RESUMEN
Tropical forest degradation from selective logging, fire and edge effects is a major driver of carbon and biodiversity loss1-3, with annual rates comparable to those of deforestation4. However, its actual extent and long-term impacts remain uncertain at global tropical scale5. Here we quantify the magnitude and persistence of multiple types of degradation on forest structure by combining satellite remote sensing data on pantropical moist forest cover changes4 with estimates of canopy height and biomass from spaceborne6 light detection and ranging (LiDAR). We estimate that forest height decreases owing to selective logging and fire by 15% and 50%, respectively, with low rates of recovery even after 20 years. Agriculture and road expansion trigger a 20% to 30% reduction in canopy height and biomass at the forest edge, with persistent effects being measurable up to 1.5 km inside the forest. Edge effects encroach on 18% (approximately 206 Mha) of the remaining tropical moist forests, an area more than 200% larger than previously estimated7. Finally, degraded forests with more than 50% canopy loss are significantly more vulnerable to subsequent deforestation. Collectively, our findings call for greater efforts to prevent degradation and protect already degraded forests to meet the conservation pledges made at recent United Nations Climate Change and Biodiversity conferences.
Asunto(s)
Biomasa , Agricultura Forestal , Bosques , Actividades Humanas , Humedad , Árboles , Clima Tropical , Agricultura/estadística & datos numéricos , Biodiversidad , Conservación de los Recursos Naturales/legislación & jurisprudencia , Conservación de los Recursos Naturales/estadística & datos numéricos , Conservación de los Recursos Naturales/tendencias , Incendios , Agricultura Forestal/estadística & datos numéricos , Tecnología de Sensores Remotos , Factores de Tiempo , Árboles/crecimiento & desarrollo , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudenciaAsunto(s)
Política Ambiental , Objetivos , Desarrollo Sostenible , Naciones Unidas , Política Ambiental/legislación & jurisprudencia , Política Ambiental/tendencias , Desarrollo Sostenible/legislación & jurisprudencia , Desarrollo Sostenible/tendencias , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudencia , Naciones Unidas/organización & administración , Inteligencia ArtificialAsunto(s)
Contaminación Ambiental , Cooperación Internacional , Maniobras Políticas , Negociación , Plásticos , Investigadores , Naciones Unidas , Plásticos/provisión & distribución , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudencia , Contaminación Ambiental/legislación & jurisprudencia , Contaminación Ambiental/prevención & control , Cooperación Internacional/legislación & jurisprudenciaAsunto(s)
Comercio , Contaminación Ambiental , Cooperación Internacional , Maniobras Políticas , Plásticos , Investigadores , Naciones Unidas , Plásticos/provisión & distribución , Cooperación Internacional/legislación & jurisprudencia , Comercio/legislación & jurisprudencia , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudencia , Contaminación Ambiental/legislación & jurisprudencia , Contaminación Ambiental/prevención & controlRESUMEN
Glacier shrinkage and the development of post-glacial ecosystems related to anthropogenic climate change are some of the fastest ongoing ecosystem shifts, with marked ecological and societal cascading consequences1-6. Yet, no complete spatial analysis exists, to our knowledge, to quantify or anticipate this important changeover7,8. Here we show that by 2100, the decline of all glaciers outside the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets may produce new terrestrial, marine and freshwater ecosystems over an area ranging from the size of Nepal (149,000 ± 55,000 km2) to that of Finland (339,000 ± 99,000 km2). Our analysis shows that the loss of glacier area will range from 22 ± 8% to 51 ± 15%, depending on the climate scenario. In deglaciated areas, the emerging ecosystems will be characterized by extreme to mild ecological conditions, offering refuge for cold-adapted species or favouring primary productivity and generalist species. Exploring the future of glacierized areas highlights the importance of glaciers and emerging post-glacial ecosystems in the face of climate change, biodiversity loss and freshwater scarcity. We find that less than half of glacial areas are located in protected areas. Echoing the recent United Nations resolution declaring 2025 as the International Year of Glaciers' Preservation9 and the Global Biodiversity Framework10, we emphasize the need to urgently and simultaneously enhance climate-change mitigation and the in situ protection of these ecosystems to secure their existence, functioning and values.
Asunto(s)
Ecosistema , Calentamiento Global , Cubierta de Hielo , Biodiversidad , Agua Dulce/análisis , Calentamiento Global/legislación & jurisprudencia , Calentamiento Global/prevención & control , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudencia , Análisis Espacio-Temporal , Especificidad de la Especie , AnimalesRESUMEN
The United Nations (UN) stated that all new roads and 75% of travel time on roads must be 3+ star standard by 2030. The number of stars is determined by the International Road Assessment Program (iRAP) star rating module. It is based on 64 attributes for each road. In this paper, a framework for highly accurate and fully automatic determination of two attributes is proposed: roadside severity-object and roadside severity-distance. The framework integrates mobile Lidar point clouds with deep learning-based object detection on road cross-section images. The You Only Look Once (YOLO) network was used for object detection. Lidar data were collected by vehicle-mounted mobile Lidar for all Croatian highways. Point clouds were collected in .las format and cropped to 10 m-long segments align vehicle path. To determine both attributes, it was necessary to detect the road with high accuracy, then roadside severity-distance was determined with respect to the edge of the detected road. Each segment is finally classified into one of 13 roadside severity object classes and one of four roadside severity-distance classes. The overall accuracy of the roadside severity-object classification is 85.1%, while for the distance attribute it is 85.6%. The best average precision is achieved for safety barrier concrete class (0.98), while the worst AP is achieved for rockface class (0.72).
Asunto(s)
Accidentes de Tránsito/prevención & control , Materiales de Construcción/normas , Viaje/tendencias , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudencia , Croacia , Recolección de Datos , Seguridad , Factores de TiempoRESUMEN
Over the last five years prior to the Glasgow Climate Pact1, 154 Parties have submitted new or updated 2030 mitigation goals in their nationally determined contributions and 76 have put forward longer-term pledges. Quantifications of the pledges before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) suggested a less than 50 per cent chance of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius2-5. Here we show that warming can be kept just below 2 degrees Celsius if all conditional and unconditional pledges are implemented in full and on time. Peak warming could be limited to 1.9-2.0 degrees Celsius (5%-95% range 1.4-2.8 °C) in the full implementation case-building on a probabilistic characterization of Earth system uncertainties in line with the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report6 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We retrospectively project twenty-first-century warming to show how the aggregate level of ambition changed from 2015 to 2021. Our results rely on the extrapolation of time-limited targets beyond 2030 or 2050, characteristics of the IPCC 1.5 °C Special Report (SR1.5) scenario database7 and the full implementation of pledges. More pessimistic assumptions on these factors would lead to higher temperature projections. A second, independent emissions modelling framework projected peak warming of 1.8 degrees Celsius, supporting the finding that realized pledges could limit warming to just below 2 degrees Celsius. Limiting warming not only to 'just below' but to 'well below' 2 degrees Celsius or 1.5 degrees Celsius urgently requires policies and actions to bring about steep emission reductions this decade, aligned with mid-century global net-zero CO2 emissions.
Asunto(s)
Política Ambiental , Calentamiento Global , Cooperación Internacional , Temperatura , Planeta Tierra , Política Ambiental/legislación & jurisprudencia , Calentamiento Global/legislación & jurisprudencia , Calentamiento Global/prevención & control , Calentamiento Global/estadística & datos numéricos , Historia del Siglo XXI , Cooperación Internacional/legislación & jurisprudencia , Paris , Estudios Retrospectivos , Factores de Tiempo , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudenciaAsunto(s)
Cooperación Internacional , Pandemias/prevención & control , Organización Mundial de la Salud , Animales , COVID-19/epidemiología , COVID-19/terapia , Prueba de COVID-19 , Creación de Capacidad , Contención de Riesgos Biológicos/normas , Toma de Decisiones en la Organización , Notificación de Enfermedades , Salud Global/legislación & jurisprudencia , Disparidades en Atención de Salud , Humanos , Difusión de la Información , Política Organizacional , Investigación , Factores Socioeconómicos , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudencia , Zoonosis/prevención & controlAsunto(s)
Armas Biológicas/legislación & jurisprudencia , Bioterrorismo/prevención & control , Laboratorios/legislación & jurisprudencia , Política Pública/legislación & jurisprudencia , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudencia , Guerra Biológica/prevención & control , Guías como Asunto/normas , Humanos , Cooperación Internacional , Laboratorios/organización & administración , Laboratorios/normas , Naciones Unidas/organización & administraciónAsunto(s)
Clima Extremo , Calentamiento Global/estadística & datos numéricos , Objetivos , Modelos Económicos , Cambio Social , Desarrollo Sostenible , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudencia , Tormentas Ciclónicas , Ciencia de los Datos , Planificación en Desastres , Inundaciones , Abastecimiento de Alimentos , Calentamiento Global/economía , Humanos , Rayos Infrarrojos , Inversiones en Salud , Medición de Riesgo , Factores de Riesgo , Desarrollo Sostenible/economía , Desarrollo Sostenible/tendencias , Incendios ForestalesRESUMEN
Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights provides for the right to health. Two questions are considered in this article. Does this right entail a more specific right to life-saving emergency treatment? And if so, should the latter right become justiciable in the domestic courts? Two propositions will be made in this article. First, the right to life-saving emergency treatment is a necessary component of the right to health. Second, the conventional arguments against the justiciability of socio-economic rights do not apply to the right to life-saving emergency treatment. Such a right should be justiciable at the domestic level.
Asunto(s)
Tratamiento de Urgencia , Cuidados para Prolongación de la Vida , Derecho a la Salud/legislación & jurisprudencia , Derecho a la Salud/normas , Asignación de Recursos para la Atención de Salud/legislación & jurisprudencia , Asignación de Recursos para la Atención de Salud/normas , Cooperación Internacional , Factores Socioeconómicos , Reino Unido , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudenciaAsunto(s)
Conservación de los Recursos Naturales/legislación & jurisprudencia , Conservación de los Recursos Naturales/tendencias , Política Ambiental/legislación & jurisprudencia , Objetivos , Cooperación Internacional/legislación & jurisprudencia , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudencia , Naciones Unidas/tendencias , Biodiversidad , Conservación de los Recursos Naturales/historia , Política Ambiental/historia , Política Ambiental/tendencias , Calentamiento Global/legislación & jurisprudencia , Calentamiento Global/prevención & control , Historia del Siglo XX , Historia del Siglo XXI , Cooperación Internacional/historia , Ozono/análisis , Desarrollo Sostenible/historia , Desarrollo Sostenible/legislación & jurisprudencia , Desarrollo Sostenible/tendencias , Naciones Unidas/historia , Naciones Unidas/organización & administraciónRESUMEN
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is the culmination of 25 years of global efforts to embed human rights in the development discourse. Epitomising the principle of Leaving No-one Behind, the 2030 Agenda contains concrete references to the realisation of human rights as the ultimate purpose of sustainable development as well as to governments' accountability towards citizens. Despite this compelling narrative, the information produced by States in reviewing progress on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) reveals a gap between rhetoric and practice. Voluntary National Review (VNR) reports have emerged as a central tool to inform and guide the national and global reviews of SDGs progress. The UN system recommends that States build upon information from existing platforms, the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and UN Treaty Bodies, in order to reduce reporting burdens. However, an analysis of information on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) in VNR reports from 12 countries shows that States are missing the opportunity to build on the wealth of information they themselves have produced in their engagement with human rights mechanisms. Although many first generation VNRs did not come across as very substantive, their emphasis on participation and multi-stakeholder dialogue has created important, and sometimes unprecedented, national political traction for civil society. This engagement can be built upon to inject a human rights perspective towards the achievement of more equitable development outcomes.
Asunto(s)
Derechos Humanos , Salud Reproductiva/normas , Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos/normas , Informe de Investigación , Salud Sexual/normas , Responsabilidad Social , Desarrollo Sostenible , Accesibilidad a los Servicios de Salud , Humanos , Cooperación Internacional/legislación & jurisprudencia , Calidad de la Atención de Salud , Participación de los Interesados , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudenciaRESUMEN
Greenhouse gas emissions have increased rapidly since the industrial revolution. This has led to an unnatural increase in the global surface temperature, and to other changes in our environment. Acknowledging this observation, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change started an international environmental treaty. This treaty was extended by Kyoto protocol, which was adopted on 11 December 1997. Using the stochastic frontier analysis, we analyze the efficiencies of countries in terms of achieving the lowest greenhouse gas emission levels per GDP output in the years between 1990-2015. We find that the average greenhouse gas emission efficiencies of world countries for the time periods 1990-1997, 1998-2007, 2008-2012, and 2013-2015 are 82.40%, 90.37%, 89.54%, and 84.81%, respectively. Moreover, compared to the 1990-1997 period, 92.50%, 79.51%, and 59.84% of the countries improved their greenhouse gas emission efficiencies in the 1998-2007, 2008-2012, and 2013-2015 periods, respectively. Hence, the Kyoto protocol helped in increasing greenhouse emission efficiency. However, this efficiency-boosting effect faded away over time.
Asunto(s)
Monitoreo del Ambiente , Gases de Efecto Invernadero , Cooperación Internacional , Dióxido de Carbono/análisis , Cambio Climático , Gases de Efecto Invernadero/análisis , Gases de Efecto Invernadero/economía , Gases de Efecto Invernadero/metabolismo , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudenciaAsunto(s)
Salud Global/legislación & jurisprudencia , Infecciones por VIH , Política de Salud , Responsabilidad Social , Salud Global/estadística & datos numéricos , Infecciones por VIH/diagnóstico , Infecciones por VIH/tratamiento farmacológico , Infecciones por VIH/epidemiología , Infecciones por VIH/prevención & control , Humanos , Agencias Internacionales/legislación & jurisprudencia , Agencias Internacionales/organización & administración , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudenciaRESUMEN
Mathew Kavanagh and co-authors discuss law reform in the global tuberculosis response.
Asunto(s)
Derechos Humanos/legislación & jurisprudencia , Tuberculosis/epidemiología , Tuberculosis/transmisión , Humanos , Tuberculosis/diagnóstico , Naciones Unidas/legislación & jurisprudenciaRESUMEN
Depending upon how they are regulated in domestic law, advance directives (ADs) can enable persons to make decisions that have legal effect in the future as directed in the AD. There is some agreement in the academic literature that ADs are a legitimate way of giving effect to the obligations arising from Article 12 (3) of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to take appropriate measures to provide access by persons with disabilities (PWDs) to the support they may require in exercising their legal capacity. It is the purpose of this article to question when and how ADs address the obligations of support arising from Article 12 (3), concluding that it cannot and should not be assumed that ADs address those obligations only because they embody and give effect to their maker's agency. The article instead highlights the questions that must be posed to obtain legal certainty as to when and how ADs will be a form of Article 12 (3) support. The article also refutes some of the instances in the academic literature when ADs have been presented as support, while offering an account as to how the regulation of ADs should be reconsidered in order to specifically address the obligations arising from Article 12 (3) both when PWDs can and when they cannot communicate their wishes to others.