Promoting Dignity for All: Human Rights Approaches in the Post-2015 Climate Change, Disaster Risk Reduction and Sustainable Development Frameworks

This article takes as its starting point the potentially negative human rights implications that the effects of climate change, disasters and development practices can have on individuals and communities. It argues that key international instruments, including the post-2015 successors to the Kyoto Protocol, Hyogo Framework for Action on disaster risk reduction and the Millennium Development Goals, appear to be moving towards an express acknowledgment of the relevance of international human rights law as an important mechanism to minimise potential harms that may arise. This raises the question as to the appropriate role of the UN human rights monitoring and accountability mechanisms in identifying the relevant rights-holders and duty-bearers. The article therefore provides an examination of the linkages between climate change and international human rights law, as well as discussion of the human rights considerations and accountability mechanisms for disasters and sustainable development. The article concludes by arguing that despite differential understandings between disciplines as to the meaning of key terms such as ‘vulnerability’ and ‘resilience’, international human rights law provides a comprehensive basis for promoting international and national accountability. It follows that a greater level of coordination and coherence between the human rights approaches of the various post-2015 legal and policy frameworks is warranted as a means of promoting the dignity of those most affected by climate change, disasters and developmental activities.

The Relationship Between Youth Risk-Taking Behaviour and Activity Engagement

Youth have been found to engage in various risk-taking behaviours at higher rates than any other age group. However, there is a lack of research on the division between adaptive and maladaptive risk behaviours among adolescents and emerging adults. Adaptive risk-taking behaviours may present youth with ways to successfully partake in the risk behaviours that they are naturally inclined to engage in. The relationship between activity engagement and positive youth development has been extensively studied and cited as a way to expose youth to positive experiences and promote successful development. However, the relationship between activity engagement and risk behaviours among youth has yetto be studied in depth. This study investigated the potential relationship between various adaptive and maladaptive risk behaviours and activity engagement among youth, through an indirect link through five mediator variables. These potential mediators represented the three systems in Jessor's Problem Behaviour Theory. Participants included 276 youth (M = 19.06 years, SD = 1.60, 89.1 % female) from Brock University. Results revealed that activity engagement significantly predicted greater adaptive social risk behaviours among youth. However, there was no mediating effect through the problem behaviour systems. Correlations revealed that being male was associated with more maladaptive risk behaviours and fewer adaptive risk behaviours than females. Additionally, behavioural engagement specifically related to less maladaptive physical health risks and psychological engagement related to greater adaptive social risks. Overall, these findings suggest that activity engagement may be differentially related to the various types of risk-taking and gender associations may exist between the various types and dimensions of risk behaviours, but future work is needed to understand the variables that may explain such relationships.

Association between neighbourhood socioeconomic characteristics and high-risk injection behaviour amongst injection drug users living in inner vs. other city areas in Montréal, Canada

Ce manuscrit est une pré-publication d'un article paru dans International Journal of Drug Policy 2010; 21(1): 49-55.

Real estate portfolio size and risk reduction

The reduction of portfolio risk is important to all investors but is particularly important to real estate investors as most property portfolios are generally small. As a consequence, portfolios are vulnerable to a significant risk of under-performing the market, or a target rate of return and so investors may be exposing themselves to greater risk than necessary. Given the potentially higher risk of underperformance from owning only a few properties, we follow the approach of Vassal (2001) and examine the benefits of holding more properties in a real estate portfolio. Using Monte Carlo simulation and the returns from 1,728 properties in the IPD database, held over the 10-year period from 1995 to 2004, the results show that increases in portfolio size offers the possibility of a more stable and less volatile return pattern over time, i.e. down-side risk is diminished with increasing portfolio size. Nonetheless, increasing portfolio size has the disadvantage of restricting the probability of out-performing the benchmark index by a significant amount. In other words, although increasing portfolio size reduces the down-side risk in a portfolio, it also decreases its up-side potential. Be that as it may, the results provide further evidence that portfolios with large numbers of properties are always preferable to portfolios of a smaller size.

Risk reduction and real estate portfolio size

Despite a number of papers that discuss the advantages of increased size on risk levels in real estate portfolios there is remarkably little empirical evidence based on actual portfolios. The objective of this paper is to remedy this deficiency by examining the portfolio risk of a large sample of actual property data over the period 1981 to 1996. The results show that all that can be said is that portfolios of properties of a large size, on the average, tend to have lower risks than small sized portfolios. More importantly portfolios of a few properties can have very high or very low risk.

Risk reduction and diversification in UK commercial property portfolios

The issue of diversification in direct real estate investment portfolios has been widely studied in academic and practitioner literature. Most work, however, has been done using either partially aggregated data or data for small samples of individual properties. This paper reports results from tests of both risk reduction and diversification that use the records of 10,000+ UK properties tracked by Investment Property Databank. It provides, for the first time, robust estimates of the diversification gains attainable given the returns, risks and cross‐correlations across the individual properties available to fund managers. The results quantify the number of assets and amount of money needed to construct both ‘balanced’ and ‘specialist’ property portfolios by direct investment. Target numbers will vary according to the objectives of investors and the degree to which tracking error is tolerated. The top‐level results are consistent with previous work, showing that a large measure of risk reduction can be achieved with portfolios of 30–50 properties, but full diversification of specific risk can only be achieved in very large portfolios. However, the paper extends previous work by demonstrating on a single, large dataset the implications of different methods of calculating risk reduction, and also by showing more disaggregated results relevant to the construction of specialist, sector‐focussed funds.

Olive leaf phenolics and cardiovascular risk reduction: Physiological effects and mechanisms of action

Olive oil, an important component of the Mediterranean diet, is rich in polyphenols and is known to possess positive health effects relative to other dietary fats. In addition, the leaves of the olive plant (Olea europaea) contain similar phenolics (oleuropein, luteolin-7-glucoside, apigenin-7-glucoside, verbascoside and hydroxytyrosol) to those of olives and olive oil, although at higher concentrations. For example, the most abundant is the secoiridoid, oleuropein, representing 1–14% of olive leaf weight vs. 0.005–0.12% in olive oil. Although currently considered a waste product of the olive oil industry, recent research has suggested beneficial effects of phenolic-rich olive leaf extracts (OLE) in modifying cardiovascular risk biomarkers such as blood pressure, hyperglycaemia, oxidative stress and inflammation, as well as improving vascular function and lipid profiles. Despite this, data regarding the biological actions of OLE has mostly derived from animal, in vitro and ex vivo studies, with limited evidence deriving from human trials. Although the absorption and metabolism of olive oil phenolics has been investigated, less is known about the bioavailability of phenolics from OLE, limiting the interpretation of existing in vitro and ex vivo data. The current review will begin by describing the phenolic composition of olive leaves in comparison with that of the better studied olive oil. It will then review the effects of OLE on cardiovascular risk factors, covering both animal and human studies and will end by considering potential mechanisms of action