You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The right to a healthy environment has been the subject of extensive philosophical debates that revolve around the question: Should rights to clean air, water, and soil be entrenched in law? David Boyd answers this by moving beyond theoretical debates to measure the practical effects of enshrining the right in constitutions. His pioneering analysis of 193 constitutions and the laws and court decisions of more than 100 nations in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa reveals a positive correlation between constitutional protection and stronger environmental laws, smaller ecological footprints, superior environmental performance, and improved quality of life.
Democratic leadership is the most familiar form of leadership and yet the least well understood by people in democratic countries. This book explores the tensions and dilemmas that beset such leadership in order to explain why democracies produce simultaneously the strongest and weakest of leaders.
Utilizing case studies of seven Latin American countries, this book reassesses the role of legal institutions in the politics of the region.
Peru's industrial mining sector is highly conflictual and characterized by social disputes. Many of these conflicts are fought not only in politics but also in the courts, as activists attempt to hold corporate and state actors liable for human rights violations. At the same time, they face an increasing criminalization of their protests. Law is thus both an emancipatory tool for activists to access justice and an instrument for political and economic elites to prevent social change. Based on ethnographic field work, Angela Lindt sheds light on various mining disputes in Cajamarca and Piura and examines the role of law in resolving these conflicts.
This book is intended to fill a gap in climate-change literature by providing a comprehensive regional study and identifying the overall adaptation challenges in a real-life context. The way in which possible climate impacts interact with a range of other challenges in agriculture, forestry, disaster planning, health care, general economic development, and common livelihoods are presented, and it is argued that greater realism and broader vision are needed in order to address the climate challenge. For instance, unsuitable land- use changes in both coastal and highland regions may increase the vulnerability of rural people, many of whom are already living on the fringes. The author(s) also state(s) that, depending on context, it may be pertinent to address short-term and unsustainable resource use, irregularities in local land management, ineffective governance and social inequality, which are all likely to aggravate the impact of external climate and weather. Not least, it is imperative to integrate general environmental management with any climate-change adaptation effort.
Leading Colombian academics and experienced policy practitioners cast new light on their country in this systematic overview of policy analysis for an international audience. Examining the historical development and current status of policy analysis as a field of study and in practice, it considers public policy analysis in government and the judiciary, and across domains including health, education and the military. Contributors also delve into Colombia’s notable success in economic regeneration, the management of cultural diversity and the resolution of long-term internal armed conflict. Not just an important summation of policy analysis in Colombia, this book also provides insights and lessons applicable elsewhere.
Over the past two decades, legal thought and practice in Latin America have changed dramatically: new constitutions or constitutional reforms have consolidated democratic rule, fundamental innovations have been introduced in state institutions, social movements have turned to law to advance their causes, and processes of globalization have had profound effects on legal norms and practices. Law and Society in Latin America: A New Map offers the first systematic assessment by leading Latin American socio-legal scholars of the momentous transformations in the region. Through an interdisciplinary and comparative lens, contributors analyze the central advances and dilemmas of contemporary Latin A...
This book provides a series of topics on flood risk management from around the world. The first section includes models for improved approaches to flood risk management, the importance of groundwater management in the context of floods (focussing on Taiwan), contingency plan for local communities using flood simulation, deciding on response strategies against the identified flood risk before a flood occurs (illustrated for the Philippines) and models for estimating maximum flood heights (illustrated for Mozambique). The second section examines flood risk management relating to the urban environment, with examples from a coastal city in Saudi Arabia and a housing development in Mexico. The third section relates to flood risk management in the context of agriculture, particularly relating to damage to Asian rice crops.
This open access book conveys attention to the theme of transition towards resilience and sustainability and its evolutionary perspective that emphasizes the complexity and uncertainty that governments and society are called to address in response to the ongoing challenges. "New Metropolitan Perspective Post COVID Dynamics: Green and Digital Transition, between Metropolitan and Return to Villages’ Perspectives”, 25–27 May 2022, Reggio Calabria, Italy. The papers included in the book are grouped around the following main topics: the envisaged transition towards resilience and sustainability; the relevance of the planning dimension for defining sustainable development pathways and managing complexity; and the green and digital transition by glimpsing at approaches, experiences, and cases that outline innovative solutions in cities and inner areas. The book primarily targets the academic and policymaker communities involved in managing the complexity of the transition for regions and cities.
Making Law Matter presents the first book-length treatment of an innovative prosecutorial institution, the Brazilian Ministrio Publico, which refashioned itself in the 1980s into a powerful defender of citizen rights in environmental protection, as well as in other areas of public interest such as disability rights, consumer protection, and anti-corruption.