Future emergence of new ecosystems caused by glacial retreat.

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.

Automatic Roadside Feature Detection Based on Lidar Road Cross Section Images.

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).

Realization of Paris Agreement pledges may limit warming just below 2 °C.

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.

Dutifully Defying Death: A Right to Life-saving Emergency Treatment.

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.

Accountability for sexual and reproductive health and rights in development practice: building synergies.

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.

Greenhouse Gas Emission Efficiencies of World Countries.

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.

Tuberculosis, human rights, and law reform: Addressing the lack of progress in the global tuberculosis response.

Mathew Kavanagh and co-authors discuss law reform in the global tuberculosis response.

Advance directives: Addressing the obligations of support as part of the right of a person with disabilities to equal recognition before the law?

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.

Dissemination and implementation of the e-MCHHandbook, UNRWA's newly released maternal and child health mobile application: a cross-sectional study.

OBJECTIVES: In April 2017, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) released the electronic Maternal andChildHealth Handbook, the e-MCH Handbook application. One of the first mobile health (m-Health) interventions in a refugee setting, the application gives pregnant women and mothers access to educational information and health records on smartphones. This study investigated factors associated with the dissemination and implementation of m-Health in the refugee setting. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 9 of 25 UNRWA health centres for Palestine refugees in Jordan. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed for 1 week to pregnant women and mothers with children aged 0-5 years. OUTCOME MEASURES: The outcomes were whether participants knew about, downloaded or used the application. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine factors associated with application download and usage. RESULTS: 1042 participants were included in the analysis. 979 (95.5%) had a mobile phone and 862 (86.9%) had a smartphone. 499 (51.3%) knew about, 235 (23.8%) downloaded and 172 (17.4%) used the application. Having other mobile applications (OR 6.17, p<0.01), staff knowledge of the application (OR 11.82, p<0.01), using the internet as a source of medical information (OR 1.63, p=0.01) and having internet access at home (OR 1.46, p=0.05) were associated with application download. The age of the husband was associated with application usage (OR 1.04, p=0.11). CONCLUSIONS: Though m-Health may be a promising means of promoting health in refugees, multiple barriers may exist to its dissemination and implementation. Those who regularly use mobile applications and get medical information from the internet are potential targets of m-Health dissemination. For successful implementation of a m-Health intervention, health staff should have thorough knowledge of the application and users should have access to the internet. Husband-related factors may also play a role.