The coexistence of customary and statutory law, tenure, and administration in peri-urban areas of sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries such as Nigeria may cause conflict and tension. An efficient and effective land administration systems (LASs) and legal frameworks are crucial for ensuring pro-poor objectives in land administration. Women, the vulnerable and the poor who are denied access to efficient and effective land administration services tend to experience tenure insecurity. Nigeria is one of the countries with an inefficient and ineffective LASs. The study explores the possibility of hybrid legal systems contributing to tenure insecurity in peri-urban areas of Southwest Nigeria. This study assesses customary and statutory laws and administration systems pertaining to Ekiti State, Nigeria to understand whether there is legal pluralism. A case study of customary and statutory laws, tenure, and administration was carried out using primary and secondary data. The study used three peri-urban cases from Ekiti State, Nigeria (Ikere-Ekiti, Ijero-Ekiti, and Oye-Ekiti) to learn how customary and statutory laws, tenure, and administration operate within the same geographical space. The study adopted Soft System Methodology (SSM), with two analytical frameworks: Responsible Land Management (RLM) and Fit-For-Purpose Land Administration (FFPLA). Moreover, the study used institutional isomorphism theory to determine the conflicting pressure exerted on the customary legal framework, comprising the customary courts and the Customary Court of Appeal of a State (CCAS). The LASs with their legal frameworks were assessed using text-based and empirical approaches. The study findings show weak and deep legal pluralism in LASs. The assessment leads to developing conceptual tools for assessing LASs with their legal frameworks. On the one hand, the conceptual tool for assessing LASs with their legal frameworks is based on the three pillars of human rights, the rule of law, and legal pluralism, taking a constitutional focus. The study findings revealed conflicting pressure exerted on customary courts and the Customary Court Appeal of a State (CCAS). On the other hand, the conceptual tool for measuring land tenure security based on three pillars of jurisdiction, legitimacy, and collaboration. The conceptual tools provide understanding of the influence of the hybrid legal system in LASs in peri-urban areas. The understanding of the influence of hybrid system is based on decentralising land administration activities, local land management, self-determination, and autonomy. The framework also incorporates legal and institutional flexibility. Areas of further research are recommended.

As is the case with many countries, Namibia has an economy dependent on fossil fuels. The country is, however, blessed with abundant and diverse - but as yet unexploited - renewable energy (RE) resources that could be used for improving the livelihood of the vast majority of its 2.2 million people. Today the conflict between energy production from fossil fuels and protection of the environment is intensifying and this compels all countries to search for means of resolving this conflict. Developing RE through the enactment of enabling legislation and implementation of relevant policy is one important step towards attaining the ideal of an energy-secure future. This state of affairs is not unique to Namibia, as most countries with abundant RE sources are striving to promote and deploy RE in their respective regimes through appropriate policies and legal frameworks. This study examines Germany and Ghana from, respectively, the developed and developing world, as leading countries that have established a proactive RE regime. However, such a regime can only be successfully achieved if countries, including Namibia, adopt laws and policies that promote and encourage the use of RE in order to move away from fossil fuel dependence to a greener economy. Thus the study seeks to investigate RE resources in Namibia and their potential development. It outlines the current legislation pertaining to the regulation of RE in Namibia. As such, the study further examines the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) guidelines and draws examples from other regimes, particularly Germany and Ghana, in order to provide a guideline for the enactment of a general Energy Act with a particular chapter on RE. It concludes with recommendations as to how Namibia can secure a sustainable energy future.

In recent decades, the concept of ecosystem services has deepened our appreciation of the myriad benefits provided by ecosystems, and the risks to human societies posed by ecosystem degradation. There is a growing realisation that problems traditionally considered to be outside the environmental policy arena are in truth strongly connected to the environment: ecosystems underlie issues spanning climate, energy, food, water, urban planning, human health, economic development, social justice, and national security. Payments for ecosystem services (PES) create positive financial incentives for the protection and restoration of ecosystems, and represent one way to better represent the value of ecosystem services across a range of sectors. PES schemes are gaining traction in climate mitigation and biodiversity protection strategies, and most of all in the water sector. PES is complementing traditional approaches to water management and helping to address deteriorating water quality, declining water flows, and flooding. This thesis takes a legal perspective, examining the role of legal frameworks in the design and administration of PES. It focuses on PES aimed at protecting freshwater ecosystem services, and considers how legal frameworks can incorporate PES into strategies for drinking water provision. It examines an emerging body of law relating directly to PES, and provides an opportunity to consider some of the leading examples of the ES concept being reflected in law. It distinguishes three broad categories of legal frameworks that establish, regulate or enable PES. A comparative methodology is applied to an analysis of case studies of legal frameworks for PES from: Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, New York, England and Ontario. This analysis draws out conclusions about how the law relates to key policy issues around ES and PES, and different approaches to developing legal frameworks to guide PES, depending on different contexts and policy objectives.

This is a summary of research report for the study on positive action in the European Union. The Centre for Inclusion and Diversity at the University of Bradford was commissioned to lead this fifteen-month project in collaboration with the European Roma Rights Centre and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights. The main aim of the study was to examine the role of positive action in preventing or remedying discrimination by comparing the legal frameworks, policies and practices of positive action in Europe, Canada, United States and South Africa.

Economic development through the exploitation of natural resources has led to biodiversity loss among other environmental issues around the world. The use of biodiversity offsets to balance economic development and biodiversity conservation goals has significantly increased during the last three decades. A recent report of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released in December of 2016 identified at least 56 countries with laws or policies requiring the use of these types of instruments worldwide. There are over 100 biodiversity offset programs operating in countries such as United States of America, France, New Zealand, Mexico, Australia and others, which are injecting over 3 USD billion per year into the world’s economy. Experiences of different jurisdictions indicate that biodiversity offsets can become a promising tool in addressing the biodiversity loss issue in their territories. Canada and some of its provinces such as Alberta and British Columbia, which have important oil and gas sectors, and are home to important wildlife species, have been part of the biodiversity offsets debate, and have been exploring their use. This research derives from the observation that although some of the international biodiversity offset experiences have been vastly studied, there is little experience analyzing the legal challenges of implementing biodiversity offset systems, including biodiversity banks (a type of biodiversity offset that creates biodiversity markets) on public lands. The very nature of public land, where multiple users may simultaneously access the land and conduct a variety of potentially incompatible activities, can create extra legal challenges with respect to the implementation of biodiversity offsets. Through an Alberta-focused case study, the thesis explores the characteristics that a planning and legal framework of a province with a majority of public lands would need to have in order to support the use of biodiversity offsets and a biodiversity banking system. It also identifies and analyzes the legal issues and challenges of implementing long lasting biodiversity offsets in that context. Under the system studied by this dissertation, the main users of Alberta’s public forests (forest operators and oil and gas developers) become the biodiversity bankers or suppliers, and buyers of biodiversity credits, respectively. This thesis is therefore a contribution to knowledge about how biodiversity offsets, specifically biodiversity banks, can be applied on provincial public lands, used by multiple users. It focuses on the legal frameworks, property right issues, permanence, and additionality needed for a potential biodiversity banking system for a province such as Alberta.

Esta tese tem como propósito apresentar uma abordagem que justifique a vigência dos dois regimes jurídicos regulatórios presentes hodiernamente no ordenamento pátrio para a etapa de exploração e produção, segmento upstream, da indústria de petróleo e gás natural. Para tanto, abordaremos esses regimes sob o paradigma da segurança energética, que decorre, de um lado, da atual escassez de recursos naturais finitos, e, de outro, da importância estratégica que a indústria de hidrocarbonetos assumiu na economia capitalista, transformando-se, de uma commodity em um recurso estratégico ou de importância geopolítica para os países. Tendo em vista esse paradigma, trataremos da escolha do regime jurídico para o setor a partir do tradeoff incluindo, de um lado, o risco envolvidotr nesse segmento da referida indústria, e, de outro, a aquisição da propriedade dos hidrocarbonetos explotados. A justificativa em favor da mantença desses regimes tem como fulcro tornar as estruturas institucionais pátrias mais adaptadas: (i) de um lado, às díspares circunstâncias exploratórias encontradas, blocos envolvendo altos riscos exploratórios sendo explorados pelo regime calcado na Emenda Constitucional Nº 9 e Lei Nº 9.478/1997 e blocos com baixos riscos, por meio do regime disposto na Lei Nº 12.351/2010, Lei Nº 12.304/2010 e Lei Nº 12.276/2010, e, (ii) de outro, na importância que a propriedade sobre os hidrocarbonetos passou a assumir para os países em razão do paradigma da segurança energética. Nesse sentido, defendemos a tese de que o contrato ínsito ao regime regulatório de 2010, contrato de partilha de produção, uma combinação convexa entre os contratos de concessão e de serviços, figurando como um meio termo entre ambos, permite maior adaptação no tradeoff entre risco e propriedade. / This thesis aims to present an approach that justifies the validity of the two regulatory legal systems present in our times in the national order to step exploration and production, upstream segment, of the oil and gas industry. Therefore, we will address these schemes under the paradigm of energy security, which takes place on the one hand, the current shortage of finite natural resources, and on the other, the strategic importance of the oil industry took in the capitalist economy, transforming herself, a commodity, in a strategic or geopolitical resource for countries. Given this paradigm, we will treat the choice of the legal framework for the sector from the tradeoff involving, on the one hand, the risk involved in this segment of that industry, and on the other, the acquisition of ownership of hydrocarbons exploited. The reason in favor of keeping these schemes is to make institutional structures best suited to: (i) the different circumstances encountered in blocks involving high exploration risks, being exploited by the regime framed on Constitutional Amendment Nº 9 and Law Nº 9.478/1997, or blocks with low risks through the regime framed in Law Nº 12.351/2010, Law Nº 12.304/2010 and Law Nº 12.276/2010; (ii) the importance of ownership of the hydrocarbons has assumed for countries, due to the energy security paradigm. In this sense, we defend the thesis that the contract itself to the regulatory regime of 2010, production sharing contract, is a convex combination of concession contracts and services, appearing as a middle term between the two, allowing greater adaptation in the tradeoff between risk and property.