The Political Security Review of the human security subcategory, which focuses on human rights, provides a comprehensive overview of how protecting and promoting human rights is critical to ...maintaining political stability and ensuring security in societies. This subcategory recognizes that violations and abuses of human rights can lead to profound instability, social unrest, and conflict. By focusing on this aspect of human security, policymakers and scholars emphasize the need for a comprehensive approach to protect individuals' fundamental freedoms, ensure their participation in decisionmaking, hold those responsible for human rights violations accountable, and address systemic inequalities. In this way, they seek to create an environment where all people can exercise their rights without fear of retribution or discrimination. A thriving democracy and sustainable peace require not only robust political institutions, but also a commitment to upholding human rights as the basis for achieving lasting security.
Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) the nations of the world have pledged to limit warming to no more than 2 °C above preindustrial levels. However, negotiators ...and policymakers lack the capability to assess the impact of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction proposals offered by the parties on warming and the climate. The climate is a complex dynamical system driven by multiple feedback processes, accumulations, time delays and nonlinearities, but research shows poor understanding of these processes is widespread, even among highly educated people with strong technical backgrounds. Existing climate models are opaque to policymakers and too slow to be effective either in the fast-paced context of policy making or as learning environments to help improve people's understanding of climate dynamics. Here we describe C-ROADS (Climate Rapid Overview And Decision Support), a transparent, intuitive policy simulation model that provides policymakers, negotiators, educators, businesses, the media, and the public with the ability to explore, for themselves, the likely consequences of GHG emissions policies. The model runs on an ordinary laptop in seconds, offers an intuitive interface and has been carefully grounded in the best available science. We describe the need for such tools, the structure of the model, and calibration to climate data and state of the art general circulation models. We also describe how C-ROADS is being used by officials and policymakers in key UNFCCC parties, including the United States, China and the United Nations.
As recognized by the Paris Climate Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), local and subnational regions are crucial actors to achieve international ...mitigation and adaptation commitments. Scientific literature and empirical evidence point at multi-level climate governance as a crucial factor to engage subnational levels in the achievement of national and international objectives. This work focuses on the multi-level climate governance arrangements in Italy to investigate how Italian regions/provinces/cities are contributing to the achievement of national commitments. To this purpose, the paper undertakes a review of the climate policies of different tiers of government adopted to date and of the interrelationships among them. The results of the analysis show that the effective coordination between the different government levels should be strengthened to further incentivize and support initiatives at the local level. Results also show the relevant role played by international regional and city climate networks in boosting local and regional climate planning in Italy.
•Climate plans of 21 Italian regions, 32 provinces, and 32 cities were assessed.•57% of the Italian regions; 13% of provinces and 78% of cities set a carbon target.•10% of regions, no province, and 2% of municipalities have an adaptation plan.•Cities are more active than provinces and regions in defining mitigation policies.•Active multilevel governance is effective for implementing climate plans in cities.
Making Endless War is built on the premise that any attempt to understand how the content and function of the laws of war changed in the second half of the twentieth century should consider two major ...armed conflicts, fought on opposite edges of Asia, and the legal pathways that link them together across time and space. The Vietnam and Arab-Israeli conflicts have been particularly significant in the shaping and attempted remaking of international law from 1945 right through to the present day. This carefully curated collection of essays by lawyers, historians, philosophers, sociologists, and political geographers of war explores the significance of these two conflicts, including their impact on the politics and culture of the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America. The volume foregrounds attempts to develop legal rationales for the continued waging of war after 1945 by moving beyond explaining the end of war as a legal institution, and toward understanding the attempted institutionalization of endless war.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that 843 million people worldwide are hungry and a greater number suffer from nutrient deficiencies. Approximately one billion ...people have inadequate protein intake. The challenge of preventing hunger and malnutrition will become even greater as the global population grows from the current 7.2 billion people to 9.6 billion by 2050. With increases in income, population, and demand for more nutrient‐dense foods, global meat production is projected to increase by 206 million tons per year during the next 35 years. These changes in population and dietary practices have led to a tremendous rise in the demand for food protein, especially animal‐source protein. Consuming the required amounts of protein is fundamental to human growth and health. Protein needs can be met through intakes of animal and plant‐source foods. Increased consumption of food proteins is associated with increased greenhouse gas emissions and overutilization of water. Consequently, concerns exist regarding impacts of agricultural production, processing and distribution of food protein on the environment, ecosystem, and sustainability. To address these challenging issues, the New York Academy of Sciences organized the conference “Frontiers in Agricultural Sustainability: Studying the Protein Supply Chain to Improve Dietary Quality” to explore sustainable innovations in food science and programming aimed at producing the required quality and quantity of protein through improved supply chains worldwide. This report provides an extensive discussion of these issues and summaries of the presentations from the conference.
Since the late 1990s, rising sea levels around the Torres Islands (north Vanuatu, southwest Pacific) have caused strong local and international concern. In 2002-2004, a village was displaced due to ...increasing sea incursions, and in 2005 a United Nations Environment Programme press release referred to the displaced village as perhaps the world's first climate change "refugees." We show here that vertical motions of the Torres Islands themselves dominate the apparent sea-level rise observed on the islands. From 1997 to 2009, the absolute sea level rose by 150 + /-20 mm. But GPS data reveal that the islands subsided by 117 + /-30 mm over the same time period, almost doubling the apparent gradual sea-level rise. Moreover, large earthquakes that occurred just before and after this period caused several hundreds of mm of sudden vertical motion, generating larger apparent sea-level changes than those observed during the entire intervening period. Our results show that vertical ground motions must be accounted for when evaluating sea-level change hazards in active tectonic regions. These data are needed to help communities and governments understand environmental changes and make the best decisions for their future.
During emergencies humanitarian supply chains need to respond swiftly, very often without time for good planning that may end up in excessive waste and emissions. This short‐term focus on saving ...people's lives during disaster responses may harm communities and the planet in the long‐run. Even long‐term (development) focus on improving the life conditions of the poor may be either unsustainable due to the lack of community involvement or inequitable due to lack of resources. At the same time, countries closer to fulfilling the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) suffer less from disasters but still struggle with issues such as social equity. There appears to be an important link between humanitarian operations and SDGs. This special issue focuses on this interaction through a rich variety of contributions using different methodologies, data and lenses, while proposing ways to advance the SDGs. The special issue clearly shows the value operations management can bring to short‐term and long‐term problems society faces.
This article seeks to make sense of two seemingly contradictory aspects of the General Assembly's practice: its history of recommending to States that they impose unilateral sanctions; and its series ...of resolutions denouncing unilateral coercive measures as illegal. It examines the seeming discrepancy between the customary international law position regarding unilateral sanctions, and the position asserted by the Assembly, and argues that on a nuanced reading of the Assembly's resolutions, these positions are not so divergent as is often supposed. The article concludes by examining the scope for the Assembly to make future sanctions recommendations, consistently with its prior condemnation of unilateral coercive measures.
The 2016 UNGASS on drug policy resulted in an Outcome Document detailing profound differences of opinion and practice between different states polarising public health and human rights themes. This ...book examines the different positions, the underlying problems, and the options open for the next international gathering on drugs.
The UN General Assembly has expressed concerns about the relatively large and growing portion of the UN budget spent on total compensation. The United States contributes 22 percent of the UNs ...regular budget. UN total compensation consists of salary, benefits, and allowances. Since its inception in 1945, the UN has based salaries for its professional employees on salaries for the U.S. civil service. This book examines similarities between UN and U.S. government benefits and allowances and compares their monetary values, and examines UN efforts to address concerns about the sustainability of total compensation costs.
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