Adhe Ismail Ananda, La Ode Dedihasriadi, Yeni Haerani
The management the mining sector is under the state’s authority as mandated by the Indonesian Constitution. The principle of Hak Menguasai Negara (State’s Right to Control) grants the state comprehensive authority over mining activities, including policy-making, licensing, and supervision. However, decentralization policies have shifted the balance of power between central and regional governments. This paper analyzes the legal and policy frameworks governing this division of authority, focusing on the role of local governments. Employing normative legal research through the examination of statutes and legal principles, the research finds that the centralization of mining permits under Law No. 3 of 2020 has significantly diminished local governments’ authority, resulting in governance inefficiencies and economic imbalances. The paper further explores asymmetric decentralization as a potential approach to harmonize state control with meaningful local government participation.
Abstract Trace element levels in the circulation (blood, serum, plasma) are believed to play a role in the pathophysiologic processes of Alzheimer’s disease (AD); however, there is heterogeneity in the available findings. This study conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of trace elements (including: copper (Cu), iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), selenium (Se), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), manganese (Mn), aluminum (Al), arsenic (As), and magnesium (Mg)) in AD patients and controls to assess the variation of trace elements in the circulation of AD patients. By systematically screening case–control studies on circulatory trace element levels in AD patients from 2000 to the present in the PubMed, Web of Science, and MEDLINE databases, 52 studies were included in the final meta-analysis. The results of the random-effects model showed significantly elevated circulatory levels of Cd (SMD = 0.79, 95% CI: 0.35, 1.24), Hg (SMD = 0.59, 95% CI: 0.03, 1.16), and Cu (SMD = 0.70, 95% CI: 0.37, 1.04) in AD patients, while levels of Fe (SMD = − 0.58, 95% CI: − 1.03, − 0.13), Se (SMD = − 0.53, 95% CI: − 0.85, − 0.21), and Zn (SMD = − 0.99, 95% CI: − 1.52, − 0.46) were significantly lower. The database formed in this study provides reliable population-based research evidence for exploring changes in circulating trace element levels in AD patients. Monitoring and stabilization of circulatory trace element levels in the elderly may be a potential preventive target for AD.
Abstract South-to-North Water Diversion Project, a globally renowned engineering feat, aims to address water supply issues. The sediments within reservoirs play a pivotal role in natural ecosystems, not only as habitats for diverse biota but also as repositories of heavy metals, organic matter, and other contaminants. These sediments serve as a critical interface between sediment and water bodies. This comprehensive analysis focused on the spatial patterns of nutrients, organic matter, and heavy metals in the surface layer and profiles of reservoirs, exploring their interconnectedness. Leveraging the integrated pollution index, organic pollution index, potential ecological risk index, and geo-accumulation index, an ecological risk assessment was performed. The key findings are as follows: (i) Along the Middle Route of the South-to-North Diversion Project, the nutrient and organic matter contents in sediments tends to rise with distance from the Danjiangkou Reservoir, with the TN and TC contents increasing by 2.35- and 3.05-fold, respectively. (ii) As the sediment depth increases, the carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and organic matter contents exhibit varying degrees of decline, with average decreases of 62.38%, 67.47%, 17.56%, and 41.83% for TN, TC, TP, and OM, respectively. (iii) Among the eight heavy metals, only manganese (Mn) and zinc (Zn) in the Yahekou Reservoir showed moderate pollution levels, according to the geo-accumulation index. The Mn content within the surface sediments of the six reservoirs ranges from 550 to 1837 mg/kg (average, 1019.5 ± 548.3 mg/kg), whereas the Zn content ranges from 89 to 360 mg/kg (average, 156.5 ± 101.6 mg/kg). (vi) Total phosphorus (TP) and total nitrogen (TN) emerged as the primary pollutants in surface sediments. Comprehensive nitrogen and phosphorus pollution assessment revealed that the surface sediment of Danjiangkou Reservoir is mildly polluted, while Baiguishan and Jiangang Reservoirs are moderately polluted, and the rest are heavily contaminated. For the Yahekou and Chaohe Reservoirs, the average pollutant content indicates moderate pollution, while the remaining reservoirs show mild pollution levels. Graphical Abstract
In the Italian context, the first law directly affecting the urban planning and building sector dates back to approximately 160 years ago, precisely Law 2248/1865. It established the administrative unification of the Kingdom of Italy, empowering municipal councils to deliberate on ‘hygiene, building and local police regulations’, and was followed a few months later by Law 2359/1865 on expropriations for public purpose. By contrast, the first regulations for the protection of artistic, historical, archaeological and ethnographic heritage (1089/1938), and natural beauty (1497/1939), are just over 80 years old. From that time onwards, the rules governing planning and design actions have been considerably enriched and developed. Hence, it is worth reflecting on the effectiveness and efficiency of a regulatory framework that has been governing territorial, urban and building transformations in an increasingly articulated and specialised manner with a view to improving the quality and sustainability of natural and anthropic habitats. Moreover, its ability to govern the ways, times and cultural and technical contents of the project production process to carry out high quality creations is worthy of consideration.
Perhaps the issue of standardisation has never been the centre of attention in all sectors of civil life as today: in public administration and scientific research, among economic operators, planners, and citizens themselves. Regulatory systems are increasingly pervasive in regulating design activity and the characteristics of works in response to a general «increase in the variety and complexity of public interests that appear worthy of protection, such as the quality of the environment, the safeguarding of the natural and historical-artistic heritage, the protection of health, the safety of persons, and security […]» (Bassanini et al., 2005). Changing interests require frequent updates to adapt regulations to rapid socio-economic, cultural, and technological changes.
The centres of regulatory production have also multiplied, breaking up into different levels and sectors of regulation, namely with multi-level (international, EU, national, regional, local), sectoral (economy, environment, territory, landscape, infrastructure, cultural heritage, health, etc.) and institutional governance structures, with corresponding different interests (public/private, collective/individual) and complicated relationships of interconnection, conditionality and/or competition (Raveraira, 2009). The scenario is even more complex, if we broaden the scope to include, in addition to prescriptive and binding rules, the vast universe of guiding principles, voluntary standards, guidelines, best practices, etc.
Moreover, also due to the nature of the legal system model of reference (civil law derived from Roman law, as opposed to the common law of English-speaking countries, founded on the binding force of practice and judgements), Italian legislation has been stratified by an anomalous number of rules, which are often not mutually coordinated, sometimes contradictory or bearing inconsistent definitions. They are either incapable of producing the desired results, or are not the cause of effects even diametrically opposed to those expected. The attempt to solve every problem through a special regulation results in limiting the free and responsible action of citizens (and planners). Indeed, as Marco Romano points out, «to reduce people’s desires to rights codified in the doctrine of planning, imposed by enlightened and pedagogical governments on rebellious citizens unaware of their own good, is to erase what makes them citizens: the diversity of their individual life projects» (Romano, 2013).
On the other hand, the discrepancy between this regulatory approach and the reality that surrounds us is evident. On Alessandro Pizzorno’s death, Fabrizio Schiaffonati recalled how, back in the 1960s, the doyen of Italian political sociology had already warned that in Italy «everything must be regulated so that everything can be conceded», pointing out that «this is still the case nowadays, more than half a century later, with good peace for the quality of the project, which is overwhelmed by constraints and contradictory procedures that are obstructive to a necessary qualitative transformation of the anthropic environment within proper time and costs» (Schiaffonati, 2019).
This hypertrophic growth of laws and regulations (a true ‘legislative inflation’ or ‘regulatory pollution’) is accompanied by their rapid variability over time, so much so that a building intervention begun within a given legislative framework risks being completed in the presence of a different regulatory framework, which would not have allowed its execution, and vice versa. Not to mention the «badly written, lengthy regulations that are difficult to read and even more difficult to apply, (which) now represent a constant factor with which even the most prepared and motivated operator must come to terms» (Gorlani, 2022), which lead to confusion and interpretative doubts. This makes bureaucratic formalities unnecessarily complex, overloads administrative action, and increases the regulatory and management costs for citizens, businesses and the public institutions themselves, including those dedicated to monitoring and control actions (which, in a context of shrinking public resources, are often the first to be lacking…).
Legal uncertainty leads to opaque, if not arbitrary decisions, facilitates corruption, increases discrimination and social conflict, and limits economic development, sometimes to the point of inhibiting it (Bassanini et al., 2005). A vulnus with dramatic effects, if it is true that certainty does not have to be of the law, but: «certainty is law, just as, vice versa, law is certainty, if it is true that law […], is constituted for the specific purpose of giving certainty, or rather: certainties» (emphasis added; Ruggeri, 2005).
The body of urban planning legislation has expanded considerably, imposing on city and regional planning new objectives and constraints aimed at protecting and improving the quality of the environment and landscape. Strategic environmental and impact assessments, regulations to limit land consumption, to increase climate resilience and to regenerate the built environment have been in use for many years now, with their rich set of analyses and tools to manage knowledge, build scenarios, compare alternatives, and quantify their effects through indicators (environmental, socioeconomic, etc.). And yet, all this does not seem to have produced the expected effects, as witnessed by the continuing degradation of urban suburbs, the continuous increase in soil erosion by new urbanisations and infrastructures, the abandonment of ‘inland areas’, and the hydrogeological instability of the most ‘fragile’ territories. Instead, by moving more and more on the level of so-called policies, planning seems to have lost its technical capacity to conform the quality of spaces, even in their cultural value and use, in a sort of throwback of illiteracy forgetting the grammatical and syntactical rules of construction of the European city. The disciplinary crisis of the plan is evident, incapable of governing land uses and built forms, as well as the quality of public space, relying, instead, on the abstraction of ‘tactical squares’ and social streets totally inadequate to determine an organic configuration of the urban structure.
There is no large city that does not have a plan for climate resilience or sustainable mobility, nor is there a major project that cannot boast top-level environmental and/or energy performance, duly certified even when it plans to replace a tree-lined park of more than 50,000 square metres with green roofs on a shopping centre (for example, San Siro in Milan). Greenwashing operations often characterise the private actions of real estate operators, in the absence of checks and controls by the public authorities.
The public works sector has long been searching for a better balance of time, cost and quality of works. «A long journey, which has allowed for advances […] and regulatory innovations during the Nineties» (Schiaffonati, 2006) and which, after thirty years of conjunctural measures (suspensions, temporary derogations, emergency decrees, special procedures and competences, variations of thresholds, etc.1) has led to the new Procurement Code (legislative decree no. 36/2023). It features a text of more than 150,000 words, to which the regulatory and procedural innovations introduced by the PNRR must be added, with the related set of regulations, guidelines, explanatory circulars, protocols and technical instructions2.
It is a seemingly unstoppable process of continuous correction and integration to reform the reform, in the absence of the indispensable monitoring activity that should, instead, verify and assess the effects of the application of the regulation to correctly finalise its amendment. Nevertheless, there has been no lack of significant precedents in this regard, as in the case of the French experimentation of the Spinetta Law on construction insurance systems3.
If we apply to the standard the historical notion of “quality as fitness for intended use” (Juran, 1951), or to the more recent notion of «the set of properties and characteristics of a product or service that provide the capacity to satisfy expressed or implicit needs» (UNI EN ISO 8402:1995), it clearly appears that the challenge to be faced concerns not so much or only regulatory and administrative simplification, or the replacement of redundant, obsolete or unjustified regulations, but precisely the “quality of regulation”. A direction undertaken since 2001 by OECD and Apec countries with a Regulatory Reform (reference criteria to ensure quality and transparency in regulatory activity), in line with the obligation to formulate rules that are conceptually and semantically precise, clear and comprehensible in the terms used, in the objectives set, in the required behaviour (Constitutional Court, ruling no. 364 of 1988) and, above all, with contents derived from consensual and shared planning (Raveraira, 2009).
Responsibility, consensus and collaboration are, I believe, the key words to possibly rethink the relationship between design and regulation. In fact, I agree with Marco Dugato’s observation in this Dossier when he argues that «the fault of normative hypertrophy cannot be attributed to the omnipotence of the regulator by itself, rather it is attributable to the contribution of the ones regulated». If it is true that architectural design is constrained by regulations, it certainly cannot be mechanically determined by them for mere reasons of conformity. Conversely, as Maria Chiara Torricelli emphasises again in the Dossier, the norm is a tool that provides valid and shared knowledge to the project; and the project itself, as a projective activity, contributes proactively to its definition. There are many examples spanning technical directives regulating the implementation cycles of the INA Casa, the result of design research in support of the political project, and the various procedural and meta design regulations derived from research in the Architectural Technology Field. Such design experiences have unfolded in an experimental manner, in derogation of the regulations and leading to their renewal.
Instead, deductive design approaches seem to prevail today, due to the growing availability of algorithmic procedures that do not merely support the design process, but develop it in an almost automated manner through conditioning and prevailing indicators and parameters. These tools legitimise choices where conformity to the standard acts as a screen for the assumption of precise responsibilities.
There is a conceptual and operational reversal with respect to creative, responsibly inductive design action, which experiments and innovates, putting the principles of adequate performance and compliance with needs over the criteria of formal conformity. This is evident in the relationship between technical regulations and techno-typological innovation for evolutions that move the parameters of regulatory congruity “forward”, but sometimes even “sideways”. This also counteracts the phenomena of norm obsolescence.
In consideration of the pervasiveness of the regulatory systems that rule design action, it is, finally, disturbing to observe the very limited importance assigned to this subject in the education of new designers. The didactics of design, which have long been the focus of Architecture studies, rarely envisage a structured discussion on regulatory and normative aspects, leaving them to the discretion of professors. Hence, at the end of the course, a large proportion of students have never heard about the Code of Procurement, environmental impact assessment or minimum environmental criteria… Whereas it is, instead, essential to solicit, from the first year, critical attention to the normative paradigm, also for the ethical, social and professional responsibilities it entails, and to encourage the assumption of norms and constraints as factors that nourish the entire design process. The norm thus becomes a «tool for guiding and controlling design choices», which as such «must be assumed in the organisation of the starting data» (Del Nord, 1992).
Not to mention the need for qualifying training programmes, as Mario Avagnina points out, so that all those involved in the process, particularly public clients, are able to carry out their tasks. The objective is far from being achieved, and «necessarily passes through the training of the figures involved, starting with the RUPs». Figures characterised not only by technical knowledge of the building process and its rules, but also by a culture of standards and conscious responsibility that can only derive from a design practice, which is continually verified in the real context, and by design actions based on an experimental method that aims to face the issues of society. Figures characterised not only by technical know-how of the building process and its rules, but also by a culture of standards and conscious responsibility, which can only derive from a practice continually verified by comparison with reality, and by design actions marked by an experimental method that finds its arguments in taking on the problems of society.
Aesthetics of cities. City planning and beautifying, Architectural drawing and design
Matthew N. Ahmadi, Raaj Kishore Biswas, Lauren Powell
et al.
Abstract Objective A promising strategy to increase population physical activity is through promotion of dog walking. Informed by multi-process action control and nascent dog-walking theory, we examined the effectiveness of a 3-month technology-based (dog tracker) 2-arm randomised controlled dog-walking intervention to increase dog-owner daily physical activity in the general community in Sydney, Australia. Results 37 participants were allocated to the intervention group (mean age = 43.2 [SD 11.9]) and 40 to the control group (mean age = 42.3 [SD 11.9]). Both groups averaged more than 10,500 steps/day at baseline. There was no evidence of within- or between-group physical activity differences across timepoints. The results remained consistent after exclusion of participants who had data collected during COVID-19 lockdowns. Compared with baseline, both groups had significant increases in sedentary time during the post-intervention, and 6 month follow-up. The absence of significant differences between-group physical activity differences may be attributable to the ceiling effect of both groups already being sufficiently active. These results provide useful guidance to future studies intended to assess the efficacy of technology-based dog-walking interventions. Future dog-walking interventions should specifically target physically inactive dog owners. Trial Registration: ACTRN12619001391167 (10/10/2019); Retrospectively registered.
The paper explores the relationship between the Draft Global Pact for the Environment (the Global Pact) and relevant international documents (declarations and international environmental agreements) and the legislation of Republic of Serbia (RS). The first part of the article provides a survey of the contents of the Global Pact, pointing to the significance of the international environmental law principles included in this document. The next part of the paper discusses the relationship between the Global Pact principles and RS legislation, with specific reference to the relationship between the Global Pact and the right to a (healthy) environment. The author concludes that the norms of the Global Pact and those of the international environmental agreements and RS domestic laws coincide to a great extent. Apart from the intentions to codify environmental law principles, the Global Pact also introduces some new principles whose contents and scope should be analysed in detail.
This paper delves into the intricate dynamics of international law and dispute resolution within the context of renewable energy development, focusing on Indonesia's downstreaming of nickel ores. As renewable energy initiatives gain prominence globally, the demand for essential minerals like nickel increases, prompting nations like Indonesia to explore downstreaming processes. However, this transition presents complex legal challenges, including international trade agreements, environmental regulations, and indigenous rights. Through a comprehensive review of relevant literature and case studies, this study analyzes Indonesia's approach to nickel ore downstreaming and its implications for international law and dispute resolution mechanisms. Additionally, it examines the role of international organizations, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), in resolving disputes arising from renewable energy projects. By synthesizing legal frameworks, environmental concerns, and socio-economic factors, this paper offers insights into navigating the legal complexities of renewable energy development, with a focus on Indonesia's nickel industry. Ultimately, the findings contribute to the discourse on sustainable resource management and the role of international law in facilitating equitable and environmentally responsible energy transitions.
Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence
Monique C. Sosnowski, Yuna Kim, Gohar A. Petrossian
et al.
Wildlife crime threatens national and global security. Much of the impact of wildlife crime is felt overseas, often in developing countries, where it threatens to catalyze conflicts, hinders economic development, undermines the rule of law, and threatens peace, amongst having other negative socio-economic and security impacts. But the impact of wildlife crime also is felt in United States, both directly by undercutting state and local conservation efforts, and indirectly, by injecting illegal wildlife and wildlife products into United States markets. While some work has delved into the sentencing dynamics of broader environmental crime in the United States, little research has explored the sentencing of wildlife crime, which is recognized as being distinct in nature by both governmental bodies and academics alike. The current study explores the federal prosecutions of wildlife crimes, focusing on profiling the wildlife crime cases charged by the US Department of Justice (DOJ). By profiling cases, we aim to explore (1) the application of charges associated with wildlife crime cases via their judgment documents; (2) the wildlife species involved in prosecuted cases; (3) the distribution of cases across US federal districts; and (4) and the sentencing patterns of wildlife crimes. Further statistical analyses explore the relationships between a variety of the variables extracted. Policy recommendations are set forth accordingly.
General. Including nature conservation, geographical distribution
Environmental racism is a phenomenon defined by an unfair allocation of environmental risks. It is a systematic violation of the right to a safe and healthy environment. Environmental racism takes root in the colonial prioritization of race in the distribution of social and environmental benefits. The environment should not be treated like an infinite garbage can. The economic polarity of the world will always have some people on the receiving end of an ordeal. In contradistinction to the ideal, in Africa, environmental justice is a concept of privilege. The costs of industrialization such as environmental degradation and the generation of toxic waste have brought about imbalances in the environment. These imbalances have caused variant problems, both short term and long term This article discussed environmental racism and what it means for the realization of environmental justice. This article further compared the successes of the Bamako Convention to the Basel Convention in the light of the realities of the dumping of hazardous waste in Africa and the conduct of activities injurious to the environment. It further examined the activities of multinational companies in Africa and how weak regulatory environments aid the impunity of environmental pollution.
Do two conventions of international environmental law necessarily endow the same word with the same meaning? A single counterexample is enough to answer in the negative: this is the case of the term “resource” in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Beyond this result, we tackle the questions, raised by the method of analysis implemented, about the semantics of legal texts, a source of interpretative flexibility but also of cognitive amalgamations and confusions of various types. A conceptual graph is associated with each proposition or sentence comprising the term “resource.” Some expressions, especially those of a deontic nature and noun phrases naming a group of interrelated entities or a fact, are encoded in nested graphs. The scope of a term is revealed by the neighbourhood of its uses. Neighbouring expressions, positioned along the paths of conceptual graphs, are ranked owing to their distance from the target expression. Then the neighbours the most contributing to the distributional meaning of the targets are classified in a coarse taxonomy, providing basic ontological traits to “resource” and related expressions in each convention. Although the two conventions rely on the same language, the weak overlap of their respective neighbourhoods of the term “resource” and associated expressions and their contrasted ontological anchorages highlight idiosyncratic meanings and, consequently, divergent orientations and understandings regarding the protection and conservation of resources, especially of living resources. Thus, the complexity of legal texts operates both in the gap between language semantics and cognitive understanding of the concepts used, and in the interpretative flexibility and opportunities for confusion that the texts offer but that the elementary operations of formalisation allow to deconstruct and clarify.
Katažyna Mikša, Marius Kalinauskas, Miguel Inácio
et al.
Ecosystem services (ES) delivery in quantity and quality are essential to improve human wellbeing. Nevertheless, often a considerable part of ES provisioning depends on the use of private land (e.g., flood retention, carbon sequestration, water purification). In this context, the operationalization and implementation of ES concept may collide with legal property rights. Therefore, it is essential to find constructive mechanisms to engage and encourage private owners to implement sustainable land uses to reduce the onsite and offsite impacts of their activities. This paper aims to identify if ES delivery can be constrained by legal private land and how it can be tackled. It is undeniable that land-use changes (e.g., urbanization, agriculture intensification, and land abandonment) affect the territory's capacity to deliver ES in quality and quantity. These changes, especially land abandonment, are increasing the tradeoffs among ES (e.g., between carbon sequestration and water yield). Land-use planning should consider these aspects. Therefore, incorporating ES into spatial plans is crucial for stakeholders to understand the impacts of land-use change in the loss of ES value. This information can be transmitted through maps that communicate the message in a simplified way. Private owners can easily perceive the ES relevance that their land can provide if an understandable message is delivered. Although this can be a good solution, conflicts can appear even with the implementation of schemes such as Payment for ES (PES). PES is not always effective and can impose losses to farmers, disregard their cultural traditions, or not prevent poverty alleviation. In this context, it is crucial to consider local specificities to safeguard PES's success, create a “win-win” and transform a problem into a solution. Private owners' active participation in implementing sustainable practices or a determined land-use in their properties is vital to achieving global targets such as sustainable development goals.
INTRODUCTION. The article provides a doctrinal legal description of the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus, 25 June 1998) (hereinafter referred as the Aarhus Convention). According to the common position of the Russian and Anglo-American legal scholars, the Aarhus Convention was a new and crucial step in linking environmental protection measures with human rights, including through improved international legal mechanisms for environmental impact assessment. The few assessments of this convention in the Russian science of international law are restrained. In the Anglo-American scientific literature the scholars see legal value of this convention as a source of international law in the context of the Convention setting very specific legal standards for public participation in environmental protection measures. MATERIALS AND METHODS. The material for the study was the Aarhus Convention itself, the previous international legal instruments on environmental protection, as well as the European Union Directives defining the basis of the environmental impact assessment procedure, primarily against the background of the interpretation of these legal instruments in the Russian and Anglo-American international legal doctrine. The methodological basis of the study was general scientific and private scientific methods of cognition (dialectical method, methods of analysis and synthesis, deduction and induction), as well as special methods used in legal science, such as historical and legal, formal legal and comparative legal methods. RESEARCH RESULTS. In the article, the author critically analyzed how the Russian and AngloAmerican scientific publications on international law assesses the impact of the Aarhus Convention on the development of international environmental law. What is especially important, the conventional mechanisms are analyzed in the context of the applicable court practice to the Arctic regions. The article deals with the doctrinal interpretation of the Convention mechanisms of harmonization of socio-environmental (including environmental) and economic interests of States and their individuals, physical and legal, especially against the background of environmental law of the European Union. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. In the article the author draws the reader’s attention to the fact that the Aarhus Convention is little studied even in foreign courses of international law, especially in the Russian international legal doctrine. Having been adopted through the UN Economic Commission for Europe platform, the Aarhus Convention entered into force in 2001, the Anglo-American legal literature is considered as closely interrelated with the development of environmental regulation in the States of the European Union taking into consideration that in the Aarhus Convention that many procedural and legal elements related to public participation in decision-making on specific activities, including in the field of energy, as well as the receipt of significant environmental information by the population, have been developed. The Aarhus Convention, having had a significant impact on the development of the legal mechanisms at the intersection of the human rights and environmental sectors, is aimed at the effective harmonization of social, environmental and economic interests what is especially important for the verification of the regime of environmental protection in the Arctic.
Law of nations, Comparative law. International uniform law
The interaction between the two thriving fields of modern legal science, namely the investment law
and environmental law, multi-faceted and requires careful study. The historical development of these
two branches of law is characterized by a transition from poorly defined standards and principles, often
controversial and limited legal rules to create complex legal mechanisms for their regulation. These
transformations have also changed the relations between investment activities and environmental regulation.
This study focuses on the integrated study of state-legal mechanism of ensuring the investment
activities in the sphere of environmental protection and use of natural resources. This article discusses
the activities of the state, public authorities governing the provision of investment activities in the sphere
of environmental protection and the role of the state and its authorities as subjects of investment activity.
The study revealed the importance of public investment management in the field of environmental
protection and use of natural resources and given their characteristics, the more determined methods of
state regulation and the new. The study of theoretical and practical recommendations for improvement
of the current legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan and practice of its application.
Key words: investment activity, state administration, state authorities, environmental protection, use
of natural resources.
International relations, Comparative law. International uniform law
ELI-NP will be a new international research infrastructure facility for laser-based Nuclear Physics to be built in Magurele, south west of Bucharest, Romania. For the machine to operate as an intense γ rays’ source based on Compton back-scattering, electron beams are employed, undergoing a two stage acceleration to 320 MeV and 740 MeV (and, with an eventual energy upgrade, also to 840 MeV) beam energies. In order to assess the radiation safety issues, concerning the effectiveness of the dumps in absorbing the primary electron beams, the generated prompt radiation field and the residual dose rates coming from the activation of constituent materials, as well as the shielding of the adjacent environments against both prompt and residual radiation fields, an extensive design study by means of Monte Carlo simulations with FLUKA code was performed, for both low energy 320 MeV and high energy 720 MeV (840 MeV) beam dumps. For the low energy dump we discuss also the rational of the choice to place it in the building basement, instead of installing it in one of the shielding wall at the machine level, as it was originally conceived. Ambient dose equivalent rate constraints, according to the Rumenian law in force in radiation protection matter were 0.1 /iSv/h everywhere outside the shielding walls and 1.4 μiSv/h outside the high energy dump area. The dumps’ placements and layouts are shown to be fully compliant with the dose constraints and environmental impact.
Pierpaolo Mastroianni, Bernardo Monechi, Carlo Liberto
et al.
The comprehension of vehicular traffic in urban environments is crucial to achieve a good management of the complex processes arising from people collective motion. Even allowing for the great complexity of human beings, human behavior turns out to be subject to strong constraints--physical, environmental, social, economic--that induce the emergence of common patterns. The observation and understanding of those patterns is key to setup effective strategies to optimize the quality of life in cities while not frustrating the natural need for mobility. In this paper we focus on vehicular mobility with the aim to reveal the underlying patterns and uncover the human strategies determining them. To this end we analyze a large dataset of GPS vehicles tracks collected in the Rome (Italy) district during a month. We demonstrate the existence of a local optimization of travel times that vehicle drivers perform while choosing their journey. This finding is mirrored by two additional important facts, i.e., the observation that the average vehicle velocity increases by increasing the travel length and the emergence of a universal scaling law for the distribution of travel times at fixed traveled length. A simple modeling scheme confirms this scenario opening the way to further predictions.
Organizational and legal mechanisms of environmental protection are defined by the author of the article as a mechanism of organization and system of activities of state executive power bodies and local self-government bodies in the field of environmental public relations arising in connection with environmental protection and environmental safety provision.
The rules of administrative law are its legal basis, alongside with the norms of environmental law. The former designed to reflect the specifics of the subject, objects, subjects and principles of legal regulation of social relations in this area. The latter define common goals, objectives and functions of state public relations management nature.