Biosphere reserves established under the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Program aim to harmonise biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Concerns over the extent to which the reserve ...network was living up to this ideal led to the development of a new strategy in 1995 (the Seville Strategy) to enhance the operation of the network of reserves. An evaluation of effectiveness of management of the biosphere reserve network was called for as part of this strategy. Expert opinion was assembled through a Delphi Process to identify successful and less successful reserves and investigate common factors influencing success or failure. Ninety biosphere reserves including sixty successful and thirty less successful reserves in 42 countries across all five Man and the Biosphere Program regions were identified. Most successful sites are the post-Seville generation while the majority of unsuccessful sites are pre-Seville that are managed as national parks and have not been amended to conform to the characteristics that are meant to define a biosphere reserve. Stakeholder participation and collaboration, governance, finance and resources, management, and awareness and communication are the most influential factors in the success or failure of the biosphere reserves. For success, the biosphere reserve concept needs to be clearly understood and applied through landscape zoning. Designated reserves then need a management system with inclusive good governance, strong participation and collaboration, adequate finance and human resource allocation and stable and responsible management and implementation. All rather obvious but it is difficult to achieve without commitment to the biosphere reserve concept by the governance authorities.
•We identified 60 successful and 30 less successful biosphere reserves in 42 countries.•Most of the successful biosphere reserves belong to the post-Seville generation.•Most unsuccessful sites are non-compliant pre-Seville biosphere reserves.•Successful sites show evidence of conceptual implementation in design and management.•Commitment of the government authority promotes biosphere reserve success.
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction reported that the 2011 natural disasters, including the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, resulted in $366 billion in direct damages and ...29,782 fatalities worldwide. Storms and floods accounted for up to 70% of the 302 natural disasters worldwide in 2011, with earthquakes producing the greatest number of fatalities. Average annual losses in the United States amount to about $55 billion. Enhancing community and system resilience could lead to massive savings through risk reduction and expeditious recovery. The rational management of such reduction and recovery is facilitated by an appropriate definition of resilience and associated metrics. In this article, a resilience definition is provided that meets a set of requirements with clear relationships to the metrics of the relevant notions of reliability and risk. Those metrics also meet logically consistent requirements drawn from measure theory, and provide a sound basis for the development of effective decision‐making tools for multihazard environments. Improving the resiliency of a system to meet target levels requires the examination of system enhancement alternatives in economic terms, within a decision‐making framework. Relevant decision analysis methods would typically require the examination of resilience based on its valuation by society at large. The article provides methods for valuation and benefit‐cost analysis based on concepts from risk analysis and management.
Historically, there has been inadequate recognition of the need for persons with disabilities to have the opportunity for meaningful sexual expression. Many impediments lie in the way of such ...recognition and, for some with a disability, professional assistance is required. In a precedent-setting decision by the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia (National Disability Insurance Agency v WRMF (2020) 276 FCR 415; 2020 FCAFC 79) a woman with multiple sclerosis who had been accepted onto the National Disability Insurance Scheme was affirmed to be eligible for taxpayer-funded receipt of services from a sex worker, in spite of the National Disability Insurance Scheme having declined such services as not constituting a reasonable and necessary support. However, it may be that the decision will be overturned by a controversial legislative amendment. This section reviews the reasoning in the decision and the human rights and political issues raised by the decision that require consideration and engagement.
The substantial contribution of migrants to the global economy via remittances is particularly pronounced in developing countries, underscoring their economic significance. However, a considerable ...number of migrants embark on perilous journeys, resulting in over 46,000 migrant deaths since 2000. Human rights abuses further compound these challenges. This article delves into the intricate issues faced by millions of migrants, scrutinizing their economic roles and the absence of comprehensive legal protection. By highlighting the imminent demographic challenge, it explores the potential of migration in mitigating its impact. Stressing the imperative need for robust legal frameworks grounded in international human rights laws, the article advocates upholding migrants' fundamental rights as a pivotal strategy to avert the impending crisis. Employing a Critical Research framework, it analyzes international human rights laws and puts forth policy recommendations to mitigate the adverse effects of the impending demographic tsunami. The article concludes that the urgent necessity of embracing a human rights-centered approach to migration is evident, emphasizing its potential to alleviate the looming demographic challenges and propel inclusive economic development by recognizing migrants as valuable human capital.
This paper aimed to shed light on the united nations concerns toward the environment, as it known that the environment was used as a concept for the first time in the united nation conference which ...was took in place on 1972 instead of the human environment concept, This was preceded by approval the environment world day on 1968. The paper also posed problematic which was centered about the environmental international law emergence, also the role of the international conferences, organizations toward the sustainable development, and the United Nations efforts about the environment issues, the paper found that there are several international significant achievements and projects at the field of environment
Historically, impact assessment practice has not explicitly considered human rights. That human rights are relevant to business has been confirmed through the United Nations Human Rights Council's ...endorsement of the 'Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights'. Special Representative to the Secretary-General on business and human rights, Professor John Ruggie, advocated awareness of 'rights-holders' and 'duty-bearers' and a shift from third parties "naming and shaming" companies as a way of addressing human rights harms to companies also "knowing and showing" how they are taking responsibility for their human rights impacts and managing their human rights risks. Consideration of human rights should therefore be central to impact assessment for private sector projects, especially those affecting livelihoods, environment, health, safety and security, land and property, culture and gender dynamics. We provide an introduction to the business and human rights debate, discuss the relevance of human rights to the field of impact assessment, and examine a range of challenges associated with integrating the fields of human rights and social impact assessment.
In order to avoid harmful interference in the radio-frequency spectrum, geosynchronous (GEO) satellite operators coordinate their plans with one another by publicly describing their preferred orbital ...positions and frequency bands in an assignment process managed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the United Nations. But once assignments are determined, how well do satellite operators comply with them? This work describes a method for assessing GEO satellite operators’ compliance with the physical component of the ITU’s satellite network assignments in the geostationary belt using publicly available data. The positions of real, cataloged GEO satellites, measured in longitudinal degrees, are compared with data describing ITU satellite networks published by the Union’s Space Services Department to determine whether satellites are operating near an active network assigned to one of their corresponding ITU administrations. Compliance for three satellites that perform relatively frequent longitudinal-shift maneuvers in GEO — Telesat’s Nimiq 2, Russia’s Luch (Olymp), and China’s SJ-17 — is assessed over a multi-year study period and discussed. This work illustrates how historical compliance assessment can contribute to the identification and characterization of anomalous satellite behaviors, such as re-positioning the same satellite repeatedly to bring many ITU satellite networks into use, performing non-cooperative close approaches with nearby neighbors, and rendezvous operations, in the Nimiq, Luch, and SJ-17 examples, respectively.
•Geosynchronous orbit is the only orbital regime with an existing slotting scheme.•Keeping to assigned orbital positions and frequencies prevents harmful interference.•Once assignments are determined, satellite operators do not always comply with them.•Publicly available data can be used to assess compliance with orbital assignments.•Patterns of violation to guidelines in GEO should inform new rules in LEO.
This study explores the normative dimension of the evolving role of the United Nations in peace and security and, ultimately, in governance. What is dealt with here is both the UN's changing raison ...d'être and the wider normative context within which the organisation is located. The study looks at the UN through the window of one of its most contentious, yet least understood, practices: active involvement in intra-state conflicts as epitomised by UN peacekeeping. Drawing on the conceptual tools provided by the 'historical structural' approach, this study seeks to understand how and why the international community continuously reinterprets or redefines the UN's role with regard to intra-state conflicts. The study concentrates on intra-states 'peacekeeping environments', and examines what changes, if any, have occurred to the normative basis of UN peacekeeping in intra-state conflicts from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. One of the original aspects of the study is its analytical framework, where the conceptualisation of 'normative basis' revolves around objectives, functions and authority, and is closely connected with the institutionalised values in the UN Charter such as state sovereignty, human rights and socio-economic development. This book is essential reading for postgraduate students of IR and international peacekeeping organisations.
This Viewpoint describes steps to reduce structural racism and other forms of discrimination in global health, particularly within the United Nations network.
This article addresses the urgent need for critical analysis of the relationships between sport and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals enshrined in the United Nations’ global development framework, ...the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Importantly, there has yet to be any substantial academic exploration of the implications of the position accorded to sport as ‘an important enabler’ of the aims of 2030 Agenda and its broad set of Sustainable Development Goals. In beginning to address this gap, we draw on the concept of policy coherence for two reasons. First, the designation of a specific Target for policy coherence in the 2030 Agenda is recognition of its centrality in working towards Sustainable Development Goals that are considered as ‘integrated and indivisible’. Second, the concept of policy coherence is centred on a dualism that enables holistic examination of both synergies through which the contribution of sport to the Sustainable Development Goals can be enhanced as well as incoherencies by which sport may detract from such outcomes. Our analysis progresses through three examples that respectively focus on: the common orientation of the Sport for Development and Peace ‘movement’ towards education-orientated objectives aligned with Sustainable Development Goal 4; potential synergies between sport participation policies and the Sustainable Development Goal 3 Target for reducing non-communicable diseases; and practices within professional football in relation to several migration-related Sustainable Development Goal Targets. These examples show the relevance of the Sustainable Development Goals across diverse sectors of the sport industry and illustrate complexities within and across countries that make pursuit of comprehensive policy coherence infeasible. Nevertheless, our analyses lead us to encourage both policy makers and researchers to continue to utilise the concept of policy coherence as a valuable lens to identify and consider factors that may enable and constrain various potential contributions of sport to a range of Sustainable Development Goals.
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