Sustainable Management of Environmental Risks in Agricultural Production: Ensuring the Right to Food

The current research is about the sustainable management of environmental risks in agricultural production to ensure the right to food. In a globalized world, agricultural production is determined by external economic, environmental, social, legal, and political factors, as well as internal factors depending on each State’s conditions. Environmental risk factors, particularly, the growing climate change and its negative effects or the occurrence of a global pandemic, restrict agricultural industry development and create uncertainty in guaranteeing people’s right to food. Agricultural production is the first right to food material guarantee. Ensuring agricultural production is ensuring people’s right to food, their food security or at least the minimum necessary to avoid hunger. The aim is to systematize environmental risks sustainable management concepts and characteristics applied in agricultural production to guarantee the right to food. The environmental risk’s sustainable management entails an efficient use of financial and economic resources in agricultural production to prevent or reduce the environmental risk identified impact. The research establishes some general points of environmental risks sustainable management in agricultural production to guarantee the right to adequate food. The following research methods and techniques were selected: the theoretical-legal and document analysis.

Energy and Law. A Critical Approach to the Cuban Context

This research is aimed at studying the main deficiencies of the legal framework for energy in Cuba. Throughout this article, theoretical, legal and practical foundations are sought that make it possible to demonstrate the need for a legal system that is adapted to the Cuban reality and that regulates the most important elements related to the generation, distribution and commercialisation of energy. The theoretical analysis finds its starting point in the analysis of the energy as an object of legal regulation and its legal nature is dealt with. This constitutes a platform for the study of the energy legal framework in Cuba, where topics such as the current energy situation in Cuba, its commitment to sustainable development and the main institutions that govern energy in the country are presented. Finally, the article presents a comprehensive and critical analysis regarding the main deficiencies of energy legal regulation in Cuba. The exhaustive analysis of energy legislation in this area will make it possible to address the objectives set out at the beginning of the research.

How (Not) to Compare?: Not Being Inside, Nor Outside

Despite the clear clue given by Kim L. Scheppele as to the shortcomings of governance checklists, it is surprising that comparative constitutional lawyers have not yet followed it up. In fact, what Scheppele hinted at is that the methodologies we have used so far fall short of detecting the interaction effect of the particular components; this is why we need new methodologies and new ways of seeing. To address this, this article will incorporate some tools, having already taken hold in legal philosophy, into the methods discussions in comparative constitutional law in particular and comparative law in general. Upon benefiting from the distinction between internal and external points of view and showing how hermeneutical one differs from the others, the article will make a discursive analysis of the 2010 constitutional amendment in Turkey through the lenses of these three points of view.

International Conference of Urban Commons

The report seeks to outline the issues the lecturers of the International Conference Held at the University of Turin on the 21st and 22nd June 2021 touched upon. The backbone of the Conference was the rise of Urban Commons describing all the different aspects it involves: the urban voids suitable to host urban commons, the participatory models shaping the governance of commoning, the consequences such phenomenon may imply, and the technological and legal infrastructure may flank and support the development of urban commoning. All this explored by referring to concrete case studies and day-to-day experiences.

Censors and Public Lands: The Failure of Governance of a Common?

Nowadays, a small part of the worldwide population, under the aegis of property on some commons, can find a way to increase their riches, intensifying the conflicts inside the society and damaging the environment. This is the “dark side” of globalization: through this phenomenon, humans economically and socially united most of our planet, simultaneously emphasizing the fragmentation that lies under this apparent unification. This conflict, however, is not between law and society, but it is inside the latter, where the only possible way to bridge the gap seems – mostly – to be through philanthropy. This work wants to find a possible enlightenment through the study of the regulation of the roman’s lands (ager publicus), which were granted under a payment: thus, they were subjected to revocation. This rule was strengthened for the most fruitful lands through the recognition of a supervisory power in the hands of the censors, census officers and controllers of the citizen’s morality, whose decadence was sanctioned with the loss of the right to vote. It was them who could decide to whom give these lands in lease through a public auction, never considering – through a direct sanction as revocation – the ethics of the winners, thus allowing to increase their assets and consequentially the social instability.

Introduction

The piece introduces the special issue, famining it within the context of the European Horizon 2020 Project “Generative European Commons Living Lab”.

Regenerating Former Military Sites in Italy. The Dichotomy between ‘Profit-Driven Spaces’ and ‘Urban Commons’

Within the last decades, the reorganisation of the Armed Force left many voids in the territories. Being located in highly lucrative and desirable locations, former military sites can be redeveloped into either profit-driven spaces or proper urban commons. This paper focuses the attention on the Italian case and scrutinises former military barracks in the dichotomies between the generation of profit-driven spaces and urban commons. Also, the analysis questions the actual role of these voids in guaranteeing the right to the city, especially in times of severe shortage of public resources to undertake urban regeneration processes.

Remarks on Common Possession Between Law and History

‘Common possession’ can be designated as a distinguishing feature of the legal status of common goods, as opposed to the monopolistic character of real rights and especially property. The paper aims at proving how the study of the Roman legal category of res in usu publico can shed a light on the interpretation of existing legislation and ground a legal regulation of the commons based on possessory remedies.

One House for €1: Case Studies on the Governance of Abandoned Properties in Small Villages

This proposal aims at analyzing the Italian initiative “Case a 1 €” launched in 2009 for the preservation of abandoned goods, in Gangi, a small village near Palermo. The Municipality has put for sale the ruined houses for the symbolic prize of 1 €. As this initiative has been imitated by other municipalities in Italy and thus become a model, my intention is to explore how it works based on two different levels of investigation, in terms of: 1) contractual schemes (parties and respective rights and obligations) and 2) policy choices, comparing proposed and achieved goals by the administrations and the parties. Some relevant issues arise after 12 years: is the initiative an appropriate answer for the management of abandoned properties, both private and public? Is it an effective instrument to undermine the idea that such properties are a burden? Can they become a resource for collective, social and economic development? Is it a model to regain cultural identity revitalizing the small, abandoned centers, promoting inclusion, participation and environmental sustainability? I will use both inductive and deductive methods, examining and comparing some case studies in Sicily, among those municipalities that adopted this policy (Cammarata, Sambuca, Gangi, Itala, Salemi, Regalbuto, Mussomeli and Saponara). In order to investigate level 1), I will identify the contractual frames and documents provided online by the Municipalities administrations. To find answers on level 2), I will analyze (when available) the number of goods transferred from private parties to Municipalities and of those finally assigned to the final buyer. I will interview the administration’s civil servants and the final buyers to understand if their expectations (private and collective) have been satisfied.

From Libra to Diem. The Pursuit of a Global Private Currency

The official launch of the Libra project in 2019, and the subsequent troubles experienced by the project, stimulated a vigorous debate, from different perspectives, on the pros and cons of a private currency with global ambitions. This paper describes the main characteristics of Libra and of its heir, Diem, locating both in a partial taxonomy of the increasingly crowded field of so-called ‘digital currencies’. In the light of the distinguishing features and risks of such an ambitious project, the paper also aims to assess the potential impact on a crucial issue of the present international monetary system: the power to create money.