the functional radius was in favor of the center but had caused a detriment to the surroundings. Moran’s bivariate index was applied to measure and evaluate the spatial autocorrelation, which showed very low probability of the spatial distribution of administrative-disciplinary enforcement services based on the variable population with low significance. Conclusion: In general, the results indicated that the spatial distribution of administrative-disciplinary enforcement services in the neighborhoods of Isfahan City was inappropriate in a way that the desirability of access to these services in the central areas was very high, while citizens in the suburbs were facing lack of access to these services. Therefore, it is necessary to consider programs and policies that eliminate this major spatial gap and establish spatial justice in the neighborhoods of Isfahan and ultimately social justice to cover the entire city. According to David Harvey, it is advisable to give extra services to the groups in need because they do not have a history of using these services and are not thus accustomed to them. This is especially true of municipal services for very poor groups, new immigrants, and the like. Hence, entitlement to the geographical framework would be allocation of additional resources to compensate for the social and natural problems of each region. Keywords: spatial justice, spatial distribution, administrative-disciplinary services, Isfahan neighborhood References- Ardeshiri, Ali, Ken Willis & Mahyar Ardeshiri (2018). Exploring preference homogeneity and heterogeneity for proximity to urban, public services, Cities, pp 1–13.- Boyne. A., Georg, Martin A. Powell (2002). Territoial Justice Spatial Justice and Local covernment Finance, University of Herhordshire & university of clamorgan.- Delbosec, A. and G., Currie (2011). Using Lorenz curves to assess public transport equity, Journal of Transport Geography, 19(6), 1252-1259.- Deniz, A. (2012). Measuring the satisfaction of citizens for the services given by the municipality: the case of Kirsehir municipality. Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences, 32(24).- Dutta, v (2012). War on the Dream, How Land use Dynamic and Sprawling City Devour the Master Plan and Urban Suitability. A Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approach, proceeded in 13th Global Development Conference Urbanisatio and Development: Delving Deeper into the Nexus, Budapest, hungary.- Getis Arthur, (2005). Spatial Pattern Analysis, Encyclopedia of Social Measurement, Volume 3.- Godillon, S (2011). Urban renewal – a vehicle for spatial justice in the face of traffic safety problems, js.1-10.- Harvey, David (1935). "Social Justice and the City", the translator: Farokh. Hesamyan and Mohammad Reza Haeri and Behrouz monadi zadeh, the company processing and urban planning, Winter 1997, page 271.- Herrera, F., & Herrera-Viedma, E. (2002). «Linguistic decision analysis: steps for solving decision problems under linguistic information», Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 115, 67–82.- Langford, M., Higgs, G., Radcliffe, J. While, S. (2008). Urban Population Distntution Models and Service Accessibility Estimation Compuers Environment and Urban System.- Laurent E (2011). Issues in environmental justice within the European Union, Ecological Economics, No. 70, 1846–1853.- Liao, Chin-Hsien, Chang, Hsueh-Sheng, Tsou, Ko-Wan (2009). Explore the spatial equity of urban public facility allocation based on sustainable development viewpoint, 14th International Conference on Urban Planning and Regional Development in the Information Society, Spain: Sitges, p 137-145.- Lorestani A., Yaghoubpour Z., Shirzadian R. (2016). Analysis of spatial distribution of Tehran Metropolis urban services using models of urban planning, Capital Urban Manage., 1(2). Pp 83-92.- Mitchel, G. and Norman, P. (2012). longitudinal environmental justice analysis: Co-evolution of environmental quality and deprivation in England, 1960–2007. Geoforum, No. 43, pp: 44-57.- Parry, Jahangeer A., Showkat A. Ganaie & M. Sultan Bhat (2018). GIS based land suitability analysis using AHP model for urban services planning in Srinagar and Jammu urban centers of J&K, India, Journal of Urban Management 7, pp 46-56.- Sohel Rana M. D (2009). Status of water use sanitation and hygienic condition of urban slums: A study on Rupsha Ferighat slum, Khulna", www.elsevier.com, pp. 322-328.- Tirband, Majid and Azani, Mehri (2012). Distribution of facilities and municipal services based on social justice, case study: Yasouj city, Journal of applied sociology, Issue 23, No46, p: 109-138.- Wiesel, Ilan, Liu Fanqi and Buckle Caitlin (2017). Locational disadvantage and the spatial distribution of government expenditure on urban infrastructure and services in metropolitan Sydney (1988–2015), Geographical Research, pp 1-13.- windner, Robert. (2009). Planning law primer, basics of variances planning commission journal. N6, p30-47.- Zhang Chaosheng, Lin Luo, Weilin Xu & Valerie Ledwith, (2008). Use of local Moran's I and GIS to identify pollution hotspots of Pb in urban soils of Galway, Ireland , Science of The Total Environment, Volume 398, Issues 1-3. Figures:- Figure 1: Map of the political situation of Isfahan in the city, province and country- Figure 2: Map of the central feature and directional distribution of administrative- disciplinary services in neighborhoods and areas of Isfahan- Figure 3: The pattern of distribution of administrative- disciplinary services in Isfahan city using the average nearest neighborhood analysis- Figure 4: The pattern of distribution of administrative- disciplinary services in the neighborhoods of Isfahan using Moran index- Figure 5: Spatial autocorrelation of Isfahan neighborhoods from the perspective of having administrative-disciplinary services- Figure 6: Analysis of hot and cold spots in neighborhoods of Isfahan from the perspective of administrative-disciplinary- Figure 7: Analysis of the desirability of the functional radius of administrative-disciplinary services in Isfahan based on the fuzzy membership method- Figure 8: Spatial autocorrelation diagram (local Moran) between of the population and the area of administrative- disciplinary services in Isfahan neighborhoods- Figure 9: Spatial autocorrelation map between the population and the area of administrative- disciplinary services in Isfahan neighborhoods
O artigo analisa a regulação das nanotecnologias no contexto de produtos e processos químicos. O objetivo foi identificar as forças histórico-econômicas que impulsionaram as duas principais abordagens de regulação de substâncias químicas. O procedimento metodológico consistiu em uma análise histórica e de conteúdo do que juridicamente culminou como os dois principais instrumentos regulatórios: a análise regulatória de risco e o princípio da precaução. As forças histórico-econômicas são, por um lado, as forças de mercado, que se expressam na política de análise de risco regulatório em relação a riscos, saúde e sustentabilidade, e que tendem a estimular o desenvolvimento comercial e procuram individualizar as relações técnicas e os efeitos potenciais de processos, tecnologias e produtos. Por outro lado, existem as forças da vida, aquelas que privilegiam a proteção da saúde das pessoas e dos ecossistemas, e que se expressam na política do princípio da precaução. Embora à primeira vista não pareçam abordagens contraditórias, pois possuem diferentes âmbitos intrínsecos, tanto temporais e espaciais quanto sociais, na prática essas abordagens e os conceitos e metodologias que promovem representam forças sociais que eventualmente podem se enfrentar. Ambas as tendências são exemplificadas no caso das nanotecnologias. A análise mostra, como resultado, que a expressão jurídica dessas forças representa interesses de diferentes origens: em um caso aqueles que privilegiam o mercado; de outro, aqueles que privilegiam a defesa da vida e da saúde.
Environmental sciences, Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence
The winning of New Zealand and the United States in a trade dispute with Indonesia regarding quantitative restrictions on the import of horticultural products, animals and animal products at the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute panel assembly with case number DS (Dispute Settlement) 477 and 478, forces Indonesia to adjust its national policies with the existing rules in the 1994 GATT. This obviously becomes a concern for Indonesia's goal of realizing national food security and food sovereignty. This article aims to discuss how Indonesia's position in the case of DS 477 and DS 478 and how policy efforts in agriculture can be implemented so that Indonesia can withstand the development of international trade liberalization. This article is normative legal research that applies case and statutory approaches. It discusses the legal position of Indonesia when defending its reasons behind the restriction policies as well as analyses Indonesia’s opportunities to create food sovereignty and proposing legitimate policies after the cases decided. This article concludes that despite Indonesia was defeated in these cases, the opportunities for Indonesian agricultural products to be internationally marketed are still available and that bilateral arrangement would enable Indonesia to discuss the upcoming legitimate measures to be adopted. Reflecting on the results of WTO DS 477 and DS 478 cases, Indonesia should propose a Mutually Agreed Solution (MAS) and improving the provisions on horticulture imports and imports of animal products, carry out intensification and extensification policy, combat food cartels, and pay concern on the creation and implementation of various international trade regulations.
Age has frequently been recognized as one of the key attributes and indicators in creating an advertising system. In any case, it has been infrequently discovered the moderating effects of age on the links between attractions and accessibility as well as tourist satisfaction. Particularly, in the context of Bangladesh, this sort of study has not ever been considered. Hence, this study fulfils the gap by examining the moderating role of age in the relationship of these constructs. The questionnaire survey was directed for gathering data from international tourists in the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Bangladesh. The outcomes got from Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using the SmartPLS v3 uncovered that age significantly moderated the relationship between attraction and tourist satisfaction as well as accessibility and tourist satisfaction.
The idea of criminalizing ecocide as an international crime, for the first time, was raised in the 1970s. However, this green idea did not become an international criminal norm because of the opposition of some powerful governments, the resistance of large business enterprises, and preponderance of economic development discourse over environmental law discourse. At the time of drafting statute of the international criminal court (1998), "war ecocide" was criminalized only as one of the manifestations of war crimes, even that was accompanied with so many conditions and limitations that it has almost been impossible to effectively prosecute and try ecocide perpetrators. This resulted in the impunity of ecocide perpetrators all around the world and in the continuation of the gradual destruction of the earth and its vital resources. In order to put an end to this environmental impunity, it is imperative that the international community criminalize ecocide crime (in peacetime) as the most severe and most serious environmental crime and put this crime within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
As a consequence of increased pressure on environment in Europe and beyond, the extent and variety of forms of environmental damage has broadened widely over the last decades. One key way to tackle this problem is, evidently, to ensure that damage that arise is properly repaired. Whilst provisions to secure environmental liability have been implemented in the EU context through the Environmental Liability Directive, the effectiveness of this Directive is still limited. In France, in order to surpass current impasses, the 2016 Biodiversity Law was recently enacted (adopted on August 8th, 2016), which creates a specific regime in French civil law for remedying ecological damage (defined as damage caused to nature itself). Three years after the introduction of France’s new approach to ecological damage, the present article reflects on the legal innovations and challenges of the reform, and explains how the new regime proceeds to remedy ecological damage. A key challenge here, as will be discussed, is that nature as such has not been recognised as having legal personality under the French legal system, which has traditionally been a key hurdle for securing compensation for environmental loss in the first place under tort law.
The effect of deforestation on environmental degradation shifted the orientation of forest management into carrying capacity of the watershed. Based on Law No. 41/1999 on Forestry, mandates adequacy forest area defined a minimum of 30% of the watershed area which fulfilled by public forest and private forest. State forest area has limitations, so the development of community forests is needs for optimal forest area in a watershed is required. The purpose of this study was to determine the spatial distribution of potential areas for community forest development in Grindulu Watershed. The potential of community forest was examined through an interpretation of Landsat 8 of 2016 Path/Row 119/668 for land availability and the transformation of NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) as the density classifier. The classification of forest density was low density class of 5148.12 hectares or 7.20% (NDVI = 0 to 0.356), moderate density class of 12,076.39 hectares or 16.88% (NDVI = 0.356 to 0.590), and high density class of 54,294.04 ha or 75.92% (NDVI = 0.590 to 0.841). The land available for prioritized community forest development was 37,774.40 hectares (52.82%) in the form of dry-fields, shrubs, grasses, farms, which were located outside the protected areas and production forest. Based on the assessment of field surveys which were conducted proportionally at 89 samples, known good accuracy results by 0.84. Potential area for community forest development was 31,281.54 ha (43.74%) including in Pacitan (9 districts) of 29,111.98 hectares, Ponorogo (5 districts) of 263.29 hectares, and Wonogiri (2 districts) of 1,906.27 hectares.
Barbara Mugwanya Zawedde, Musa Kwehangana, Herbert K. Oloka
Research and development of genetically engineered (GE) crops in Uganda was initiated in 2003 with the launch of a national agricultural biotechnology center at Kawanda in central Uganda. The country has now approved 17 field experiments for GE plants, which were first established in 2006 with the planting of a banana confined field trial that evaluated performance of plants modified to express resistance to black sigatoka disease. Researchers leading the GE experiments have indicated that some of these GE plants are ready for environmental release that is moving beyond confined field testing toward commercialization. The government of Uganda, over the past two decades, has supported processes to put in place an effective national biosafety framework including establishment of a supportive policy environment; creation of a clear institutional framework for handling applications and issuance of permits; building critical capacity for risk analysis; and providing options for public engagement during decision-making. Uganda is ready to make a biosafety decision regarding environmental release of GE plants based on the level of capacity built, progress with priority GE crop research in the country, and the advancement in biosafety systems. Enactment of a national biosafety law that provides for a coordinated framework for implementation by the relevant regulatory agencies will strengthen the system further. In addition, product developers need to submit applications for biosafety approval for environmental release of GE crops so that mechanisms are tested and improved through practice.
The phone rings. It is 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning. The call is from the hospital. A 59-year-old was brought to the ER with acute onset of severe headache soon followed by collapse. Routine CT and CT angiography demonstrate a subarachnoid bleed with no obvious aneurysm. Catheter angiography with possible coiling of an aneurysm is requested. After a brief conversation with the on-call radiology resident I head to the hospital. This is the third early morning emergency procedure that I have had this week. I may be tired, but my brain is working. I get to the hospital and meet the patient, who is semiconscious, and the family. He is a morbidly obese longtime smoker with a history of poorly controlled hypertension and a recent history of a “mild” heart attack. He has been prescribed multiple medications and many times has been told to exercise and stop smoking. He is poorly compliant with his diet, exercise regimen, and managing his multiple medications. He continues to smoke at least one pack of unfiltered cigarettes a day. I explain the procedure, its possible complications, and the chances of increased morbidity from the procedure secondary to the patient’s significant medical problems. This is the kind of case I dread – a sure-fire incarnation of Murphy’s Law.
This patient is not atypical. He is not an old man. He could be considered a “victim” of “self- inflicted” medical conditions. Overall, it is estimated that at least 40 percent of all deaths in the United States are from “self-inflicted” medical conditions. The overwhelming number of deaths from cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease, two of the three leading causes of death in the U.S., is considered to be “self-inflicted.”
In 2008 about 35 percent of all deaths in high-income countries worldwide were due to ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), diabetes and hypertensive heart disease. In low- and middle-income countries the two leading causes of death were ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease. Cigarette smoking is linked to at least 20 percent of deaths in the United States and 10 percent of deaths globally. By the year 2030 the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that globally at least 16 percent of deaths will be linked to smoking.1 It has been estimated that, on average, adult cigarette smokers die 14 years earlier than nonsmokers.2 Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980. In 2008, 1.5 billion adults, 20 and over, were overweight. More than 500 million—10 percent of the world’s population—were obese (BMI> 30). In 2010 there were at least 43 million children younger than five years old who were obese.
In the United States and Canada these numbers are far worse. Close to 35 percent of the adult U.S. population and 25 percent of the Canadian adult population are obese. The obesity level is less than 20 percent in only one state, Colorado. In the United States, the rate of obesity has almost doubled since 1995.3 Twenty years ago the obesity level did not exceed 15 percent in any state in the United States.4
The WHO estimates that overweight and obesity are the fifth leading risk for death globally. At least 44 percent of the diabetes burden, 23 percent of the ischemic heart disease burden and between 7 percent and 41 percent of certain cancer burdens are attributable to overweight and obesity.5 This paints a gloomy picture. It seems incontrovertible that we humans are killing ourselves with indulgences that many cannot deny themselves.
Despite this gloomy picture there are glimmers of hope. Though smoking is on the rise in the developing world, it is falling in developed nations. By 1997 less than 25 percent of American adults smoked, representing a nearly 50 percent drop in the rate of smoking from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s. This decrease resulted from many factors.
When it comes to personal health, there seems to be a disconnect between what people profess they want and what people do. People say they want to be healthy but people’s behavior contradicts that which they profess. There seems to be little attempt at implementing measures that would lead to a healthier lifestyle. After the passage of President Obama’s health care bill, the comment, “I’m tired of paying for everyone else’s stupidity,” was posted on the Internet. It would be no surprise if this feeling were found to be common among healthy people. After all, if I can exercise, if I can eat a healthy diet, if I stopped smoking, if I have adopted a healthy lifestyle, why can’t every one do the same? Why do I have to pay for everyone’s stupidity?
The reality is that “no matter what, we pay for others’ bad habits. The majority of Americans say it is fair to ask people with unhealthy lifestyles to pay more for health insurance.” Many believe in the concept of “personal responsibility,” which was clearly enunciated by President Obama when he said, “We’ve got to have the American people doing something about their own care.”6
With the worldwide crisis in healthcare, with health care costs escalating at unsustainable rates, there are widespread calls for “personal responsibility” for healthcare. The theme of the 4th International Jerusalem Conference on Health Policy held in December 2009 in Israel was: “Improving Health and Healthcare: Who Is Responsible? Who Is Accountable?” There were numerous presentations at this four-day conference with the talks published in three conference books totaling 498 pages (available on-line for free downloading).
The concept of personal healthcare is that if we follow healthy lifestyles (exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, not smoking) and are good patients (keeping our appointments, heeding our physicians’ advice, and using a hospital emergency department only for emergencies), we will be rewarded by feeling better and spending less money.” There are many initiatives that have been introduced to promote personal responsibility for health. One of the major goals of the federal Government’s “Roadmap to Medicaid Reform” is to promote personal responsibility.7
Throughout our history, there has been a “dominant cultural preference for notions of personal responsibility...consonant with Jeffersonian democracy’s emphasis on voluntarism, decentralization, and only limited obligation to the common good.” Minkler8 stresses that by emphasizing personal responsibility, we are blaming the victim—what has been referred to by Crawford9 as the “victim-blaming ideology,” which “ignores what is known about human behavior and minimizes the importance of evidence about the environmental assault on health.”
Is it practical to expect people to have personal responsibility, and accountability for their health? Emanuel, in a trenchant analysis of the “difficulties in making accountability practical,” discusses the “facts of human nature.” He feels that these facts reflect some “deep-seated evolutionary and other trends that are built into our psychology.” He outlines six points to prove that “it’s impossible to get organizations and individuals to be accountable” (emphasis added). Included in these points are:
• People want power, authority, and control. People do not want to be held accountable because accountability is a challenge to their authority and power. Accountability is not a good thing when it applies to us.
• As an exercise of our power, we hold other people accountable. We are very supportive when it comes to holding other people accountable.
• We don’t want to be accountable for situations over which we have little or no control.
• “Human beings are fundamentally conservative.” We do not like change; we resist change. We like and have adapted to our environment. We will resist change unless forced to change.10 (The strongest human urge is not for food or for shelter or for sex. The strongest human urge is to be an immovable boulder, to stay where and how we are.)
Kawachi outlines three myths about lagging U.S. health performance that have “attained the status of shibboleths.” These myths include the ideas that our poor health performance reflects the inherited differences in health stock of our population, comes from poor people behaving badly, and is due to the lack of universal healthcare in the United States. 11
Kawachi carefully debunks these myths and poses an important question: “If bad genes and bad behaviors can’t explain America’s dismal state of health, then what can?” He proceeds to outline the social determinants of health, determinants that over many years have been shown to be necessary for the overall good health of the population. These social determinants that are most important are: safe neighborhoods, productive employment, freedom from discrimination and full participation in communal life. “Peoples access to health-promoting social conditions is played out through politics.” It is politics that determines who gets what, how much, and when. He quotes Rudolph Virchow, who asserted, “Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else but medicine on a grand scale.”
Prosperity alone will not guarantee health. The deleterious effects of economic inequality, and not just the inequality confined to the “officially poor,” exert an independent, detrimental influence on population health. “As private wealth becomes more concentrated, the quality of public life suffers.” There is a striking association between the degree of household income inequality and mortality rates. The more unequal the distribution of income, the more unhealthy people tend to be.”12
The “sensitivity of health to the social environment and to...the social determinants of health” was detailed in a WHO publication. The authors agree that while “exhortation to individual behavior change” is a well-recognized approach to promote health, evidence suggests that there are limitations to this approach. The overarching theme for advancing health is the absolute need for a more just and caring society with much depending on understanding the interaction between material disadvantage and its social meanings.13
The problems of, and the reasons for poor health are complex. There are no simple solutions. Playing the blame game is morally and ethically wrong. “Regardless of any social decision as to the limits and scope of individual responsibility for health, the moral framework for discussing the issue is equality...to reach a consensus, discourse should be according to the common basis of all theories of justice-Aristotle’s formal principle of justice: ‘equals must be treated equally and un-equals must be treated unequally, in proportion to the relevant inequality.’”
When using this framework, Golan concludes that even conditions that were avoidable and were caused by the patient, conditions that were the fault of the patient, cannot be considered relevant inequalities that exclude the patient from care.14 We must heed these wise words.
References:
1 The World Health Organization. www.who.int/research/en. 2 CDC Fact Sheet. www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/health_effects/.
3 CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. August 26, 2011. Volume 60(33); 1135.
4 Levi J. The Huffington Post. February 29, 2012.
5 WHO, Media Centre. Obesity and Overweight, fact sheet. Updated March 2011.
6 Jauhar S. No Matter What, We Pay for Other’s Bad Habits. New York Times. March 29, 2010.
7 Steinbrook R. Perspective: Imposing Personal Responsibility for Health. 2006. NEJM; 355:753-756.
8 Minkler M. Personal Responsibility for Health? A Review of the Arguments and the Evidence at Century’s End. 1999. Health Education & Behavior; 26(1): 121-140.
9 Crawford R. You Are Dangerous to Your Health. 1977. Int J Health Serv; 4:671.
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10 Emanuel E. Difficulties in Making Accountability Practical. 2009. In Conference Book Part 1: The 4th International Jerusalem Conference on Health Policy. Pages 51-61.
11 Kawachi, I. Why the United States is Not Number One in Health. In Healthy, Wealthy and Fair: Health Care for a Good Society, eds. Brown, L.D., Jacobs, L., Morone, J. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pages 222-230.
12 Kawachi I, ibid.
13 Wilkerson R and Marmot M, Editors. Social Determinants of Health: The Solid Facts, 2nd ed. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe, 2003.
14 Golan O. The Right to Treatment for Self-Inflicted Conditions. 2010 J Medical Ethics; 36:683-686.
This article deals with the Convention on Biological Diversity, article 8 (j) in connection tothe national and local legislation to be enacted prior to article 8 (j) enforcement. It showsthat for legal protection of Indigenous Peoples’s intangible rights, land rights are to be resolvedby government and organisms devoted to land right claimed by Aboriginal Peoples.The experience of Australia through its recent colonization, decolonization and reviewof social values presented by Rudd Administration secured Indigenous Peoples rights. In conclusion, this article proposes a multi-action from historical, political, legal and jurisprudentialsources for article 8 (j) to be operative.
Environmental sciences, Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence