scholarly journals Trading deforestation - Why the legality of forest-risk commodities is insufficient

Author(s):  
Tiago N. P. dos Reis ◽  
Vinicius Guidotti de Faria ◽  
Gabriela Russo Lopes ◽  
Gerd Sparovek ◽  
Chris West ◽  
...  

Abstract Consumer countries and blocs, including the UK and the EU, are defining legal measures to tackle deforestation linked to commodity imports, potentially requiring imported goods to comply with the relevant producer countries’ land-use laws. Nonetheless, this measure is insufficient to address global deforestation. Using Brazil’s example of a key exporter of forest-risk commodities, here we show that it has ~3.25 Mha of natural habitat (~152.8 million tons of CO2) at a high risk of legal deforestation until 2025. Additionally, the country’s legal framework is going through modifications to legalize agricultural production in illegally deforested areas. What was illegal may become legal shortly. Hence, a legality criterion adopted by consumer countries is insufficient to protect forests and other ecosystems and may worsen deforestation and conversion risks by incentivizing the weakening of social-environmental protection by producer countries.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiago Reis ◽  
Vinicius Faria ◽  
Gabriela Lopes ◽  
Gerd Sparovek ◽  
Christopher West ◽  
...  

Abstract Consumer countries and blocs, including the UK and the EU, are defining legal measures to tackle deforestation linked to commodity imports, potentially requiring imported goods to comply with the relevant producer countries’ land-use laws. Nonetheless, this measure is insufficient to address global deforestation. Using Brazil’s example of a key exporter of forest-risk commodities, here we show that it has ~3.25 Mha of natural habitat (~152.8 million tons of CO2) at a high risk of legal deforestation until 2025. Additionally, the country’s legal framework is going through modifications to legalize agricultural production in illegally deforested areas. What was illegal may become legal shortly. Hence, a legality criterion adopted by consumer countries is insufficient to protect forests and other ecosystems and may worsen deforestation and conversion risks by incentivizing the weakening of social-environmental protection by producer countries.


This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the withdrawal agreement concluded between the United Kingdom and the European Union to create the legal framework for Brexit. Building on a prior volume, it overviews the process of Brexit negotiations that took place between the UK and the EU from 2017 to 2019. It also examines the key provisions of the Brexit deal, including the protection of citizens’ rights, the Irish border, and the financial settlement. Moreover, the book assesses the governance provisions on transition, decision-making and adjudication, and the prospects for future EU–UK trade relations. Finally, it reflects on the longer-term challenges that the implementation of the 2016 Brexit referendum poses for the UK territorial system, for British–Irish relations, as well as for the future of the EU beyond Brexit.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 1125-1147
Author(s):  
Maria O'Neill

AbstractWith increasing globalization, transnational crime in general, and human trafficking in particular, a design of new legal framework is required in order to effectively operationalize interstate law enforcement operations and prosecutions. The development of a transnational criminal legal framework—or frameworks—can build on pre-existing transnational economic frameworks. There is also the need to extend the application of domestic law beyond national borders to influence transnational corporate behavior. Regulations based on reflexive law are one possible approach. Teubner's idea of reflexive law has been informing developments in this area. This approach uses traditional national law to inform corporate governance strategies in order to achieve effects on the market. A few jurisdictions have already adopted measures modeled on this approach to tackle human trafficking and slavery-like conditions in global supply chains. Weaknesses in the approaches adopted by the UK and the State of California have already been identified. If strengthened, this approach could be adopted in more jurisdictions—including the EU—and also to combat more areas of transnational crime—such as money laundering. This paper will examine the resulting challenges using human trafficking as a case study.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Hedemann-Robinson

AbstractOver several years, the European Union (EU) has gradually developed its legal framework to assist in the proper application of EU environmental protection rules, both at Member State as well as at EU institutional levels. This article focuses on one particular and relatively recent emerging element of that supranational framework, namely the range of EU secondary legislative measures and provisions concerning the management of environmental inspections. In addition to appraising the extent of EU legislative engagement in relation to environmental inspections, this article reflects on certain challenges of a constitutional nature that the EU will need to address in the future if its intervention in this particular policy field is to continue to develop.


2004 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Farmer ◽  
T. R. Nisbet

Abstract. This paper overviews changes in forest management in the UK with respect to environmental protection. The evolution of policy is explained from historical and sustainability perspectives and covers developments in forest planning, accreditation, devolution and future challenges and opportunities. Keywords: forest management, best practice, sustainable forestry, environmental protection, land use change


2007 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 261-286
Author(s):  
Tamara K Hervey

Cases involving patients such as Mrs Yvonne Watts, who travelled from the UK to France for a hip replacement to avoid a ‘waiting list’ in the UK, relying on rights in European Union (EU) law, attract high levels of media attention. While the vast majority of patients are either unwilling or unable to travel across borders to receive health care, it is clear that some patients are seeking health care abroad. Although data on patient mobility within the EU are significantly limited, nevertheless, a relatively steady, small but not insignificant number of patients are moving across borders within the EU to receive health care. This paper considers the current legal framework on the rights in EU law of those patients who seek health care in another Member State. As the right to seek private health care abroad is (largely) non-contentious, and has been a well-established feature of EU law since at least the mid 1980s, the focus of this paper is on publicly or quasi-publicly funded health care.


2011 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 1055-1064 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine N Stefanelli

The United Kingdom (‘UK’) has indicated its intention not to opt-in to two proposals from the European Commission aimed at further developing the Common European Asylum System through the replacement of existing instruments on asylum procedures and reception conditions. The purpose of the European Union (‘EU’) amendment process is to establish rules that more closely align the legal framework for asylum in the Member States so that asylum seekers receive the same higher standard of treatment in any Member State in which they choose to make their application, and to address criticism that the Directives are incompatible with human rights obligations. The UK asserts that its asylum procedures satisfy the standards imposed by its obligations under international and European law, and does not view further harmonization of asylum matters at EU level as necessary or appropriate. Its decision not to opt-in raises issues regarding sovereignty, subsidiarity, the rule of law and European integration. This article will explore these issues, as well as provide an overview of select provisions from the proposals in light of UK asylum policy.


Author(s):  
Ross Cranston ◽  
Emilios Avgouleas ◽  
Kristin van Zweiten ◽  
Theodor van Sante ◽  
Christoper Hare

This chapter discusses bank structural reform. Most structural reform initiatives that have been undertaken since 2008 were aimed at reversing the effects of the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act in the late 1990s and of the EU legislation that promoted universal banking. The chapter first considers the financial stability concerns and the mechanics of contemporary structural reform legislation in the USA, the UK, and the EU, and the actual legal framework underpinning these reforms. It then covers the regulation of bank involvement in derivatives markets. Today, derivatives regulation is a clear part of macroprudential regulation to the extent that centralized clearing and settlement and increased transparency battle opacity and interconnectedness and limit systemic risk. The remainder of the chapter covers deposit insurance, bank corporate governance, risk control, and executive remuneration.


Author(s):  
Kenneth A Armstrong

This chapter studies an innovative governance devise invented by the Brexit negotiators: transition — a stand-still period which will allow the UK to remain pro tempore part of the EU internal market and customs union despite being no longer a member state. On February 1, 2020, and ten months later than scheduled, the EU and the UK entered into a period of ‘transition’; a time between formal membership of the EU and the beginning of a new relationship. At one level, there is a certain taken-for-granted simplicity to the idea of managing not just an orderly exit of the UK from the EU but also the provision of continuity and certainty while the parties negotiate and decide their future relationship. But at another level, the formal terminology and indeed the metaphors used to describe this interim legal framework disclose some deeper tensions around the sequencing and organisation of the withdrawal process as well as the direction of travel of the parties. Transition was originally conceived as a bridge toward the future EU–UK relations, but the risks remain that it may turn into a bridge to nowhere — particularly if the period is not extended beyond December 31, 2020, given time-constraints for such new difficult negotiations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel D. White

The UK government is currently proposing the enactment of a “Sanctions Act” upon the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in 2019, embodying a right to impose “autonomous sanctions” against other states and non-state actors, on the basis that the UK will no longer be able to benefit from the EU’s collective sanctioning competence. The spotlight is again on the nature and purposes of sanctions in international law. The article addresses the legal framework applicable to sanctions by, first of all, showing that the nature of sanctions is different in the international legal order to how it is conceived in domestic legal orders in that sanctions are primarily imposed in response to threats to or breaches of the peace and, in so doing, the analysis will distinguish sanctions from countermeasures and other non-forcible measures. It then proceeds to demonstrate that the values of peace and security that underpin sanctions are essentially normative and should be seen as part of the international legal order and enforceable through sanctions alongside other fundamental norms of international law. Whether viewed as responses to breaches of international law or not, the analysis shows that sanctions are collective measures exclusively within the competence of international organizations. Having established the conceptual and legal frameworks for understanding sanctions, the article considers sanctions imposed against states and non-state actors, and explores whether the move towards targeted sanctions is a form of collective response to violations of international law. The article finishes by considering that, in contrast to countermeasures and other measures of self-help, collective sanctions are inherently lawful, but can only be legally justified as measures adopted out of a necessity to prevent major ruptures to peace and international law.


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