Ecological Law Research Articles

Mission possible: Holistic approaches can heal marine wounds.

Ocean sciences comprise a vast array of disciplines ranging from physics to socio-economics. The various approaches compete with each other for visibility, rather than cooperate and join forces. Communication beyond the science journals tends to focus on charismatic species and habitats (the ohhh tactics, aimed at provoking wonder) that does not result in the full perception (the ahhh strategy) of the role of ocean sciences for our well-being. Furthermore, natural sciences fail to establish the logical primacy of natural laws over social and economic laws, even though society and the economy cannot exist without the rest of the environment. Sustainability is universally recognized as a stringent priority, but it gives prevalence to economic and social values, relegating natural phenomena to a secondary role: natural assets are evaluated with measures of economics (in monetary terms) giving primacy to economic laws over ecological laws. The solution to these problems resides in the cultural evolution of that part of the scientific community that recognizes the necessity of evolving from reductionistic tactics to a holistic strategy, with a timely integration of ocean sciences and technologies and of their collaboration with social and economic sciences.

ПРИНЦИП ФОРМУВАННЯ ЕКОЛОГІЧНОЇ КУЛЬТУРИ В УКРАЇНІ: ПРОБЛЕМИ ТЕОРЕТИКО-ПРАВОВОГО ЗМІСТУ ТА ПЕРСПЕКТИВИ РОЗВИТКУ

The article examines the theoretical and legal, legislative and other approaches to understanding the essence and content of the principle of formation of ecological culture in environmental law and legislation of Ukraine. At present, the principle of formation of ecological culture is only partially reflected in the norms of the Constitution of Ukraine and current legislation, in particular the Law of Ukraine "On Environmental Protection". The implementation of this principle in legislative, practical and law enforcement activities will help increase the level of environmental and legal awareness and culture, ecologization of national law and legislation. The level of ecological and ecological-legal culture in society determines the effectiveness of operation of ecological management and control system, the guarantee of the ecological safety of economic and other activities, the achievement of ecological law and order, the restoration of ecological balance, the development of science and ecological knowledge. The strengthening of the principle of ecological culture formation will be promoted by performance of the strategic tasks put in provisions of sources of the state ecological policy, primarily, the Basic principles (strategy) of the state ecological policy for the period till 2030. Proposals have been made to improve the current legislation in order to take into account the principle of forming an environmental culture, guaranteeing the sustainable development of our country from the standpoint of current challenges and processes of globalization. The opinion on the expediency of constitutional contemplation of the principle of formation of ecological culture as a basis for building a democratic, social, legal and ecological state had been expressed. This principle is offered to supplement the main sources of natural resources, environmental law and environmental safety law. The introduction of the principle of formation of ecological culture in the national legislation should assume a nature of a systemic character, which will help to provide the coherence of environmental law and other branches in the regulation of environmental relations. This will increase the level of ecological and legal culture of society and citizens and strengthen the course of our state towards international and European integration. Keywords: ecological culture, ecological-legal culture, ecological law, ecological legislation, environment, principles of ecological law, principles of law, state ecological policy

Ecological Civilization and Legal Norms for Resilient Environmental Governance

Abstract The aim of this article is to examine how the principles of ecological civilization can help shape a consensus about restating environmental legal principles generally. This restatement is essential given the fact that many human laws have proven to be manifestly at variance with the natural systems of Earth’s biosphere. Disruptions caused by climate change increase and the sixth great extinction of species has ushered in crises in biodiversity. It is argued that with environmental degradation becoming worse world-wide, more is required of governments than just again endorsing steps to advance sustainable development. Rather, there is a need for more effective and resilient governmental management. States must agree upon the progressive development of the law necessary to deal with Earth’s changing, new, and real conditions. New environmental principles, such as the principle of resilience, will need to be added to the existing ones. Potentially, China can contribute greatly to the global debate about Earth’s ecological law principles by sharing its knowledge and understanding of ecological civilization.

Follow Ecological Laws and Improve Ecological Governance Capacity and Level

The eco-civilization system constitutes an important part of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. In order to achieve harmonious coexistence between man and nature, it is required to not only uphold and improve the eco-civilization system, but also give full play to the advantages of China’s socialist system and governance system to ensure that the eco-civilization system is effectively implemented; meanwhile, it is important to apply ecological laws in a scientific manner to continuously develop and improve the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Ecological laws function as the scientific basis for the building of ecological systems and ecological governance. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) demand the guarantee of ecological system and improvement of ecological governance capacity. While adhering to and perfecting the eco-civilization system, it is also needed to continuously advance the modernization of ecological governance capacity.

Ecological laws for agroecological design: the need for more organized collaboration in producing, evaluating and updating ecological generalizations.

The applied discipline of agroecological design provides a useful case study for examining broader philosophical questions about the existence and importance of ecological generalizations or "laws." Recent developments in the availability and use of formal meta-analyses have led to the discovery of many resilient generalizations in ecology (Linquist et al. 2016). However, these "laws" face numerous challenges when it comes to their practical application. Concerns about their reliability and scope might stem from unclear logical and epistemic connections to more foundational or "unifying" generalizations (Lean in Philos Top 47(1), 2019) which, in ecology, tend to be derived from first principles and in association with highly abstract models. This raises questions about the nature of those foundational generalizations themselves. In particular, how resilient are they compared to the generalizations uncovered by empirically driven methods? Here we propose a procedure for evaluating the resilience of generalizations across five ecologically relevant dimensions. This procedure was applied to seven well known foundational generalizations in ecology. Surprisingly, it turned out to be impossible to estimate the resilience of these foundational generalizations based on the available literature. This points to the need for a more centralized repository of information about ecological generalizations, created with the explicit aim of evaluating such important dimensions as causal mechanism and predictive power.

Based on the Emerging E-commerce Ecosystem Synergy and Innovation Mechanism Investigation

E-commerce is a new business model based on Internet information technology, and its internal operation mechanism can be studied in depth from the perspective of the knowledge ecosystem according to the law of knowledge ecology. The various knowledge elements in the e-business knowledge ecosystem interact and influence each other, continue to exchange materials and energy according to specific rules, and develop and circulate autonomously so that users can acquire, transfer, share and sublimate knowledge in the business system. Finally, knowledge innovation and new value creation are realized to complete the final value sublimation. Based on this, this paper elaborates on three aspects of e-business ecosystem system synergy theory, e-business ecosystem, and e-business ecosystem synergy and innovation model for the reference of relevant personnel.

Integrative ecology in the era of big data—From observation to prediction

Most ecological and environmental issues faced by human society can only be solved at the ecosystem, watershed, regional and even global scale. Thus, ecological research is developing rapidly towards macro-scale studies. With the rapid development of observational networks and information technology, the spaceborne-aircraft-ground based observation system is becoming an important feature of ecosystem monitoring in the new era. With the gradual formation of the global new-generation observational systems and the rapid expansion of massive multi-source heterogeneous data, ecology has entered the era of big data, big science, and big theory. How to integrate ecological big data, discover valuable ecological laws and mechanisms, and further expand them to solve eco-environmental issues that closely relate to human development are the major opportunities and challenges in this field. In this paper, we systematically summarized the research progresses in ecological big data, reviewed the opportunity and demand of integrative ecology, and further discussed the main approaches of ecological big data integration by using meta-analysis, data mining, and data-model fusion. Finally, we proposed the prospects and research directions of in-tegrative ecology and suggested that future researches need to integrate big data into land models so as to improve the accuracy of ecological forecasting. It can be foreseen that under the background of global change and the rapid development of big data in the future, integrative ecology will be extensively applied and developed to serve the sustainable development of human society.

Juridical Analysis of Environmental Law Enforcement in Forestry Crimes Regulation in the Regional Autonomy

This paper discusses the UUPLH as the basis of Indonesia's environmental policy to prevent and overcome environmental pollution and destruction. A good and healthy environment is created; ecological law enforcement uses state administrative law instruments, civil law, and criminal law. At the law enforcement level, there are many obstacles. Due to the unclear formulation of offenses and various sanctions, the proof is quite difficult, except in being caught red-handed. Strictly speaking, preventive and repressive law enforcement measures against forest and land fires cases and their ecosystem impacts are still not adequate. This fact can be seen from the lack of resolution of forest and land burning issues that have been submitted to the court, and even almost none of the perpetrators of forest and land logging were charged with the legal sanctions above. As for the culture of law culture, the cases of forest and land fires are certainly large-scale corporations, which can even control political power. The state, in this case, state administrators, should consistently target corporate crime and focus on law enforcement efforts using available instruments.

Consequences of Urbanization on Wildlife Survival in India and USA – Relevance of Adoption of Legislations

Urbanization has always been a sign of growth, but it has created its own set of issues, concerns and challenges to tackle. One such issue is the destruction of wildlife's natural habitat in the form of deforestation which contributes to killing and chocking of wildlife. The quest for urbanization gradually becomes an individual preference in which people yearn for more luxury, be it in the form of automated gadgets, luxury cars or posh farmhouses- all leading to pollution and wildlife survival disturbance. For India and the United States of America being no exception, this trend is global. India is the world’s second most populous nation and one of the largest developing economies for rising urban development rates. The United States of America on the other hand, falls within the context of a developed nation. At this juncture, urbanization and natural life are among the most controversial issues that require legal intervention to protect and preserve biodiversity. On a cynical note, both the countries are welfare nations, but is this welfare extended to the wildlife too? India has achieved an unprecedent level of urbanization, and the United States is already an urban society, yet a dunking rate of events in untamed wildlife is a serious legal problem for both the nations. India has adopted various legislation such as The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and Endangered Species Act of USA and these legislations had been formulated in the nation-state with regards to urbanization and ecological law while both the nations are parties to the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. The goal was to economically develop the country, stimulate urbanization, and sub-mix the untamed wildlife regime. By comparing both the countries, the paper will jointly present a reformation that needs to be considered under one legislation by bridging the gap between the developing nations and developed nations. The empirical method of research will be adopted to compare both the legislations. In light of the aforementioned scenario, this paper by way of a doctrinal search attempts to endeavor into the following: 1. Relationships between the growing population, the ecology principle, change towards urbanization and the establishment of wildlife laws in India and the United States. 2. Urbanization analysis and wildlife law requirements on a global aspect. 3. Recommend sustainable urbanization improvement along with biodiversity and natural life insurance solutions.

Stanovlenie ekologicheskogo prava i ekologicheskoj politiki v russkih gorodah pervoj poloviny XIX veka

Stanovlenie ekologicheskogo prava i ekologicheskoj politiki v russkih gorodah pervoj poloviny XIX veka

Ecological Jurisprudence and Indigenous Relational Ontologies: Beyond the ‘Ecological Indian’?

A turn to Indigeneity is a common and welcome theme in foundational texts and moments in the development of ecological law. Nevertheless, this chapter examines the risk of falling into archetypes or myths of the “ecological Indian.” In tracking the debate about sustainability and conservation in ethnobiology, the chapter challenges scholars and proponents of ecological law to engage with Indigenous knowledges in a way that embeds knowledges in the polities and legal orders of Indigenous peoples and is sensitive to the complexities of the cosmopolitics involved in negotiating understanding and action across different life-worlds. This certainly means contending with the colonial context in which Indigenous knowledge in relation to “the environment” emerges, and situating Indigenous peoples themselves as key actors in the move to ecological law; it may also mean questioning or re-calibrating what it means to be ecocentric, to respect all life forms or to be interconnected with them.

ЦИВІЛЬНО-ПРАВОВА ВІДПОВІДАЛЬНІСТЬ ДЕРЖАВИ ЗА ЗАКОНОДАВСТВОМ УКРАЇНИ: ДОКТРИНАЛЬНИЙ ПОГЛЯД

Стаття присвячена питанням цивільно-правової відповідальності за законодавством України. Наголошено, що традиційно проблематика відповідальності держави становила інтерес публічних галузей права, таких як конституційне, адміністративне, екологічне. В умовах сьогодення, коли перед державою Україна чи не кожного дня постають нові геополітичні виклики, сутність підходів до оцінки ролі та значення цивільно-правової відповідальності держави змінюється. Держава як особливий публічно-правовий суб’єкт бере участь у виникненні, зміні та припиненні правовідносин, у тому числі й відносин цивільної відповідальності. На сьогодні залишається невирішеною низка питань щодо підстав та умов цивільно-правової відповідальності держави, особливостей суб’єктного складу в цивільному правопорушенні, та найголовніше, - самого доктринального визначення категорії «цивільно-правова відповідальність держави». Досліджено окремі аспекти еволюції цивільно-правового регулювання відносин з відшкодування шкоди, завданої органами державної влади. Зазначено, що інститут відшкодування завданої особі шкоди був правовою необхідністю з початку зародження вчення про правовідносини. Проте, найбільшого розвитку інститут цивільно-правової відповідальності досяг саме за часів римського права.
 Основи розуміння та формування цивільно-правової відповідальності держави були закладені за часів римського права. Сьогодні питання цивільно-правової відповідальності держави не втрачає своєї актуальності серед сучасних дослідників, оскільки стрімкі зміни суспільного устрою кидають все нові виклики для підстав цивільно-правової відповідальності, умов і механізмів відшкодування державою завданої шкоди юридичним чи фізичним особам. Сформульоване визначення цивільно-правової відповідальності держави - як безумовного обов’язку держави в особі відповідальних органів державної влади або юридичних осіб публічного права здійснити справедливе відшкодування (компенсувати) заподіяну потерпілій особі матеріальну та (або) моральну шкоду викликану організаційно-управлінськими, військово-політичними, організаційно-правовими рішеннями, діями та заходами органів державної влади, їх посадових осіб, службовцями та у інших випадках визначених законодавством.

Estimating the Optimum Coverage and Quality of Amplicon Sequencing With Taylor's Power Law Extensions.

Theoretical analysis of DNA sequencing coverage problem has been investigated with complex mathematical models such as Lander–Waterman expectation theory and Stevens’ theorem for randomly covering a domain. In the field of metagenomics sequencing, several approaches have been developed to estimate the coverage of whole-genome shotgun sequencing, but surprisingly few studies addressed the coverage problem for marker-gene amplicon sequencing, for which arguably the biggest challenge is the complexity or heterogeneity of microbial communities. Overall, much of the practice still relies variously on speculation, semi-empirical and ad hoc heuristic models. Conservatively raising coverage may ensure the success of sequencing project, but often with unduly cost. In this study, we borrow the principles and approaches of optimum sampling methodology originated in applied entomology, achieved equal success in plant pathology and parasitology, and plays a critical role in the decision-making for global crop and forest protection against economic pests since 1970s when the pesticide crisis and food safety concerns forced the reduction of pesticide usages, which in turn requires reliable sampling techniques for monitoring pest populations. We realized that sequencing coverage is essentially an optimum sampling problem. Perhaps the only essential difference between sampling insects and sampling microbiome is the “instrument” used. In traditional entomology, it is usually humans that visually count the numbers of insects, occasionally aided by binocular microscope. In the metagenomics research, it is the DNA sequencers that count the number of DNA reads. Furthermore, a key theoretical foundation for sampling insect pest populations, i.e., Taylor’s power law, which achieved rare status of ecological law and captures the population aggregation, has been recently extended to the community level for describing community heterogeneity and stability, namely, Taylor’s power law extensions (TPLEs). This theoretical advance enabled us to develop a novel approach to assessing the quality and determining optimum reads (coverage) of amplicon sequencing operations. Specifically, two applications were developed: one is, in hindsight, to assess the quality of amplicon sequencing operation in terms of the precision and confidence levels. Another is, prior to sequencing operation, to determine the minimum sequencing efforts for a sequencing project to achieve preset precision and confidence levels.

Heterogeneity–disease relationship in the human microbiome-associated diseases

Space is a critical and also challenging frontier in human microbiome research. It has been found that lack of consideration of scales beyond individual and ignoring of microbe dispersal are two crucial roadblocks in preventing deep understanding of the spatial heterogeneity of human microbiome. Assessing and interpreting the heterogeneity and dispersal in microbiomes explicitly are particularly challenging, but implicit approaches such as Taylor's power law (TPL) can be rather effective. Based on TPL, which achieved a rare status of ecological laws, we introduce a general methodology for characterizing the spatial heterogeneity of microbiome (i.e. characterization of microbial spatial distribution) and further apply it for investigating the heterogeneity-disease relationship (HDR) via analyzing a big dataset of 26 MAD (microbiome-associated disease) studies covering nearly all high-profile MADs including obesity, diabetes and gout. It was found that in majority of the MAD cases, the microbiome was sufficiently resilient to endure the disease disturbances. Specifically, in ∼10-16% cases, disease effects were significant-the healthy and diseased cohorts exhibited statistically significant differences in the TPL heterogeneity parameters. We further compared HDR with classic diversity-disease relationship (DDR) and explained their mechanistic differences. Both HDR and DDR cross-verified remarkable resilience of the human microbiomes against MADs.

Ecological law in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT The issue motivating this article is the extent to which ecological legal thinking needs to change and adapt to the Anthropocene. My contention is that legal scholars tend to use the notion of the ‘Anthropocene’ as a synonym for the extreme impact human beings are having on the environment. Yet, few go further and consider whether the intellectual foundations or prescriptive proposals of ecological law have been challenged by Earth systems science. This is precisely the gap I intended to address in this article. Part one provides a descriptive summary of key findings in Earth systems science. Following this, part two presents two challenges to ecological lawyers. First I argue that we ought to abandon attempts to formulate a non-anthropocentric theory of law and embrace descriptive and perceptual forms of anthropocentrism. Second, I argue that earth systems science undermines many versions of ecological integrity found in legislation around the world.

The swarm that we already are: artificially intelligent (AI) swarming ‘insect drones’, targeting and international humanitarian law in a posthuman ecology

Over the last fifty-odd years the US Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has launched programs aiming at emulating and incorporating insect technologies in military technology. The US Army Unmanned Aircrafts Systems Roadmap 2010–2035 has specified insect swarming as a field of development for Unmanned Aviation Systems. While legal scholarship has paid substantial attention to drones, autonomous weapons systems and artificial intelligence (AI), developments based on insect swarming technologies have been largely ignored. This article takes emerging AI swarming technologies in military warfare systems as its starting point and asks about the significance of the swarming insect in and through contemporary International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and warfare. Taking up Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notions of ‘the swarm’ and the ‘war machine’, and drawing on critical environmental legal scholarship, the article argues that rather than dispersing the human from its central position in the ‘targeting loop’, the increased interest in insects for commercial and warfare purposes is an intensification of transhumanist desires and an acceleration of late capitalism. As a counter-move, and as a contribution to a posthumanist turn in IHL, the article calls for becoming-insect, swarm and minoritarian as an epistemological practice and ontological shift in IHL and its critical scholarship, resulting in a posthumanitarian legal ordering of becoming.

Human reproductive system microbiomes exhibited significantly different heterogeneity scaling with gut microbiome, but the intra‐system scaling is invariant

Maintaining sexual reproduction in a highly competitive world is still one of the major mysteries of biology given the apparently high efficiency of asexual reproduction. Co‐evolutionary theories such as the Red Queen hypothesis would suggest that the microbiomes in human reproductive systems, specifically the microbiomes contained in semen and vaginal fluids, should reach some level of homogeneity thanks to arguably the most conspicuous microbiome transmission between two sexes. The long‐term sexual coevolution should favor the dynamic homogeneity or stability, which should also be beneficial for sexual reproduction such as sperm survival or fertilization on physiological/ecological time scale. We present a piece of quantitative evidence in the form of microbial community spatial heterogeneity to support the stability notion by analyzing three big datasets of the human vaginal, semen and gut microbiome. Methodologically, we applied a recent community‐level extension to the classic Taylor's power law, which reached the rare status of ecological law and has found applications beyond biology. Both ecological and evolutionary theories, such as hologenome/holobiont and Red Queen, as well as consideration of first principles, would predict that microbiome transmissions between two sexes should have homogenizing effects on the composition and stability of the microbiomes in human reproductive systems, and therefore have similar variance structures. This is supported by the finding that the power law analysis revealed human vaginal and semen microbiomes exhibited the same scaling parameter size in their community spatial (inter‐individual) heterogeneities, while the both exhibited significantly different heterogeneity scaling parameter size with the human gut microbiome.

People and Nature in an Urban World

Humanity is facing an existential contradiction: we are building an urban future for ourselves, yet urbanization in its current form is threatening the very future of humanity and the natural world. Urban growth is a seemingly unstoppable worldwide process. Much has been written about this historic trend, but the environmental impacts of an urbanizing world are barely discussed.

The modern problems of theory ecological law

The modern problems of theory ecological law

'Social Nature:' Political Economy, Science, and Law in the Anthropocene

Data-driven approaches to environmental governance, such as those promoted by the planetary boundaries concept, permit the rapid circulation of actionable information on environmental performance through transnational networks operating within the political economy. Some of the most promising approaches emerge from structural coupling between science and economics, largely bypassing law and politics and operating in cognitive rather than normative terms. Yet a purely cognitive global ecological law, offering no possibility of stabilisation of expectations, would ultimately be ineffective. I argue that a role for law emerges if the normative dimensions of the condensation of complex scientific insights into metrics with a high degree of resonance in the political economy are taken seriously. Law must do more than transduce scientific data into metrics as though scientists have unmediated knowledge of Earth systems. Rather, the normative dimensions of scientific knowledge-production, notably in processes of judging, arguing, and persuading, create opportunities for the development of norms governing the processes of condensing and translating scientific knowledge of ecological risk into signals of economic risk. As Bruno Latour argues, responses to ecological crisis ought not to be conceived of as a new form of jus naturalis, containing norms and standards dictated directly to humankind by the non-human world; instead, what is required is a jus gentium that accepts the unknowability of the non-human world, and the mediated – and therefore highly normative – channels through which knowledge of that world is derived.