Hasil untuk "Environmental law"

Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor, Shana L. Hirsch, Trent Dillon et al.

Abstract Offshore and coastal renewable energy could be a key contributor to energy sovereignty, decarbonization efforts, and co-benefits to other sectors of a Blue Economy. However, current development is predominantly focused on large-scale sites to offset emissions to meet national climate action targets, not on providing energy access where it can deliver more direct community benefits and support equity goals. We undertake a global analysis to identify where offshore renewable energy could contribute to an equity-focused goal of providing energy access to coastlines unconnected to existing electric grids, i.e., “last-mile” electrification. Results show that these energy resources are widely distributed throughout the world, and could particularly benefit coastal areas in Oceania, South America, southern and eastern Africa, western Australia, and the Arctic. In contrast, most current investment in offshore and coastal renewable energy—to date, mainly offshore wind sites—is in highly developed regions. Redirecting support to areas in need of electricity requires national and international financial institutions to shift from profit-driven renewable energy developments in highly-developed and energy-rich nations and towards equity-focused development. Making sure that economically marginalized and remote communities with unmet energy needs can both control and benefit from economic and technological developments such as renewable energy is one way to align development processes with energy equity and energy transformation goals, often stated within Blue Economy plans. This requires a conceptual and financial reorientation that emphasizes community energy needs and agency throughout development processes.

Andrea Ciaccio, Francesco Moscone, Elisa Tosetti

In this paper we investigate the causal impact of the European Union Emissions Trading System, a cap-and-trade scheme limiting greenhouse gas emissions of firms, on their environmental performance. Although previous studies have focused primarily on the effect of the emission cap imposed by the policy, we argue that the trading mechanism creates complex interdependencies among firms that can change the policy's intended effects. We develop a novel Difference-in-Differences approach that disentangles the direct causal effects of the scheme on regulated firms from the indirect spillover effects arising from trading among firms. By incorporating potential interference between treated units, our methodology allows a more comprehensive assessment of the policy's overall effectiveness. Monte Carlo simulations show that our proposed estimators perform well in finite samples, confirming the reliability of our approach. To assess the direct and indirect effects of the scheme, we construct a novel database on emissions of European industrial sites by matching information on treated plants from the European Commission's Community Independent Transaction Log with emission data from the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register for the years from 2001 to 2017. We find that the scheme reduced emissions only for non-trading plants, but such reduction is entirely offset when accounting for spillovers from trading plants, thus suggesting that the trading mechanism neutralizes the environmental benefits of the policy. Our findings have important implications for the design of future environmental policies and the ongoing evaluation of cap and trade policies.

Tomofumi Shimoda, Wataru Kokuyama, Hideaki Nozato

Triaxial vibration sensor are widely used used in various application. Recently, low-cost sensors based on micro electro mechanical system (MEMS) technology are also becoming more widely adopted. However, their measurement accuracy can be affected by environmental factors such as temperature. In this study, we developed an environmental testing system integrated with a triaxial vibration exciter. The system can reproduce long-stroke, low-frequency triaxial vibrations -- such as those caused by huge earthquakes -- under temperatures ranging from $-30~^\circ\mathrm{C}$ to $+80~^\circ\mathrm{C}$. Using this system, the measurement accuracy of vibration sensors can be evaluated under different environmental conditions. The system provides highly accurate reference measurements using a laser interferometer and reference accelerometers that are primarily calibrated within the system. The overall accuracy of the reference vibration measurement is estimated to be approximately 0.23~\%. Based on these reference measurements, we investigated the accuracy of earthquake observations using a MEMS accelerometer as a demonstration. The system configuration and testing procedures are presented in this paper.

Eswarasanthosh Kumar Mamillapalli, Nishtha Sharma

Childhood obesity remains a major public health challenge in the United States, strongly influenced by a combination of individual-level, household-level, and environmental-level risk factors. Traditional epidemiological studies typically analyze these levels independently, limiting insights into how structural environmental conditions interact with individual-level characteristics to influence health outcomes. In this study, we introduce a micro-macro machine learning framework that integrates (1) individual-level anthropometric and socioeconomic data from NHANES and (2) macro-level structural environment features, including food access, air quality, and socioeconomic vulnerability extracted from USDA and EPA datasets. Four machine learning models Logistic Regression, Random Forest, XGBoost, and LightGBM were trained to predict obesity using NHANES microdata. XGBoost achieved the strongest performance. A composite environmental vulnerability index (EnvScore) was constructed using normalized indicators from USDA and EPA at the state level. Multi-level comparison revealed strong geographic similarity between states with high environmental burden and the nationally predicted micro-level obesity risk distribution. This demonstrates the feasibility of integrating multi-scale datasets to identify environment-driven disparities in obesity risk. This work contributes a scalable, data-driven, multi-level modeling pipeline suitable for public health informatics, demonstrating strong potential for expansion into causal modeling, intervention planning, and real-time analytics.

Rodrigo de Souza Bulhões, Marina Silva Paez, Dani Gamerman

In this paper, we propose a flexible matrix-variate spatiotemporal model for analyzing multiple response variables observed at spatially distributed locations over time. Our approach relaxes the restrictive assumption of spatial isotropy, which is often unrealistic in environmental and ecological processes. We adopt a deformation-based method that allows the covariance structure to adapt to directional patterns and nonstationary behavior in space. Temporal dynamics are incorporated through dynamic linear models within a fully Bayesian framework, ensuring coherent uncertainty propagation and efficient state-space inference. Additionally, we introduce a strategy for handling missing observations across different variables, preserving the joint data structure without discarding entire time points or stations. Through a simulation study and an application to real-world air quality monitoring data, we demonstrate that incorporating spatial deformation substantially improves interpolation accuracy in anisotropic scenarios while maintaining competitive performance under near-isotropy. The proposed methodology provides a general and computationally tractable framework for multivariate spatiotemporal modeling with incomplete data.

D. Zakharova, G. De Lucia, B. Vulcani et al.

Galaxy properties correlate with their position within the cosmic web. While galaxies are observed in an environment today, they may have experienced different environments in the past. The environmental history, linked to pre-processing, leaves an imprint on the properties of galaxies. We use the GAEA semi-analytic model and IllustrisTNG to reconstruct the environmental histories of galaxies between $z=0$ and $z=4$ that today reside in filaments. Our goal is to understand how galaxy properties are related to their past environments, and the role of the cosmic web in shaping their properties. We find that filament galaxies at $z=0$ are a heterogeneous mix of populations with distinct environmental histories. The vast majority of them have experienced group processing, with only $\sim$20\% remaining centrals throughout their life. For $\rm 9 < \log_{10}(M_{star}/M_{sun}) < 10$ galaxies, models confirm that the environmental effects are primarily driven by group processing: satellites stop growing stellar mass and exhibit elevated quenched fractions, whereas filament galaxies remain centrals have properties that are similar to field galaxies. Massive galaxies ($\rm \log_{10}(M_{star}/M_{sun}) > 10$) that have never been satellites and entered filaments more than 9 Gyr ago show accelerated stellar mass assembly and higher quenched fractions relative to the field, due to a higher frequency of merger events inside filaments, even at fixed mass. The most massive $\rm \log ((M_{star} / M_{sun}) > 11$) galaxies accreted onto filaments over 9 Gyr ago, highlighting the role of filaments in building up the high-mass end of the galaxy population. Filaments regulate galaxy evolution in a mass-dependent way: group environments regulate low-mass galaxies, while filaments favour the growth of massive galaxies.

H. O. Fatoyinbo, P. Tiwari, P. O. Olanipekun et al.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), especially the H5N1 strain, remains a major threat to animal health, food security, and public health. Recent spillover events in dairy cattle in the United States, linked to wild birds, highlight the critical importance of understanding transmission pathways at the cattle--wild bird--environment interface. In this work, we formulate and analyze a deterministic compartmental model that captures the transmission of HPAI between dairy cattle and wild birds, incorporating both direct and indirect (environmental) routes. The model combines an $SEIR$ framework for cattle with an $SIR$ structure for wild birds, coupled through an environmental compartment. We derive the basic reproduction number, $\mathcal{R}_{0}$, using the next-generation matrix approach, decomposing it into cattle-to-cattle, bird-to-bird, and environmental contributions. Qualitative analysis establishes positivity, boundedness, and global stability of equilibria through Lyapunov functions. Numerical simulations confirm the results of the theoretical analyses, illustrating outbreak trajectories, extinction thresholds, and persistence dynamics. A global sensitivity analysis, based on Latin hypercube sampling and partial rank correlation coefficients, identifies key parameters, particularly transmission among cattle, environmental contamination, and recovery rate as critical drivers of epidemic outcomes. Our results show that disease elimination is achievable when $\mathcal{R}_{0} < 1$, while persistence is inevitable for $\mathcal{R}_{0} > 1$. These findings provide a comprehensive mathematical framework for assessing HPAI risks and offer guidance for biosecurity strategies aimed at mitigating spillover and controlling outbreaks in livestock populations.

Abdorasoul Sadeghi, Soheil Roudari, Hela Nammouri

Given the importance of the global issues of climate change and environmental pollution in sustainable development, this study aims to investigate whether there is a connection among green finance, fossil energy, and institutional factors, considering the significance of a transition to renewable clean energy from fossil energy in sustainable development. For this purpose, the effects of fossil energy on the S&P green bonds are compared by considering and ignoring institutional quality as an interaction term in various oil shocks, using the threshold structural vector autoregression (TSVAR) technique for the US in 2012–2019. The findings indicate that the sensitivity of green bonds to oil shocks is limited to short-term periods. Institutional factors make this sensitivity more persistent, extending into the medium and long term. These results highlight the significance of institutional quality in the development of green bonds, especially when the oil market and the large amount of money circulating into it create grounds for corruption, the role of administrative integrity, legal structures, and government policies becomes more prominent. Hence, the integrity and quality of institutional factors, which includes corruption incentives, democratic accountability, government stability, bureaucracy as well as law and orders, should be taken into account in policymaking.

Alessandro Truant, Federica Giacometti, Jorge Hernández et al.

Artisanal fisheries in southern Chile rely heavily on the Patagonian red octopus (<i>Enteroctopus megalocyathus</i>) as a valuable resource, contributing significantly to local economies. This octopus species accounts for 25–40% of Chilean octopus landings. It is a merobenthic species, characterized by a semelparous life cycle and a long brooding period, and it is distributed along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the southern tip of South America, inhabiting holes and crevices in rocky substrates. However, this fishery faces critical challenges to both its ecological sustainability and the food safety of octopus products. The primary fishing method, using hooks, poses a risk to reproductive capacity as it can capture brooding females. Food safety concerns arise from microbial contamination during pre- and post-harvest handling, bioaccumulation of toxins from algal blooms, and the presence of heavy metals in the marine environment. While evisceration effectively reduces the risk of consuming toxins and heavy metals, inadequate hygiene practices and insufficient ice usage throughout the production chain represent significant food safety risks. Chilean fishing Law No. 18892/1989 defines artisanal fishing and establishes territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs) to promote sustainable extraction of benthic resources. Integrating training programs on post-harvest handling, hygiene practices, and food safety measures into the TURFs framework, along with targeted investments in infrastructure and technical assistance, is crucial to ensure the long-term sustainability of the <i>E. megalocyathus</i> fishery, protect consumer health, and maintain the economic viability and environmental sustainability of this vital resource for local communities.

Shrey Aryan, Michael B. Law

We establish a concavity principle for solutions to elliptic and parabolic equations on locally symmetric spaces with nonnegative sectional curvature, extending the results of Langford and Scheuer. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first general concavity principle established on spaces with non-constant sectional curvature.

Prabhu Shakti, Martin Natasha

There has been international recognition of the burgeoning climate change crisis, with numerous conventions attempting to foster collaboration and cooperation between countries. However, it has been established that there exists a discrepancy, with certain countries historically polluting more, while other countries bear the brunt of these erratic changes with specific categories of people having to bear even more. Through this there arises a requirement to analyze the efforts countries make to alleviate climate change, especially their interaction with other nations in terms of forming alliances or adopting similar measures. The utopian ideation behind law is to provide a voice for the voiceless and to safeguard the interests of the masses. Though corruption and sheer inefficiency has riddled this powerful tool with deficits. The current rate of environmental degradation demarcates the failure of the law, as marginalized communities continue to face mass discrimination and struggle to mobilize to courts. It is important to understand the bodies involved in governance and the unique manner in which an issue gets addressed through the system. Only through this understanding can gaps be bridged and functional legislation enacted. Moreover, as there is a shift in global politics and a need to deconstruct Western hegemony, it is crucial to understand the Global South’s perspectives in dealing with the contention of climate change. In particular, countries like India and Morocco that are distinct but share certain common intricacies as developing countries with torrid pasts. This paper aspires to explore and examine Indian and Moroccan environmental acts or laws towards protection in juxtaposition to the surmounting levels of pollution.

Maryam Salajeghe, Mehran Ameri

As international desalination capacities have increased, brine from desalination plants has become an environmental danger to ecosystems. Thus, it is essential to treat such hypersaline brines. This case study uses a hybrid RO-freeze desalination system and an evaporation pond to treat desalination brine. A thermodynamic analysis based on the mass and energy balances is initially performed for the proposed system. Then, RO-freeze Desalination and Reverse Osmosis desalination have been compared from the viewpoint of energy consumption and the amount of brine discharge. The effects of temperature and salinity in the feedwater and the Fs factor on energy consumption and the quantity of brine discharge are under investigation. The results show a 30% increase in recovery in RO-FD compared to reverse osmosis desalination, while SEC has only a 40% increase. The specific energy consumption, second-law efficiency, and evaporation pond area are 6–12 kWh/m3, 7–12 %, and 20000-52000 m2, respectively. It is coupled with a CO2 cooling system that freezes seawater in a crystallizer and melts ice in a chamber. The evident rise in water product and decreased residual brine amount create an exceptionally appealing desalination process.

Pisarić Milana

In Serbia, the planning, arrangement, and use of space, as well as the construction of facilities and the performance of construction works, are regulated by the Law on Planning and Construction, which requires that spatial and urban plans be in conformity with the Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia, as the fundamental and highest-level document in this field of planning. At the same time, in the planning system of the Republic of Serbia, it represents a development-planning document with which all strategies and other public policy documents must be in conformity. However, the long-term foundations for the organization, arrangement, use, and protection of the territory of the Republic of Serbia, aimed at harmonizing economic and social development with the natural, ecological, and cultural potentials and constraints of its territory, were established only for the period from 2010 to 2020 and not beyond this point. Consequently, from the perspective of environmental impact, the author examines the strategic-development and general regulatory functions of the Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia. In this regard, the paper also analyzes the adequacy of the solutions provided by the Law on Planning and Construction and accompanying by-laws, as well as their conformity with the rules on strategic environmental impact assessment of plans and on environmental impact assessment of projects. This is particularly significant given that the Law explicitly prohibits the application of the provisions of other laws that regulate the issues covered by this Law in a different manner, except for those laws and regulations governing environmental protection.

Li Chen, Paul Nikolaev, David J. Prömel

We study a continuous-time version of the Hegselmann-Krause model describing the opinion dynamics of interacting agents subject to random perturbations. Mathematically speaking, the opinion of agents is modelled by an interacting particle system with a non-Lipschitz continuous interaction force, perturbed by idiosyncratic and environmental noises. Sending the number of agents to infinity, we derive a McKean-Vlasov stochastic differential equation as the limiting dynamic, by establishing propagation of chaos for regularized versions of the noisy opinion dynamics. To that end, we prove the existence of a unique strong solution to the McKean-Vlasov stochastic differential equation as well as well-posedness of the associated non-local, non-linear stochastic Fokker-Planck equation.

Jonas Scholz, Tom R. Andersson, Anna Vaughan et al.

Machine learning (ML)-based weather models have recently undergone rapid improvements. These models are typically trained on gridded reanalysis data from numerical data assimilation systems. However, reanalysis data comes with limitations, such as assumptions about physical laws and low spatiotemporal resolution. The gap between reanalysis and reality has sparked growing interest in training ML models directly on observations such as weather stations. Modelling scattered and sparse environmental observations requires scalable and flexible ML architectures, one of which is the convolutional conditional neural process (ConvCNP). ConvCNPs can learn to condition on both gridded and off-the-grid context data to make uncertainty-aware predictions at target locations. However, the sparsity of real observations presents a challenge for data-hungry deep learning models like the ConvCNP. One potential solution is 'Sim2Real': pre-training on reanalysis and fine-tuning on observational data. We analyse Sim2Real with a ConvCNP trained to interpolate surface air temperature over Germany, using varying numbers of weather stations for fine-tuning. On held-out weather stations, Sim2Real training substantially outperforms the same model architecture trained only with reanalysis data or only with station data, showing that reanalysis data can serve as a stepping stone for learning from real observations. Sim2Real could thus enable more accurate models for weather prediction and climate monitoring.

James Lee Wei Shung, Andrea Piazzoni, Roshan Vijay et al.

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) being developed these days rely on various sensor technologies to sense and perceive the world around them. The sensor outputs are subsequently used by the Automated Driving System (ADS) onboard the vehicle to make decisions that affect its trajectory and how it interacts with the physical world. The main sensor technologies being utilized for sensing and perception (S&P) are LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), camera, RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging), and ultrasound. Different environmental parameters would have different effects on the performance of each sensor, thereby affecting the S&P and decision-making (DM) of an AV. In this publication, we explore the effects of different environmental parameters on LiDARs and cameras, leading us to conduct a study to better understand the impact of several of these parameters on LiDAR performance. From the experiments undertaken, the goal is to identify some of the weaknesses and challenges that a LiDAR may face when an AV is using it. This informs AV regulators in Singapore of the effects of different environmental parameters on AV sensors so that they can determine testing standards and specifications which will assess the adequacy of LiDAR systems installed for local AV operations more robustly. Our approach adopts the LiDAR test methodology first developed in the Urban Mobility Grand Challenge (UMGC-L010) White Paper on LiDAR performance against selected Automotive Paints.

Yoko Rasaki Rasaki, Wetria Fauzi, Tasman Tasman

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become an obligation for every company in the form of a Limited Liability Company which in the process uses Natural Resources in Indonesia, this is regulated in Article 74 of Law Number 40 of 2007 concerning Limited Liability Companies and Government Regulation Number 47 of 2012 concerning Social and Environmental Responsibility of Limited Liability Companies, but during the COVID-19 Pandemic with the existence of Large-Scale Social Restrictions (PSBB) for industries and offices referring to Article 4 of Government Regulation Number 21 of 2020, the implementation of CSR for PT Semen Padang was not carried out properly. Based on Presidential Instruction Number 4 of 2020 concerning Refocusing Activities, Budget Reallocation, and Procurement of Goods and Services in the Context of Accelerating the Handling of Corona Virus Disease 19 (COVID-19), states that the use of existing budgets for activities that accelerate the handling of COVID-19. This resulted in the planning of CSR activities in the Company's Activity Budget Plan (RKAP) which had been approved through the General Meeting of Shareholders (GMS) experiencing changes. Based on this, the problem formulation in this study explains how the Implementation of Corporate Social Responsibility Activities during the COVID-19 Pandemic at PT Semen Padang, as well as knowing what obstacles there are in its implementation. The research method used is empirical legal research. The implementation of PT Semen Padang's CSR activities during the COVID-19 Pandemic, which is guided by the Regulation of the Minister of State-Owned Enterprises of the Republic of Indonesia number PER-05 / MBU / 04/2021, focuses its activities on providing assistance to the community from previously more in carrying out community empowerment activities directly in the field, while the obstacles experienced come from the budget, PSBB regulations and community dependence

Joachim Tremosa, Joachim Tremosa, Rasmus Jakobsen et al.

Underground Hydrogen storage (UHS) is a promising technology for safe storage of large quantities of hydrogen, in daily to seasonal cycles depending on the consumption requirements. The development of UHS requires anticipating hydrogen behavior to prevent any unexpected economic or environmental impact. An open question is the hydrogen reactivity in underground porous media storages. Indeed, there is no consensus on the effects or lack of geochemical reactions in UHS operations because of the strong coupling with the activity of microbes using hydrogen as electron donor during anaerobic reduction reactions. In this work, we apply different geochemical models to abiotic conditions or including the catalytic effect of bacterial activity in methanogenesis, acetogenesis and sulfate-reduction reactions. The models are applied to Lobodice town gas storage (Czech Republic), where a conversion of hydrogen to methane was measured during seasonal gas storage. Under abiotic conditions, no reaction is simulated. When the classical thermodynamic approach for aqueous redox reactions is applied, the simulated reactivity of hydrogen is too high. The proper way to simulate hydrogen reactivity must include a description of the kinetics of the aqueous redox reactions. Two models are applied to simulate the reactions of hydrogen observed at Lobodice gas storage. One modeling the microbial activity by applying energy threshold limitations and another where microbial activity follows a Monod-type rate law. After successfully calibrating the bio-geochemical models for hydrogen reactivity on existing gas storage data and constraining the conditions where microbial activity will inhibit or enhance hydrogen reactivity, we now have a higher confidence in assessing the hydrogen reactivity in future UHS in aquifers or depleted reservoirs.

Fengjie Gao, Wei Yang, Si Zhang et al.

Ecological security pattern (ESP) can bridge the paradox between ecological conservation and socioeconomic development. Although various methods have been applied to establish ESP successfully, improving its scientificity and reliability for regional sustainability are still great challenges. Taking Harbin administrative region as the study area, this paper integrated the merits of the function-oriented method (assessing the importance of ecological services using the InVEST model) and the structure-oriented method (extracting the connectivity of landscapes based on the MSPA model) to improve the identification of ecological sources more scientifically. Night light data were used to modify the natural resistance surface to reveal the real natural and human disturbance for ES loss during species migration and ecological flows. Then, the ESP was established by combining the ecological nodes after extracting and grading the ecological corridors. The results showed that the individual ES performed with a high spatial heterogeneity and was highly correlated with land use patterns. The extremely important and slightly important were the dominant level types in the study area, and the proportion of extremely important declined greatly from 44.78% in 1980 to 30.14% in 2020. Core was the main landscape type with a proportion of 57.13% and mainly distributed in the Lesser Khingan Mountains and Zhangguangcai Mountains. More than 700 ecological corridors were extracted according to the MCR model and the important ecological corridors were selected based on the gravity model, with 86 ecological nodes obtained from the intersection points of ecological corridors. An ESP of “two zones, two barriers, one axis and one belt” was proposed, and relevant protection measures were put out for the sustainable development in the study area. The findings indicated that imposing ESP could form a stable secure frame for social economic development and ecological protection, avoiding irrational land use modes and excessive dispersion of landscapes. This study could provide valuable references for land use planning and the formulation of related ecological protection policies and regional sustainable development strategies.

Ricardo Cavalcante Barroso

A avaliação e o controle de impactos no Brasil se constituem de instrumentos fundamentais para a proteção do meio ambiente ecologicamente equilibrado, valor e bem essencial para a manutenção da qualidade de vida para as presentes e futuras gerações. Nessa perspectiva, o momento da tomada de decisão sobre a viabilidade ambiental de empreendimentos capazes de proporcionar significativos impactos ao meio ambiente demanda constante aprimoramento no sentido de tornar cada mais apropriada, completa e holística a gestão do meio ambiente. Com esse propósito, o estudo foca atenção nas etapas de triagem (screening) e escopo (scoping), destacando as suas relevâncias para proporcionar uma abordagem compreensiva dos impactos de modo mais inclusiva e capaz de antecipar os riscos da atividade impactante. Assim, a fase de definição dos estudos mais apropriados para a compreensão dos impactos de empreendimentos, ainda em sua fase de concepção (escopo) e a fase de definição da exigência do EIA/RIMA afiguram-se como etapa das mais relevantes para o atingimento dos objetivos legais impregnados à avaliação de impactos ambientais.