Framework Convention on Climate Change

One of the crucial questions which emerges in the context of REDD is how the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities will be protected. These rights include the rights of sharing in the financial benefits of REDD , the rights to participate in decision-making around REDD schemes, and the rights to have their knowledge about forestry resources respected. Each of these issues depends on the extent to which they have some sort of claim to, or tenure over, tropical rainforests. While the REDD Advance Negotiating Text is ‘groundbreaking’ for including references to the rights of indigenous peoples, and local communities, the implementation of these rights requires clarity with respect to the type of tenure which grants property rights in forest carbon. In addition, the rights cannot be simply asserted without undertaking a detailed legal analysis of transparency norms, legal standing and transparent access to decision-making in each tropical rainforest country.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1628387_code609399.pdf?abstractid=1628387&rulid=5310512&mirid=2

REDD+, Transparency, Participation and Resource Rights: The Role of Law

Cities are key in climate mitigation and adaptation, and they have developed into sites of innovative urban climate governance that can spur on climate action. Building on this development, a rich scholarship (within earth system governance and beyond) is now available that seeks to understand the development and performance of urban climate governance around the world. This article systematically reviews a decade of urban climate governance scholarship (building on 260 publications from 2009 to 2018). It is informed in this by four research challenges that were identified by leading scholars of urban climate governance a decade ago. The article seeks to understand how much progress has been made in the literature during this decade, and to identify the key research challenges for the critical decade that lies ahead of us.

Studying urban climate governance: Where to begin, what to look for, and how to make a meaningful contribution to scholarship and practice

Mangrove forests have been considered as potentially suitable for PES, though few mangrove PES schemes exist worldwide, suggesting they - and the broader social-ecological and governance systems in which they sit - may not be as conducive to PES as first thought. This study assesses economic, social, and governance challenges to implementing PES in mangroves. It draws on empirical evidence from two prospective community-level mangrove carbon PES schemes in the Philippines, where fishing and aquaculture are major livelihoods. We conducted (1) policy reviews and interviews with local communities, government, and NGOs to investigate governability; (2) village income accounting to determine the extra income that participants could receive through PES; and (3) a choice ranking exercise to elicit preferences on how payments could best be spent to enhance participant wellbeing. The latter approach identifies key gender differences, and enables potential PES-induced social-ecological trade-offs to be pre-empted. Blue carbon PES can contribute an additional 2.3–5.8% of current village incomes, while villagers would prefer to spend the monies on more effective fishing equipment, which could perversely jeopardize fishery sustainability. To be most successful, coastal PES schemes in the Philippines need to be managed through a multi-level governance regime involving co-management and local participation.

Governance and implementation challenges for mangrove forest Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES): Empirical evidence from the Philippines

Single-use plastic (SUP) being a versatile material, is adopted as an alternate to traditional materials specifically for the use in food packaging due to its inherent characteristics like high durability, inertness, and protecting ability but has become a curse for living being today due to its random usage and unplanned rejection to nature. Mostly plastics used in packaging of beverages, fresh meats, fruits and vegetables are under concern today. Single-use packages result in generation of several billion tons of garbage till date, which pollutes the environment. At the immediate past, it has come to light that micro plastics obtained due to slow degradation of SUP present in oceans, are also being consumed by marine organisms such as fishes and shellfish species which disturbs the marine life extensively. Hence, finding right strategy to mitigate the plastic waste related issues has becoming inevitable today. This review paper briefs various strategies undertaken worldwide to mitigate the pollution due to generation of plastic waste. Various notable impact of adopted strategies and recent innovations to replace the SUP products are also discussed and in view of this a roadmap is also suggested which can be used to achieve the milestone of Zero Plastic Waste.

Challenges and possible solutions to mitigate the problems of single-use plastics used for packaging food items: a review

This book identifies the fundamental legal principles and the governance requirements of sustainable forest management. An analytical model for assessing forest regulation is created which identifies the doctrinal concepts that underpin forest regulation (justice, property, sovereignty and governance). It also highlights the dominant public international institutions involved in forest regulation (UNFF, UNFCCC and WB) which is followed by analysis of non-state international forest regulation (forest certification and ecosystem markets). The book concludes by making a number of practical recommendations for reform of global forest governance arrangements and suggested reforms for individual international forest institutions.

Global Forest Governance: Legal Concepts and Policy Trends

"This volume, the second in a series of three, examines the institutional architecture underpinning the global climate integrity system. This system comprises an inter-related set of institutions, governance arrangements, regulations, norms and practices that aim to implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Arguing that governance is a neutral term to describe the structures and processes that coordinate climate action, the book presents a continuum of governance values from ‘thick’ to ‘thin’ to determine the regime’s legitimacy and integrity. The collection contains four parts with part one exploring the links between governance and integrity, part two containing chapters which evaluate climate governance arrangements, part three exploring avenues for improving climate governance and part four reflecting on the road to the UNFCCC's Paris Agreement. The book provides new insights into understanding how systemic institutional and governance failures have occurred, how they could occur again in the same or different form and how these failures impact on the integrity of the UNFCCC. This work extends contemporary governance scholarship to explore the extent to which selected institutional case studies, thematic areas and policy approaches contribute to the overall integrity of the regime."--Publisher website

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Governing the Climate Change Regime : Institutional Integrity and Integrity Systems

Global Forest Governance

The increasing international political, public and scientific engagement in matters of environmental sustainability and development has produced a rapidly expanding body of environmental law and policy. The advent of international protocols, directives, and multilateral agreements has occurred concomitantly with the harmonisation of widespread environmental regimes of governance and enforcement within numerous domestic settings. This has created an unprecedented need for environmental legal apparatuses to manage, regulate and adjudicate legislation seeking to protect, sustain and develop global natural habitats. The evolving literature in green criminology continues to explore these developments within discourses of power, harm and justice. Such critiques have emphasised the role of dedicated environmental courts to address environmental crimes and injustices. In this article, we examine the important role of specialist courts in responding to environmental crime, with specific reference to the State of Queensland. We offer a critique of existing processes and practices for the adjudication of environmental crime and propose new jurisdictional and procedural approaches for enhancing justice. We conclude that specialist environmental courts endowed with broad civil and criminal jurisdiction are an integral part of an effective response to environmental crime.

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Environmental crime and specialist courts: The case for a 'one-stop (judicial) shop' in Queensland

The chapters in this book explore the impact of recent shifts in global and regional power and the subsequent development and enforcement of international refugee protection standards in the Asia Pacific region. Drawing on their expertise across a number of jurisdictions, the contributors assess the challenges confronting the implementation of international law in the region, as well as new opportunities for extending protection norms into national and regional dialogues. The case studies span key jurisdictions across the region and include a comparative analysis with China, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Australia. This topical and important book raises critical questions for the Asia Pacific region and sheds light on the challenges confronting the protection of refugees and displaced persons in this area. Interdisciplinary in its approach, it will be of interest to academics, researchers, students and policy-makers concerned with the rights and protection of refugees.

Rowena Maguire

Papers

Global Forest Governance: Legal Concepts and Policy Trends

Governing the Climate Change Regime : Institutional Integrity and Integrity Systems

Global Forest Governance

Environmental crime and specialist courts: The case for a 'one-stop (judicial) shop' in Queensland

Protection of Refugees and Displaced Persons in the Asia Pacific Region