Literature Review

The research paper entitled "Blue Economy Coastal Resources its Economic Valuation and Governance for Achieving Sustainable Development Goals" is an attempt to define and analyze the concept of Blue Economy, Coastal Resources, its Economic Valuation and Governance and its implications for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) slated by United Nations. The research study covers aspects such as development of coastal resources for building a blue economy to achieve SDGs, economic valuation of coastal resources to develop appropriate and suitable mechanisms for achieving healthy ocean and its importance for current and future generations, sustainability of coastal resources and coastal management policies, coastal communities and sustainable blue economy among other aspects. The other aspects covered in the research paper include a detailed literature review on blue and coastal economy, research questions and concluding observations. The United Nations Environment Programme(UNEP) and the United Nations(UN) are the major multilateral organizations working for development of coastal resources and coastal communities. It is observed that economic valuation of coastal resources is required to assess and determine the development of the coastal communities and their governance for achieving the United Nations 2030 Agenda.

Based on the latest developments in ecological law in Latin America, including the recognition of the rights of nature, this article examines emerging climate-related cases that, challenging Western anthropocentric legal paradigms, address the climate crisis from an ecocentric perspective to protect both human and nature rights. Through novel arguments based on ecological law counter-narratives and a rights of nature perspective, these cases are giving way to the emergence of a new typology of climate litigation in which the intrinsic value and interests of all life forms and the legal status of nature are recognized. First, this article analyses the experience and current trends in the emerging field of ecological law in the region, including ecological and intergenerational dimensions of human rights and the legal and jurisprudential recognition of the rights of nature. Second, it reviews and compares some of the most relevant climate-related cases as well as recent, less known—some still pending—claims that incorporate an ecocentric approach, combining the protection of the rights of present and future generations and the rights of nature or exploring other arguments in the field of ecological law. These cases have the potential to contribute to the development of climate litigation with an ecocentric profile. Attention is given to the main arguments, characteristics, strengths, and shortcomings of these cases, as well as to potential barriers to the development of an ecocentric angle to climate litigation and the implementation of judicial decisions.

Concerns about the impact of human activities on the environment and cultural heritage led to the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Joint UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Programme, and the World Heritage Convention in the early 1970s.

Despite the promising application of Big Data analytics to environmental contexts significant challenges remain regarding the communication of data-derived insights and data itself. Addressing issues at the intersection of Big Data analytic technologies and environmental communication are a pair of United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) initiatives; the Data for Environmental Alliance (DEAL) and the World Environmental Situation Room (WESR). Both initiatives seek to address communicative hindrances associated with adopting and using Big Data analytic technologies on the international stage and offer a welcome addition to the environmental communication toolbox. This commentary considers these initiatives by providing a brief overview of them and potential obstacles to their success.

Plastics are everywhere. They are in many goods that we use every day. However, they are also a source of pollution. In 2022, at the resumed fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly, a historic resolution was adopted with the aim of convening an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, with the intention to focus on the entire life cycle of plastics. Plastics, in essence, are composed of chemicals. According to a recent report from the secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm conventions, around 13 000 chemicals are associated with plastics and plastic pollution. Many of these chemicals are endocrine-disrupting chemicals and, according to reports by members of the Endocrine Society and others, exposure to some of these chemicals causes enormous costs due to the development of preventable diseases. The global plastics treaty brings the opportunity for harmonized, international regulation of chemicals with endocrine disrupting properties present in plastic products

The review presents the strong business case for inland food fisheries in developing countries to be either a co-benefit, or very often the main benefit, of ecosystem restoration. In view of the current state of inland water aquatic habitats the potential for restoration is high. Realizing this potential requires concerted action to overcome current challenges, foremost of which is the invisibility of inland fisheries in many policy arenas as well as technical and scientific fora. The drivers of ecosystem degradation, ecosystem services valuation frameworks and the main technical tools for implementing interventions are presented. Experiences in developed countries dominate the literature but are not necessarily applicable to developing country inland food fisheries. Local communities that have high dependency on inland fisheries and live in close association with inland water fisheries habitats not only provide much higher fisheries values but a management asset that is unavailable in developed countries and the mainstay of many successful restoration programmes. Ten case studies, representing effective restoration of food fisheries from local to basin scale are used to illustrate what can be achieved. The prospects of inland fisheries benefiting from, or contributing to, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) are good but upscaling the existing progress will require increased and sustained efforts to mainstream the values of inland fisheries including their co-benefits for biodiversity conservation.

This collection of Questions & Answers (Q&As) was prepared by the Environmental Effects Assessment Panel (EEAP) of the Montreal Protocol under the umbrella of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The document complements EEAP’s Quadrennial Assessment 2022 (https://ozone. unep.org/science/assessment/eeap) and provides interesting and useful information for policymakers, the general public, teachers, and scientists, written in an easy-to-understand language.

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Not only inflicted human casualities, the war between Russia and Ukraine, also injured the environment. Russia's discriminating attacks on essential objects such as gas, energy, oil, and mining infrastructure become the most significant root cause. UNEP affirmed that the attacks resulted in widespread water, soil and air pollution, as well as a significant deterioration in Ukraine's ecosystem stability. Accordingly, the study intends to examine the framework of international humanitarian and criminal law, specifically in terms of enviromental protection, as well as to analyze accountability before the International Criminal Court. The study employed doctrinal method involving a statutory and conceptual approach. In this case, relevant legal instruments such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, as well as the Rome Statute, were being examined. Furthermore, the study is also certified by the evolution of legal doctrines in books, jounals, and other credible sources. According to the findings, humanitarian law, which is underpinned by customary international law, protects the environment slightly better than international criminal law. In short, the state bears multiple duties for environmental damage caused by the outbreak of war. Individual accountability before the ICC, on the other hand, is being overlooked. It is due to the Rome Statute's flaws, which include vagueness in the formulation of the articles, stringent standards for proof of environmental damage, and bias in proving mens rea. As a result, improvements in the enforcement of international crimes (war crimes and related types) that cause environmental damage are urgently required

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Despite recent debates about whether ‘rights of nature’ (RoN) are sufficiently de-colonizing, the extent to which they are aligned with, emergent from, or appropriative of Indigenous values and worldviews, their ability to be co-opted by neo-extractivist states and corporations, and the degree to which they remain guided by the assumptions of Western liberal individualism, to date there has been considerably less attention paid to the fact that movements for RoN are challenging not just legal anthropocentrism, but the decision-making authority of states. Drawing on interviews with rights of nature activists, organizers, and lawyers in the mid-western US state of Ohio and on close readings of recent court cases, this chapter demonstrates that, when approached ethnographically, these on-the-ground efforts to legally acknowledge the rights-bearing status of non-humans raise important political-economic questions about the limitations of state environmental regulatory processes that require a reorientation in some of the scholarship on the rights of nature.