Suchergebnisse

This article investigates the Arctic Council's new Agreement on the response to marine oil pollution in the Arctic Region. The Agreement is evaluated in the light of the challenges of responding to marine oil pollution in the Arctic, and in light of the international legal framework for oil spill response currently in place. Based upon this, the article concludes that the Agreement, rather than being considered an innovative new legal tool, properly is best understood as a symbolic token of the Arctic Council's willingness to discuss the problems associated with the present plans on resource exploitation in the Arctic. If, however, the Arctic Council sets out to establish an effective legal governance regime to the challenges of responding to a serious oil spill in the Arctic, the Agreement is, as the title suggests, merely a drop in the ocean.

Regulation of critical infrastructure (CI) is in vogue; and accordingly every government presently develops legal governance regimes. In this paper, I try to analyse some of the present efforts to identify and govern CI. I argue that while the legal definitions introduced contribute little to the actual identification of critical infrastructure, they alter the responsibility and modus operandi of the identification. Political discretion is re-organized into administrative decisions. By relying on similar observations from risk sociology, I set out to criticize the present implementation for masking the hard political choices inherent in the work with CI, and thereby creating a dysfunctional governance regime for the protection of CI.

This article investigates the L'Aquila decision. It aims to present a theoretical framework from contemporary disaster research and political philosophy to better understand why blame and responsibility has come to play such a prominent role in the aftermath of disasters. Furthermore, it presents a number of examples from criminal law around the world to provide context to the decision. The central claim in tthis piece is that the decision is not an extraordinary, isolated decision on responsibility following disasters; rather the decision is emblematic to an on-going development of disaster responsibility. Thus, after disaster follows a legal process aimed at identifying, and if necessary, penalizing the mistakes leading to the horrifying outcome. In that way disasters are increasingly like any other event in society with major negative implications; it is evaluated and if appropriate adjudicated.

Abstract
This paper explores the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic through the framework of existential risks – a class of extreme risks that threaten the entire future of humanity. In doing so, we tease out three lessons: (1) possible reasons underlying the limits and shortfalls of international law, international institutions and other actors which Covid-19 has revealed, and what they reveal about the resilience or fragility of institutional frameworks in the face of existential risks; (2) using Covid-19 to test and refine our prior 'Boring Apocalypses' model for understanding the interplay of hazards, vulnerabilities and exposures in facilitating a particular disaster, or magnifying its effects; and (3) to extrapolate some possible futures for existential risk scholarship and governance.

Expert scientific knowledge is fast becoming an integral part of disaster management, and, in the process, is changing the role of science for the reduction of disaster risks at the policy level. Yet science and policy operate in different domains between which there are often competing interests and modes of valuing knowledge. Based on research done as part of the research project Enhancing Synergies for Disaster Prevention in the European Union (ESPREssO), we discuss three major issues facing European Union member states with respect to the interface between science and policy for disaster risk reduction: knowledge transfer, disaster expertise, and risk awareness. In doing so, we hone in on three gaps: an epistemological gap, an institutional gap, and a strategic gap. We argue that these gaps can help explain underlying systematic challenges for the integration between science and policy for disaster risk reduction. These gaps need to be addressed by focusing on changes at the governance level.

Expert scientific knowledge is fast becoming an integral part of disaster management, and, in the process, is changing the role of science for the reduction of disaster risks at the policy level. Yet science and policy operate in different domains between which there are often competing interests and modes of valuing knowledge. Based on research done as part of the research project Enhancing Synergies for Disaster Prevention in the European Union (ESPREssO), we discuss three major issues facing European Union member states with respect to the interface between science and policy for disaster risk reduction: knowledge transfer, disaster expertise, and risk awareness. In doing so, we hone in on three gaps: an epistemological gap, an institutional gap, and a strategic gap. We argue that these gaps can help explain underlying systematic challenges for the integration between science and policy for disaster risk reduction. These gaps need to be addressed by focusing on changes at the governance level

AbstractClimate litigation has become a strategic tool to push for climate justice, including compensation for losses caused by climate change. Many cases rely on the establishment of a causal relationship between the defendants' emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) and the plaintiffs' losses. All decided cases seeking compensation for a concrete climate related impact have been unsuccessful (thus far). Legal scholars as well as social and natural scientists have looked at individual cases and evidence of these unsuccessful claims, aiming to identify legal and scientific hurdles. Based on previous research where we analysed specific cases, we step back from a case‐specific analysis in this article and identify the social context in which law and science operate and intersect. We assert that without a general understanding of the urgency of climate change and the scientifically proven fact that climate change impacts the present, and that it is possible to attribute individual losses to human‐caused climate change, the fate and future of climate litigation focusing on losses and damages will continue to encounter major obstacles in courts. This is despite the increasingly sophisticated strategies of litigants; the positive outcome of some strategic litigation and improvements in the field of climate science, all of which would be expected to sway for a successful future of the fight against climate change.