India’s Withdrawal from Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)

The Sino-US competition in the Indo-Pacific has become a central issue in international relations and how the competition of both countries affects state behavior. This article attempts to provide explanations of India's behavior in deciding to leave the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement by using the neoclassical realism theory. Neoclassical realism believes that the actors' behavior is influenced by the constellation of international structures and domestic constellations. India's exit from RCEP was influenced by structural changes in the Indo-Pacific region, with the loss of China's balance of power marked by the withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Moreover, the condition has been exacerbated by the pressure received by Narendra Modi at the domestic level with the emergence of rejection of India's involvement in RCEP. It has influenced Narendra Modi's perception, who was active in the region with the two factors above, decided to resign from RCEP.

Role analysis of women in electricity consumption at domestic level

Women play an especial prominent role in buying things that provide sustenance for home and family. Therefore, this study was under taken to see how women play their role with special reference to electricity consumption and what can be done to improve it. ‘Awareness,’ ‘opinion’ and ‘practice’ of respondents regarding issues related to electricity consumption for household use revealed that ‘Awareness’, ‘Opinion’ and ‘Practices’ of the respondents were of ‘medium’ level. Looking at the women’s prominent role in household energy consumption they can be given some awareness programs to further play active role as consumer and conserve electricity.

Design And Fabrication of a Domestic Biogas Unit for Cooking Applications

This paper presents the design and fabrication of a domestic biogas unit by using daily organic waste for cooking. Basically, this unit consists a gas storage unit and a digester barrel. Initially, the organic wastes including kitchen wastes were deposited into the digester barrel which contains water with pH 6 once in every two days for two weeks. Then the mix started to produce biogas when the pH value reached around 6.8-7.5. After that food wastes were added slowly every day. When this step is continued further, the daily collection of biogases is 50 liters. As the digestate of this anaerobic digester is rich in nutrients this is also a good organic fertilizer for plants in the home garden. Also, this unit is designed and fabricated with easy maintenance and usage. Further, it is very much beneficial to dispose biodegradable kitchen wastes in an eco-friendly manner. In order to answer the energy demand in domestic level, it is highly essential to utilize the daily organic waste as a source of energy and produce methane as an alternative solution for cooking-energy requirement.

Are Cities Taking Center-Stage? The Emerging Role of Urban Communities as “Normative Global Climate Actors”

Cities around the world are playing an increasingly active role in global climate governance. Considering their share in global emissions on the one hand, and the direct threats they face from climate-related disasters on the other, urban communities are at the forefront of mitigation and adaptation actions. While cities generally implement such actions as part of their State’s international climate commitments, they sometimes go beyond, or even against the nationally adopted policy stance. This article explores the evolving normative role of cities in relation to climate change, considering how they can contribute, both to the development of new rules of international law, and to the implementation of existing norms for climate action at the domestic level. Based on an analysis of current developments and concrete examples, the article reflects on the potentialities and constraints of cities as “normative global climate actors”.

Racial Discrimination and Nationality and Migration Exceptions: Reconciling CERD and the Race Equality Directive

The principles of equality and non-discrimination offer potentially valuable tools to challenge discriminatory practices employed by States against non-citizens. However, nationality and immigration-related exceptions are an established feature of non-discrimination laws. Such exceptions raise fundamental questions about the scope of the protection offered by anti-discrimination laws and have the potential to perpetuate, rather than eliminate, race discrimination. This article addresses this critical but often neglected issue, through a doctrinal analysis of two specific exceptions - Articles 1(2) and 1(3) of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and Article 3(2) of the EU's Race Equality Directive - and an examination of their impact in practice at the domestic level. We argue that nationality and migration status exceptions must be interpreted as narrowly as possible, in line with the core purpose of these instruments to eliminate race discrimination. Furthermore, we suggest that the interplay between these legal frameworks at the domestic level of implementation takes on particular importance in defining the scope and limits of nationality and migration-based exceptions.

Impact of Micro Finance Institutes (MFI’s) on the Growth of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Economic stability is very necessary for the development of economy a country. For this purpose industrialization plays a positive role in fulfilling this achievement. The trend of borrowing from Micro Finance Institutions increases day by day as business activities takes place. Also from political stability Foreign Direct Investment takes place resulting in boosting and competitive environment for domestic investors. MFIs serving in all cities of Pakistan focus on enhancing business activities on domestic level. Each and every bank has its own microfinance institution departments focusing mainly on fulfilling the access to finance through some easy steps for starting new ventures. From past some years Pakistan is facing a lot different situations in country like Political Instability, Terrorism and Unemployment. Now in this situation there is lack of foreign investment in our country. Meanwhile, Domestic Level Small & Medium Enterprises faces a lot of challenges while financing their own SMEs. State bank of Pakistan introduces Business Support Fund through which every bank has to facilitate investors with loans to increase new ventures startup which in turns can help out the economy. Trend of MFIs and SMEs had increase in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as well like Faisalabad, Karachi and Lahore so do demand for credit investment increases resulting in MFIs with new ideas and proposals.

China-Venezuela Relations: China Dilemmatic Options towards Venezuela Crisis and the Role of China Community of Common Destiny Principles in Maintaining Cooperation

Oil prices directly impact Venezuela's circumstance due to 95% of their revenue come from oil export. Since 2013, oil prices drop significantly compared to the previous year. Thus, the crisis hits Venezuela severely. The impacts not only feel in domestic level but also in international level. China is Venezuela's bilateral partner that was impacted by the Venezuela crisis. Venezuela failed to fulfill their oil export to China to pay their loan in the oil-for-loan diplomacy scheme. Thus, their cooperation failed to fulfill the economic gain. However, China still shows the action that favorable Venezuela. Backing up non-intervention toward Venezuela in the UN, provide new loan and adjust the payment of the previous loan also diversify their investment in Venezuela. This paper argues that this action is no more for merely material gain. But it is the action that is based on the newly ideational aspect of China's foreign policy, which is the China Community of Common Destiny. Thus, this research will analyze how this rhetoric idea involves China's action towards Venezuela. Also, this research will address their relations and China's diplomatic option toward their relations with Venezuela in crisis circumstances.

The School Strike for Climate as people’s engagement in the transnational legal process and global constitutionalism

What is the significance of the School Strike for Climate from an international constitutional perspective? In this article, I compare the School Strike for Climate with the Hong Kong protests of 2019–20. Both these movements became necessary because of gaps in their countries’ respective domestic and international legal frameworks – what I term constitutionalism gaps. The immediate cause of each protest was how state and non-state actors exploited these constitutionalism gaps in the existing legal framework. Protests in Hong Kong were triggered by the attempt to enact an Extradition Law that threatened people’s autonomy, whereas the School Strike for Climate is a response to the failure of the state to deliver climate justice. Both these movements use similar strategies of advocacy and they have relied extensively on new technology. Based on this comparison, I argue that the School Strike for Climate promotes procedural and substantive values of constitutionalism at the international level, similar to the Hong Kong Protests at the domestic level. Through the School Strike for Climate, people seek to engage directly in the transnational legal process. In attempting to bridge the constitutionalism gap at the international level, the School Strike for Climate promotes values of global constitutionalism.

To lead or not to lead: regional powers and regional leadership

Recent trends demonstrate that states with sufficient capabilities to be granted regional power status by its peers (primarily other states within their region) can nonetheless renounce regional leadership. This article analyzes the puzzling behavior of these detached or reluctant regional powers. We argue that resorting to an approach grounded in neoclassical realism is helpful to explain why regional powers might not exercise leadership. In this article regional leadership is conceptualized as an auxiliary goal within the grand strategy of a regional power. This goal will be pursued in the absence of certain structural and domestic constraints. Great power competition determines the incentives for regional leadership at the structural level. Capacity to extract and mobilize resources for foreign policy affects the decision to pursue leadership at the domestic level. We apply the analytical framework to analyze Brazil’s detachment from South America after the Cardoso and Lula presidencies.