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Copyright of Actualidad Jurídica Ambiental is the property of CIEMAT, through its Centro Internacional de Estudios de Derecho Ambiental (CIEDA) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Actualidad Jurídica Ambiental is the property of CIEMAT, through its Centro Internacional de Estudios de Derecho Ambiental (CIEDA) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Purpose: To highlight ongoing and emergent roles of nurses and midwives in advancing the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 at the intersection of social and economic inequity, the climate crisis, interprofessional partnership building, and the rising status and visibility of the professions worldwide. Design: Discussion paper. Methods: Literature review. Findings: Realizing the Sustainable Development Goals will require all nurses and midwives to leverage their roles and responsibility as advocates, leaders, clinicians, scholars, and full partners with multidisciplinary actors and sectors across health systems. Conclusions: Making measurable progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals is critical to human survival, as well as the survival of the planet. Nurses and midwives play an integral part of this agenda at local and global levels. Clinical Relevance: Nurses and midwives can integrate the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals into their everyday clinical work in various contexts and settings. With increased attention to social justice, environmental health, and partnership building, they can achieve exemplary clinical outcomes directly while contributing to the United Nations 2030 Agenda on a global scale and raising the profile of their professions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urgency of the ecological crisis, described as a 'code red for humanity', is also a call to the business ethics community to work even harder for a safe space for humanity. This commentary suggests two specific domains of engagement, with the aim of having more impact in mitigating the ecological crisis: (1) the empirical fact of non-negotiable biophysical thresholds to convey the status and severity of the crisis, and (2) the need for strong laws and regulations—and compliance with these—to guide the aggregated economic activity away from further transgressing biophysical thresholds. Traditionally, business ethics focusses on why and how business can contribute beyond compliance with laws and regulations. By engaging more explicitly with the other two domains, our business ethics community can contribute to distinguish between which are value discussions and which are not, and to the necessity and legitimacy of laws and regulations. This text is a proposal on how we can use business ethics, hence the form of a commentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coming agenda for the European Common Agricultural Policy includes more incentives for the environmental compliance of farmer's activities. This will be particularly important in the case of water risk management in Mediterranean countries. Among the new challenges is the need to evaluate some of the instruments necessary to comply with the Water Framework Directive requirements that emphasize the management of water demand to achieve the environmental targets. Here we analyze the implications of changing water rights as a policy response to these challenges. We analyze two important aspects of the decision: (i) the effects on the crop productivity and efficiency and (ii) the effects on the rural income distribution. We provide the empirical estimations for the marginal effects on the two considered aspects. First, we calculate a stochastic frontier production function for five representative crops using historical data to estimate technical efficiency. Second, we use a decomposition of the Gini coefficient to estimate the impact of irrigation rights changes on yield disparity. In our estimates, we consider both bio-physical and socio-economic aspects to conclude that there are long term implications on both efficiency and social disparities. We find disparities in the adaptation strategies depending on the crop and the region analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work aims to present and describe the process of identifying and ranking environmental aspects of a dry port in Brazil. The general approach includes a literature review on the importance of managing the environmental aspects and impacts in dry ports, followed by a description of the holistic procedures entailed in inventorying the port's activities linked to environmental aspects, the Leopold matrix, and the expert knowledge regarding the local context (e.g., compliance with the law, regional adaptation to climate change strategy, and stakeholder concerns) necessary to perform the ranking. The results showed that emissions to the air, noise, and resource consumption are among the most significant environmental aspects of the dry port. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This forum provides commentary on five accountability articles in this issue. In response to those pieces, it advances the argument that the study of accountability through the framework proposed by Kramarz and Park (and demonstrated by the empirical articles) can uncover key political dynamics that drive the design of global environmental governance initiatives. The utility of the practical application of accountability measures to ensure good design, rather than proper implementation, is less clear. Using the framework to study accountability does, however, provide an opening for debates over initiative design that may lead to improvements in global environmental governance outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Climate change and carbon footprints are among the most urgent concerns facing society and are key issues of corporate responsibility. The purpose of this study is to assess whether Australian companies have adjusted their footprint-related disclosure responses. Adopting a legitimacy perspective, a key aim is to assess whether pragmatic or moral legitimation approaches dominate by determining whether disclosure tends to be more reflective of symbolism or of apparent behaviour. Design/methodology/approach – Content analysis of the sustainability and annual reports of the ASX's Top 50 companies is undertaken to compare carbon footprint-related disclosures in 2008 and 2005. Their extent and nature (action or symbolism) and the use of attention-attracting devices are reported for the more carbon intensive and less carbon intensive sectors. Findings – Footprint-related disclosure rates are increasing, and disclosure is being signalled more prominently. However, while carbon-intensive sectors appear to be pursuing a moral legitimation strategy underpinned by substantive action, the less intensive sectors are relying more heavily on symbolic disclosure. Research limitations/implications – The sample size is small and comprises only large listed Australian companies. Practical implications – While the carbon-intensive sectors appear to be taking encouraging actions, a regulatory response may be required for the less carbon-intensive sectors to take advantage of their market power to facilitate cooperative carbon reduction with broader constituent groups. Further, incentives for the carbon-intensive sectors may be needed to encourage ongoing efforts to bridge the carbon chasm that is emerging. Originality/value – This study appears to be the first to provide direct Australian evidence on favoured legitimation tactics by assessing the symbolic versus behavioural management implicit in carbon footprint-related disclosures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emission limits in the Kyoto Protocol are too generous. Simply tightening these limits, however, will not make a new climate treaty any more effective at addressing climate change unless the other problems with Kyoto are also addressed. A new climate treaty arrangement must enforce both participation and compliance. This might be done by applying an enforcement mechanism, such as a trade restriction, to a new treaty styled after Kyoto. Potent trade restrictions, however, may lack credibility and legitimacy. An alternative approach recommended here is to break the problem up, with separate (but linked) agreements addressing individual gases and sectors, using the most appropriate means to enforce each component of the system. In bundling together all sectors and greenhouse gases in a single agreement, Kyoto has aimed to achieve cost-effectiveness at the expense of enforcement, which depends on the treaty's weakest enforcement link. The imperative must be to ensure that any future treaty arrangement can be enforced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A considerable challenge for the creators of international environmental agreements is how to design mechanisms that deter defection without deterring participation. Relatively "soft" law often garners widespread participation, but it creates few concrete incentives for states to improve behavior. "Harder" commitments make shirking more difficult, but these institutional features may deter from joining the very states whose practices are least consistent with the treaty's requirements. Empirical analyses of ratification of the core agreements of the climate change regime support these propositions. Flexibility provisions provide one mechanism for states to mitigate this dilemma. The findings with regard to one flexibility mechanism strongly support this argument. The results with regard to a second flexibility mechanism, however, tend to follow an opposite pattern. The author offers a preliminary interpretation of this finding. Finally, this article provides insight into how international social networks and the strength of domestic nongovernmental organizations affect ratification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulatory agencies use many chemical standards to help protect human health and the environment. Some of these standards could potentially be adversely influenced by climate change, so it is important to scope the likelihood of such changes, and develop a plan for addressing them. A review of the literature showed that many complex interactions could occur between climate change factors, chemicals, and receptors. However, the way in which chemical standards are currently set is already likely to take into account predicted climate changes in temperate regions, at least implicitly. In contrast, compliance monitoring to ensure that chemical standards are not breached may be compromised if climate change leads to more variability in measured parameters, with a consequent reduction in the statistical power of monitoring programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides an overview of the compliance approaches employed under two environmental agreements, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. Discussion on the compliance theory under multilateral environmental agreements; Ways to facilitate compliance; Steps in managing compliance; Characteristics of commitment efforts.

The article discusses activities of the New Zealand Planning Institute (NZPI) including upcoming conferences in New Zealand such as Planning for Sustainable Development Conference on November 7-10, 2016, Environmental Compliance Conference in Auckland in November 2016, and annual conference of NZPI in Wellington in April 2017. Topics discussed include NZPI's role in New Zealand Planning, urban planning framework, and process of recruiting a chief executive officer by NZPI.