<p>Diss. Umeå : Umeå universitet, 1998</p> / digitalisering@umu

This thesis deals with the analysis of the specific instruments of international law applicable to the protection of the environment of indigenous peoples. The thesis consists of four chapters. The first chapter describes the specific relationship which binds indigenous people to their traditional territories and natural resources and the most important threats to these territories and resources. The second chapter focuses on the development of the relationship between the international community and indigenous peoples and analyses the term indigenous peoples. Furthermore, this chapter contains an overview of the international and regional sources of law relevant to the protection of the environment of indigenous peoples. The third chapter draws attention to the international and regional mechanisms of protection of indigenous rights. The fourth chapter contains an analysis of particular environmental rights and systemizes them into collective, minority, individual and procedural rights.

"In Africa non-state actors (NSAs) are causing an alarming concern with the destruction of the environment and indigenous communities in the name of development; such environmental degradation leaves indigenous or economically marginalized groups in an unsatisfactory environment to their health, standard of living and basic necessitites of life and the land for future development. In most instances, the host country does not get good value from the vast amount of resource extraction. In other words, this kind of investment does not benefit the affected people; rather, it transfers a country's resources outside. In the end the poor pays for the lust of the rich. In some cases, African governments are simply not interested in the impact of the activities of NSAs on the people as they personally benefit from their presence due to corruption. As a result, it is correct to note that 'the local partners (African governments)' are selling indigenous communities on for their personal gain. In spite of the fact that some of these African countries have strong environmental laws in operation, they are often unwilling to force NSAs to comply with environmental rights and labour standards since they badly need the investment and capital that NSAs bring into their economies. Some of these NSAs pressurise national governments and even threaten them with lawsuits to open their doors for them. Others completely close down and relocate in order to blackmail the governments to follow through on the permits after exploration had started. Globalisation and an increase in international trade have joined with the growth of the human rights movement. These dual trends have cast an increasing attention on the role that NSAs play in environmental rights violation throughout the Sub-Saharan African region. The criitical issue in this period of globalisation, and which is also a challenge to it, is the liability and social responsibility of NSAs in times of violation of enviornmental rights, since today they figure prominently within the human rights field. Most of their activities are not in accordance with national or international environmental standards. While NSAs enjoy sovereign immunity within local jurisdictions, primary responsibility lies with states, which in most cases, are held liable for wrongful acts committed by NSAs, since they are regarded as the ultimate guardian of the welfare of their populations. As state authority declines, NSAs play a direct and indirect role in a wide range of environmental human rights violations, and this has now led to a point where there is a need to attach more concrete obligations to them. The thesis provides a framework with which th NSAs can be held directly and indirectly accountable for their role in fuelling the instability in the Sub-Saharan African region. The purpose of the thesis is to determine the approaches or guidelines that can be followed in order to ensure that NSAs behave appropriately in host states in realisation of the right to development by preserving the harmonious environment that local communities are entitled to. The creation of a viable and sustainable environment for everyone is of paramount importance in today's society." -- Introduction. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2003. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

"The study aims at exposing the uncertainties that surround the meaning and enforcement of environmental rights. The new South African constitutional dispensation and how it relates to the enforcement of environmental rights has been chosen as a case study. The South African situation is believed to be exemplary when it comes to the enforcement of fundamental freedoms. The South African Constitution provides for environmental rights alongh with mechanisms for their enforcement. The constitution also requires that legislative and policy measures are put in place to give effect to the rights in the Constituion. South Africa also has an idependent and rights oriented Constitutional Court that is capable of handing down decisions that can inspire the development of environmental rights jurisprudence. ... The work is divided into five chapters. Chapter one introduces the work. Chapter two is a conceptual framework that attempts to summarise different concepts surrounding the idea of environmental rights. Chapter three is on comparative jurisprudence, aimed at exposing existing global trends on the enforcement of environmental rights. Chapter four deals with the enforcement of environmental rights under the South African Constitution. Concluding remarks and recommendations are made in Chapter five." -- Chapter 1. / Supervised by George Agyeman Sarpong / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2001. / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

Nigeria is at a crossroad - how to balance developmental needs with environmental protection. The challenge is exacerbated because Nigeria operates a mono-economy which overwhelmingly depends on the crude oil resources from the Niger Delta for its economic survival. As a result, the protection of the Niger Delta environment has not been accorded the priority it deserves. The thesis aims to investigate the potentials of Constitutional Environmental Rights (CERs) to assist in resolving the environmental sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta. The thesis will utilize insights developed by environmental justice scholarship as the theoretical framework to investigate the main causes of the sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta and to propose ways to tackle these environmental challenges. The thesis draws inspiration from the research carried out by David Boyd on the efficacy of CERs for environmental sustainability for its analytical framework. Although Trans-National Corporations (TNCs) and international trade contribute to the sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta, the thesis will not focus on these. Instead, it will focus on the internal legal causes of the sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta, because the external causes of the sustainability crisis have been addressed at length by other researchers. Moreover, addressing the internal causes of the sustainability crisis could also address some of the impacts of the external causes of the sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta. As such, the thesis uses 3 of Boyd's CERs performance indices in analyzing the suitability of CERs to tackle the 3 identified major internal causes of the sustainability crisis in the Niger Delta. Specifically, Boyd's index 1 (impetus for the enactment of stronger environmental laws) could address gaps in Nigeria's environmental regulatory framework. Index 4 (improvement in the implementation and enforcement of environmental laws) could address the non-implementation and non-enforcement problems with the existing environmental regulatory framework in Nigeria. Lastly, index 6 (increased public participation in environmental governance) could address the marginalization of the Niger Delta in resource governance in Nigeria. These indices will not only help to uncover the weaknesses in Nigerian laws and their enforcement but will also identify potential barriers to CERs within the current legal and policy architecture and suggest solutions on how CERs would be implemented if recognized in Nigeria to avoid these barriers. The main contribution of the thesis is a detailed case study of how CERs may work in Nigeria to tackle the environmental crisis in the Niger Delta, and a detailed and specific analysis of what would be required in terms of domestic political, structural and legal change to ensure that CERs could contribute to the sustainability of the Niger Delta as much as they have in other countries. The research makes specific recommendations for changes to Nigerian law, policy and institutions, such as adoption of CERs in the enforceable part of the Constitution, ownership and control by federating units of natural resources found in their territories, and elimination of barriers to access to justice. This would come about through strategically crafted constitutional provisions and laws to address the underlying factors that would limit the effectiveness of CERs in Nigeria. The thesis argues that addressing these fundamentals and constitutionalizing environmental rights will lead to improved environmental outcomes for the Niger Delta.

La première partie de ces recherches s’attache à étudier les causes de l’apparition de la Charte de l’environnement et plus particulièrement du droit pour chacun de vivre dans un environnement équilibré et respectueux de la santé (article 1er de la Charte). Elle développe ensuite les définitions de ce droit, à la lumière notamment du droit international et national antérieur à la Charte, pour enfin analyser son effectivité. Le manque d’effectivité du droit pour chacun de vivre dans un environnement équilibré et respectueux de la santé contraint, dans une deuxième partie, à rapprocher le préjudice environnemental, en tant que préjudice subjectif, d’un dommage écologique objectif. Ce qui permet d’analyser la responsabilité induite par les atteintes environnementales et sanitaires. Il est enfin constaté qu’à travers l’ensembledes règles environnementales, un équilibre environnemental entre l’homme et la nature et une préservation de la santé sont à la fois systématiquement recherchés. Cette protection sanitaire passe par l’encadrement d’une nature sauvage et, suite à des transformations environnementales, par des aménagements permettant de réparer les dommages écologiques nuisibles à l’être humain. Si toutes ces règles convergeaient vers un seul et même objectif, celui de vivre dans un environnement équilibré et respectueux de la santé, il serait possible de dire que ce droit est le signe de l’apparition d’un nouveau concept. Cependant il demeure à ce jour un droit purement politique, hypothétique, dont l’effectivité n’existe que ponctuellement à travers une multitude de règles environnementales et urbanistiques dont l’ampleur reste un frein. / The first part of these researches aims at studying the causes of the apparition of the Charter of the environment and in particular the right for everyone to live in a balanced and environment, which is conducive to health (Article 1 of the Charter). It then develops the definitions of this right, particularly in the light of international and national laws prior to the Charter,to finally analyze its effectiveness. The lack of effectiveness of the right for everyone to live in a balanced environment that is conducive to health constrains, in a second part, to assimilate the environmental prejudice, as a subjective prejudice, to an objective ecological damage. This allows to analyze the responsibility induced by environmental and health damages. Finally, it is noted that, through all the environmental regulations, an environmental balance between man and nature, and health preservation have systematically been sought. This health protection requires the supervision of wild nature and,subsequently to environmental transformations, the development of solutions to remediate to environmental damage harmful to humans. If all these rules were converging towards a single objective, which would be to live in a balanced environment conducive to health, it could be possible to say that this right is the sign of the emergence of a new concept. However, this body of law remains, to this day, purely political and hypothetical. Its effectiveness exists only occasionally, through a multitude of environmental and urban planning rules, whose large scope also remains an obstacle.

Magister Legum - LLM / The International Committee of the Red Cross/Crescent (ICRC) has been the only agency promoting the observance of the law of armed conflict. It has invested considerably in finding solutions to protecting people and regulates the means and methods of warfare. Throughout the development of the law of armed conflict, the protection of the environment was never the centre of focus. From the early 1868 Declaration of Saint Petersburg to the Hague Regulations of 1907, attention was given to weakening the military forces of the enemy and the right of the belligerents not to destroy or seize the enemy’s property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war. Through AP I, the basic principle of IHL was reaffirmed. The concepts of military necessity and proportionality became clearer, permitting only those acts of war which are proportional to the lawful objective of a military operation. Considering the cruelty experienced through the crises that occurred in the RC, it is therefore imperative for the administration to enforce their observation. In the light of the above background the aims of this research paper are to seek to explore the challenges that the current RC administration is facing in implementing IHL and IEL principles. In addition, the research paper will analyse the possibilities to promote the implementation of IHL and IEL instruments within the public domain, mostly the army, to dissipate any ignorance that occur. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has also made it clear that an obligation rests upon states to take environmental considerations into account during armed conflict in so far as these relate to states’ military objectives

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:17:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Ilda Chicale Atauri.pdf: 2757827 bytes, checksum: aca4b76b6af6424e50efe2bae2ca9efe (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-10-30 / This thesis analyses the relation of Social Service to the sustainability in the ambit of the Brazilian environmental policy. It regards a constantly discussed theme, considering the impacts generated on nature by the industrial and economical development. The Social Service is characterized as an interventive technical profession, and it is inserted in the social technical work division. It is the Social Service professional s duty to work with environmental education, not only as an emerging and urgent demand, but also as a placed reality, that reaches its daily occupational space. The social assistant is a professional that has enough methodological theoretical and ethical- political capability in order to develop mediations for the accomplishment of the populations social environmental rights. In this context, this thesis study object was to learn the social service profession and its dialogue with the sustainable and environmental management in an access and accomplishment perspective of the social environmental rights. Therefore, the general goal consisted of knowing and analyzing how the Social Service relates to the environmental and sustainable management in business organizations and representative public facilities from Bauru. The specific goals were to verify and evaluate the environmental and the sustainability matter on its several ways, such as new demands for professional graduation. The research mapped the city of Bauru, Sao Paulo state, which develops actions and practices focused in the sustainable and environmental management through the city s managers who work in the City s Environmental Protection Areas Management Council as well as in business organizations that produce automotive batteries, located in Bauru s Industrial Districts I and II. Six city managers participated on the research, answering the semistructured survey, using a recorder, and four managers connected to the business organizations, although in this second empiric field only one manager had agreed to be subject of the survey answering the questions in his very workplace. It was verified that the new juridical paradigm, which recognizes the environment as a right, points to the Social Service profession s insertion in their daily interventions, considering that the professional exercise consolidates itself fundamentally in the mediation for rights and enlargement of the citizenship. The existence of gaps present in theoretical and practical appropriation in the professional exercise of the social assistant was evidenced. The research verified the actions and the practices developed by the city managers, showing the inexistence of the Social Service professional in detriment to all the other professionals engaged in the environmental policy. It is believed that this study s results will contribute to new content offers, to be inserted in the social assistant professional formation résumé. In relation to the business organizations, it was verified that they still have sustainability only in their speeches and that, if there is the pretension of new paradigms, these are in a building process and they still have a long way ahead, in order to display the compromise with sustainability / Esta tese faz uma análise da relação do Serviço Social com a sustentabilidade, no âmbito da política ambiental brasileira. Trata-se de uma temática em discussão constante, haja vista os impactos gerados na natureza pelo desenvolvimento industrial e econômico. O serviço social caracteriza-se como uma profissão técnica, interventiva e está inserido na divisão sociotécnica do trabalho. Cabe ao profissional de Serviço Social trabalhar com a educação ambiental, não só como uma demanda emergente e urgente, mas, como uma realidade posta, que atinge o seu espaço ocupacional cotidianamente. O assistente social é um profissional que possui capacitação teórica metodológica e ético-política suficientes para que desenvolva mediações para a efetivação dos direitos socioambientais das populações. Nesse contexto, o objeto de estudo desta tese foi apreender a profissão de serviço social e sua interlocução com a gestão ambiental e sustentável, numa perspectiva de acesso e efetivação dos direitos socioambientais. Assim, o objetivo geral constituiu-se em conhecer e analisar como o Serviço Social se relaciona com a gestão ambiental e sustentável nas organizações empresariais e órgãos públicos representativos da cidade de Bauru. Os objetivos específicos foram constatar e avaliar a questão do meio ambiente e da sustentabilidade, nas suas diversas facetas, como novas demandas para a formação profissional. A pesquisa mapeou o município de Bauru, Estado de São Paulo, o qual desenvolve ações e práticas focadas na gestão ambiental e sustentável por intermédio dos gestores municipais que atuam no Conselho Gestor das Áreas de Proteção Ambiental Municipal, bem como nas organizações empresariais que fabricam baterias automotivas localizadas nos Distritos Industriais I e II da cidade de Bauru. Participaram da pesquisa seis gestores municipais, que responderam a entrevista semiestruturada, com o uso do gravador, e quatro gestores ligados às organizações empresariais, embora neste segundo campo empírico apenas um gestor tenha aceitado ser sujeito da pesquisa, respondendo às questões no próprio local de trabalho. Constatou-se que o novo paradigma jurídico, que reconhece o meio ambiente como direito, aponta para a inserção da profissão de Serviço Social em suas intervenções cotidianas, considerando que o exercício profissional se consolida fundamentalmente na mediação pelos direitos e ampliação da cidadania. Evidenciou-se a existência de lacunas presentes na apropriação teórica e prática no exercício profissional do assistente social. A pesquisa evidenciou as ações e práticas desenvolvidas pelos gestores municipais, retratando a inexistência do profissional de Serviço Social, em detrimento aos demais profissionais engajados na política ambiental. Acredita-se que os resultados desse estudo irão contribuir para novas propostas de conteúdo, a serem inseridas no currículo de formação profissional do assistente social. Com relação às organizações empresariais, verificou-se que elas ainda têm a sustentabilidade apenas em seus discursos e que, se existe a pretensão de novos paradigmas, estes estão em processo de construção e lhes falta um longo caminho a ser percorrido, para ostentar o compromisso com a sustentabilidade

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No / CSR within a purely voluntary context has so far not made meaningful contributions to the problem of corporate environmental and human rights abuses in Africa. The paper therefore aims to improve the effectiveness of CSR in the continent by making companies accountable for the veracity of statements they have voluntarily put out in the public domain. The paper adopts the stakeholder and legitimacy theories and information regulation as its framework of analysis. Following a discourse on the developments in and limitations of sustainability, the paper constructs an argument in line with these theories how these reports can still be utilised to make meaningful contribution towards strengthening CSR through accountability for false and misleading statements. Corporations have a stake in information in sustainability reports with regard to their corporate image and reputation. Therefore, under the appropriate framework, utilising corporate accountability for false and misleading statements by companies has promise for making CSR more effective. The main limitations of this research is the political will of national governments in Africa to undertake such an exercise and the relative ability of civil society groups in light of the power of corporations to effectively hold them to account through the models proposed. The paper is interdisciplinary, drawing upon both management and legal theories. A significant contribution of this research is its pragmatic approach which goes beyond calling for legal platform for CSR by recommending a model for accountability within the existing voluntary CSR framework.