Swiss Alps Jungfrau Aletsch UNESCO World Heritage Site - The state of this World Heritage region as a starting point for regional monitoring

The UNESCO listing as World Heritage Site confirms the outstanding qualities of the high-mountain region around the Great Aletsch Glacier. The region of the World Heritage Site now faces the responsibility to make these qualities visible and to preserve them for future generations. Consequently the qualities of the site must not be regarded in isolation but in the context of the entire region with its dynamics and developments. Regional monitoring is the observation and evaluation of temporal changes in target variables. It is thus an obligation towards UNESCO, who demands regular reports about the state of the listed World Heritage assets. It also allows statements about sustainable regional development and can be the basis for early recognition of threats to the outstanding qualities. Monitoring programmes face three major challenges: first, great care must be taken in defining the target qualities to be monitored or the monitoring would remain vague. Secondly, the selection of ideal indicators to describe these qualities is impeded by inadequate data quality and availability, compromises are inevitable. Thirdly, there is always an element of insecurity in the interpretation of the results as to what influences and determines the changes in the target qualities. The first survey of the monitoring programme confirmed the exceptional qualities of the region and also highlighted problematic issues.

Implementation of Evidence-Based Practices for Treatment of Alcohol and Drug Disorders: The Role of the State Authority

The current climate of increasing performance expectations and diminishing resources, along with innovations in evidence-based practices (EBPs), creates new dilemmas for substance abuse treatment providers, policymakers, funders, and the service delivery system. This paper describes findings from baseline interviews with representatives from 49 state substance abuse authorities (SSAs). Interviews assessed efforts aimed at facilitating EBP adoption in each state and the District of Columbia. Results suggested that SSAs are concentrating more effort on EBP implementation strategies such as education, training, and infrastructure development, and less effort on financial mechanisms, regulations, and accreditation. The majority of SSAs use EBPs as a criterion in their contracts with providers, and just over half reported that EBP use is tied to state funding. To date, Oregon remains the only state with legislation that mandates treatment expenditures for EBPs; North Carolina follows suit with legislation that requires EBP promotion within current resources.

The state of in vitro science for use in bioaccumulation assessments for fish

Through the concerted evaluations of thousands of commercial substances for the qualities of persistence, bioaccumulation, and toxicity as a result of the United Nations Environment Program's Stockholm Convention, it has become apparent that fewer empirical data are available on bioaccumulation than other endpoints and that bioaccumulation models were not designed to accommodate all chemical classes. Due to the number of chemicals that may require further assessment, in vivo testing is cost prohibitive and discouraged due to the large number of animals needed. Although in vitro systems are less developed and characterized for fish, multiple high-throughput in vitro assays have been used to explore the dietary uptake and elimination of pharmaceuticals and other xenobiotics by mammals. While similar processes determine bioaccumulation in mammalian species, a review of methods to measure chemical bioavailability in fish screening systems, such as chemical biotransformation or metabolism in tissue slices, perfused tissues, fish embryos, primary and immortalized cell lines, and subcellular fractions, suggest quantitative and qualitative differences between fish and mammals exist. Using in vitro data in assessments for whole organisms or populations requires certain considerations and assumptions to scale data from a test tube to a fish, and across fish species. Also, different models may incorporate the predominant site of metabolism, such as the liver, and significant presystemic metabolism by the gill or gastrointestinal system to help accurately convert in vitro data into representative whole-animal metabolism and subsequent bioaccumulation potential. The development of animal alternative tests for fish bioaccumulation assessment is framed in the context of in vitro data requirements for regulatory assessments in Europe and Canada.

Assessing the state of Sustainable Land Management research in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan

This article synthesizes findings from a review of the state of research on sustainable land management in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and from an analysis of the interface between research and action. Using the Global Land Project (GLP 2005) analytical framework, we analyzed the distribution of 131 selected publications (including a clearly defined set of local and international academic and gray literature) across the framework's components and links in a social–ecological system. There is a strong emphasis in the literature on the impact of changes in land use and management on ecosystems; however, there is little research on the implications for ecosystem services. This finding is opposed to that of a similar analysis of publications at the global scale (Björnsen Gurung et al 2012). Another major gap was the lack of research on Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan regarding the influence of global factors on social and ecological systems, despite social, economic, and political integration into global structures since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the increasing influence of climate change. Our analysis disaggregated academic literature published in the region and international academic literature, revealing stark differences. These differences are partly attributable to the legacy of the late Soviet era principle of “rational use of land resources,” which fit the planned economy but lacks approaches for decentralized resource governance. Finally, the emphasis of research on systems knowledge, the lack of transdisciplinary research, and the critical feedback of stakeholders at a regional sustainable land management forum suggest that actionable sustainable land management research on Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is rare. Recommendations are made for targeted, application-focused, multistakeholder research and knowledge sharing, including local and international researchers as well as practitioners, policy-makers, and land users.

The role of the state in investor-state arbitration

The Role of the State in Investor-State Arbitration is a collection of contributions from lawyers, arbitrators and political scientists on the development of the concept of the “State” in a field that currently presents an increasing number of controversial disputes: Investor-State Arbitration. The book analyzes the limits of the host State as a regulator, studying issues such as attribution and the role of State-Owned Enterprises and sub-State entities; the changing role of the home State in Investor-State disputes, including its direct participation in Investor-State arbitration and State to State dispute settlement; and the overall role that both home and host States can play in the improvement of Investor-State Dispute Settlement.