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A duty to assess an oil project's downstream greenhouse gas emissions: the UK Supreme Court in Finch
Get PDFNational environmental impact assessment (EIA) frameworks have generally been applied as requiring an assessment of the effects of projects on greenhouse gas emissions and, thus, on climate change. Yet, a question that has repeatedly been asked is whether an EIA should only consider a project's direct, on-site emissions, or also its indirect emissions. In R (Finch) v County of Surrey, the UK Supreme Court found that the approval of an oil project was unlawful on the ground that the EIA had not considered the downstream emissions that would result from the combustion of the oil by its end users. This judgment contributes to the emergence of a global consensus on the need for the EIAs of fossil-fuel projects to consider downstream combustion emissions. Yet, it leaves many questions open as to how far indirect emissions are to be assessed
Enforcing the unenforceable: exploring police officer use of discretion in the enforcement of COVID-19 rules and regulations
No full textDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, governments relied on the police to enforce COVID-19 rules. However, little is known about police enforcement of these norms and use of discretion in this process. The current study draws on a sample of 3,866 police officers from 10 countries across
the globe and examines officers’ use of discretion when encountering violations of COVID-19 rules. We assess the relative significance of factors such as the perceptions of community adherence to COVID-19 rules, assessments of the police agency’s support to deal with the pandemic,
evaluations of COVID-19 seriousness, and psychological adjustments to the pandemic on police officers’ willingness to react when observing a COVID-19 violation. Our findings highlight the complexity of officer responses to violations of rules, which include not only enforcement actions such as giving advice and warning, issuing tickets, and making
arrests, but also non-actions
Does the growth of religious minorities transform electoral politics? Evidence from the evangelical boom in Brazil
Get PDFChristian evangelicals now represent a significant share of the global population. Notably, they are expected to soon outnumber Roman Catholics in several low- and middle-income countries. This paper examines whether such episodes of religious minority growth can reshape electoral politics. To address this, I combine novel data spanning over two decades (1994–2018) of Christian evangelicals’ expansion across Brazilian municipalities with indicators of structural changes in electoral politics: voter turnout, competition, polarization, and conservatism. Regression models with unit and year-fixed effects reveal no impact of the evangelical boom on electoral competition and polarization, suggestive evidence of increasing conservatism in recent years, and a clear and robust negative effect on turnout. Regression discontinuity design estimates, leveraging an exogenous and discontinuous growth of Christian evangelicals in Brazil’s rural areas, support these findings. The results suggest that the rise of religious minorities may drive gradual transformations in electoral politics
Examining the discourse of ‘delay’ in urban governance: project speed and the politicisation of time in the English Planning System
Get PDFWhile a growing body of work has been produced on the temporalities of urban governance and planning, limited attention has been paid to questioning how time is deployed through the application of chrono-technologies (Nowotny, 1994). Drawing on governmental and industry grey literature and empirical data, this paper examines the discourse of delay and ‘project speed’ surrounding planning policy and practice in England. Prompted by sustained accusations of planning ‘delay’, we chart how the use of political time (Howlett and Goetz, 2014) and ‘time talk’ (Lazar, 2019) features heavily in shaping urban discourse, and becomes subject to storytelling (Sandercock, 2003a,b) and prevailing chronotopes (Mulíček et al., 2015). It is demonstrated how long-run temporal narratives focussing on speed and delay in planning are signifiers for securing a governmentality that asserts certainty and growth as overriding priorities. This politicisation of time and practice holds significant implications for democratic governance more widely
The impact on the skill premium of the task content of jobs: evidence from online job ads for Chile 2009 – 2018
Get PDFWe evaluate the influence on the skill premium of the task content of jobs by exploiting the text data from online job ads covering 2009-2018 (over 189,000 ads) published by one of the leading Chilean online job portals (www.trabajando.com). Our analysis tests the expected complementarity between skilled labour, non-routine cognitive (analytical and interactive), and routine cognitive tasks. Our results show weak evidence of the influence on the skill premium of our task-related measures. Nevertheless, some implications arise from this apparent decrease in the importance of the tasks skilled workers typically perform, such as inefficient educational investment or unwanted changes in the occupational ladder
Animal welfare, agency, and animal-computer interaction
Get PDFRecent discussions in animal welfare have emphasised the importance of animal agency—the ability of animals to make choices and exert control over their environment in a way that aligns with their needs and preferences. In this paper, we discuss the importance of animal agency for welfare and examine how use of some types of animal–computer interaction can enable animals to exercise more agency in captive environments through increased choice and control, cognitive challenge, and social interactions; as well as considering some of the potential limitations of such efforts
Santa Cruz Mixtepec: community engagement and religious heritage in Mexico
Get PDFSanta Cruz Mixtepec is the location of a ruined 16th-century Dominican convent that was conserved and partially restored between 2015 and 2018. That project involved a collaboration between federal, municipal and privately funded stakeholders, with extensive community engagement. This chapter describes the history of the convent, the role it currently plays in the Santa Cruz community and its governance, placing its restoration in the potentially conflicting contexts of heritage tourism and Catholic practices in Mexico. It questions how the ‘local community’ can be adequately defined, the problematic approach to the Catholic clergy, and explores the conflicting interests of stakeholders who nevertheless collaborated in good faith and with considerable success
The physiological mechanisms underlying consumer preferences towards organic food
No full textPrevious research has shown that organic food labeling may lead consumers to biased processing of their preferences, the physiological mechanisms behind this phenomenon are not understood. For the first time, this manuscript combines consumer valuation and physiological measures to investigate the explicit and implicit preference dimensions of organic food. The explicit dimension was measured using the expected and actual degree of liking of two identical - but differently labeled - pear juices (organic and non-organic) while the implicit dimension was measured using the activity of the mylohyoid muscle (MM) and the 3D kinematics of the hand, and arm movements. Our findings reveal that the MM was activated during the pre-action phase, where participants observed the organic-labeled product, which suggests a selective anticipatory motor preparation. Moreover, kinematic analyses indicated that participants reached for the organic-labeled pear juice with a shorter reaction time and with more targeted grasping movements compared to the non-organic-labeled juice. In addition, the presence of the organic label significantly influenced consumers' degree of liking. Using this novel approach, these results contribute to a better understanding of the physiological mechanisms underlying consumers behaviors toward organic food products
Trente ans de mutations de la parenté à la suite de l’AMP : réflexions comparatifs sur les lois britanniques et françaises (Thirty years of the evolution of parenthood status following ART – comparison of British and French laws)
No full textThis original chapter analyses the evolution of the recognition of legal parenthood following assisted conception in the UK and France. It explores the reasons why, despite being a pioneering law in the 1990s, the UK Human Fertilisation & Embryology Acts have not been able to embrace the notion of 'two mothers'. In contrast, notwithstanding a very conservative and limited approach to admitting the practice of assisted conception, French law is now leading the way in giving legal recognition to new parenthood forms which better reflects the lived realities of its citizens