Risks of Carbon Fraud

Carbon credit markets are in the early stages of development and media headlines such as these illustrate emerging levels of concern and foreboding over the potential for fraudulent crime within these markets. Australian companies are continuing to venture into the largely unregulated voluntary carbon credit market to offset their emissions and / or give their customers the opportunity to be ‘carbon neutral’. Accordingly, the voluntary market has seen a proliferation of carbon brokers that offer tailored offset carbon products according to need and taste. With the instigation of the Australian compliance market and with pressure increasing for political responses to combat climate change, we would expect Australian companies to experience greater exposure to carbon products in both compliance and voluntary markets. This paper examines the risks of carbon fraud in these markets by reviewing cases of actual fraud and analysing and identifying contexts where risks of carbon fraud are most likely.

Editorial

In May 2011, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies published Lessons for the Coalition: an end of term report on New Labour and Criminal Justice (Silvestri, 2011). In that collection I described Labour's performance on environmental issues as ‘too little too late’. The UK experienced a period of Blair/Brown environmental governance that demonstrated ‘symbolic success but real failure’. Amongst New Labour's environmental achievements were the establishment of the Climate Change Act 2008, the creation of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the establishment of numerous green quangos to oversee and implement a range of environmental policies. However, these steps forward were seemingly threatened by the early days of a Cameron-led coalition where austerity measure, trade and the abolition of green quangos were on the cards. In sum, I concluded ‘future UK government report cards on the environment do not look good’ (Walters, 2011). After two and half years of a Conservative/Liberal Democratic coalition, and much rhetoric about it being ‘the greenest government ever’, the interim report card for the Cameron government on environmental matters is grim reading indeed. The demise of green quangos, record carbon emissions, renewable energies policies stultified, environmental criminality and victimisation all but ignored, and billions of pounds lost to environmental corporate fraudsters are just some of the headlines of Tory inspired governance with much environmental rhetoric and no environmental results.

Green crime and the role of environmental courts

Environmental issues continue to capture international headlines and remain the subject of intense intellectual, political and public debate. As a result, environmental law is widely recognised as the fastest growing area of international jurisprudence. This, combined with the rapid expansion of environmental agreements and policies, has created a burgeoning landscape of administrative, regulatory and judicial regimes. Emerging from these developments are increases in environmental offences, and more recently environmental crimes. The judicial processing of environmental or ‘green’ crimes is rapidly developing across many jurisdictions. Since 1979, Australia has played a lead role in criminal justice processing of environment offences through the New South Wales Land and Environment Court (NSW LEC). This article draws on case data, observations and interviews with court personnel, to examine the ways in which environmental justice is now administered through the existing court structures, and how it has changed since the Court’s inception.

The Future of the World's Forests

Forest regulation is never far from the headlines. The recent COP 18 negotiations held in Doha towards the end of 2012 were criticized by observers for slowing the development of the ‘REDD+’ initiative and for marking the end of ‘Forest Day’, whilst in the last month controversy has arisen following reports that the World Bank’s investment in forestry-related projects has failed to address poverty or benefit local communities. Dr Rowena Maguire’s research focuses on international climate and forest regulation and indigenous and community groups rights and responsibilities in connection with environmental management. Her new book, Global Forest Governance, identifies the fundamental legal principles and governance requirements of Sustainable Forest Management, an introduction to which is provided in her article below.

Caribbean copyright showdown

The tiny Caribbean island of Antigua doesn’t make the news very often. Located 1800 kilometres east of Miami, just north of Montserrat, it is best known as a holiday destination for well-heeled Europeans and celebrities with private yachts. Now it is in the headlines for an unexpected reason...

Vulnerability held not to be pre-requisite for establishing a duty of care in claims of pure economic Loss

Case note Apache Energy Ltd v Alcoa of Australia Ltd (No 2) [2013] In 2011, headlines were made when Alcoa sued Apache Energy and its partners for $158 million, a loss it claimed was a consequence of Apache Energy failing to adequately inspect and maintain the gas pipelines that supplied the gas used by Alcoa in its business. As the loss was not a consequence of any property damage or injury to Alcoa, the loss is characterised as pure economic loss...

Lähi-itä - mielikuvat, media ja konflikti : Tutkimuskohteena opettajaopiskelijat

This study examines Finnish student teachers' images of The Middle East conflict and its parties and medias' influence on these images. The research problems are 1) how student teachers understand the Middle East as a geographical and a cultural area 2) what kind of conceptions they have of the Middle East conflict and its parties; Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs and societies and religions closely connected to them and 3) how the media has influenced on these conceptions. Theoretical background of this study concerns with different mental images, their construction and meaning, stereotypes, intercultural competence, media and its influence as well as media literacy. The methods used in this study were survey and theme interview. Also headlines of the news were analysed. The survey was directed at student teachers of the University of Helsinki (n = 75). Six of them were interviewed. The survey was conducted in February and interviews were made in the turn of May and June 2003. The headlines analysed dealt with the Middle East conflict in the newspaper "Helsingin Sanomat" in January, April and July 2003. Main results: Images of the Middle East area differed largely from respondent to another. Student teachers didn't know much about the Middle East conflict. Stereotypes occurred in the conceptions connected to the parties of the conflict. Stereotypes appeared especially in the negative conceptions of islam and muslims and one-sided conceptions of Arabs. The influence of the conflict was noticeable in conceptions related to Israelis, Israel and Palestinians. Palestinians were sympathized. Attitudes towards Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs were negative to some extend and their societies were not valued very equal, open or modern. On the basis of the research, student teachers' intercultural competence was not good enough. Media had influence on the conceptions. Also skills in critical use of media varied largely. Some trusted strongly in the objectivity of a picture and the news. It can be argued, on the grounds of the results, that teacher education should concentrate more on themes of intercultural competence and media literacy. These two are interrelated and are both needed in understanding and conceptualising the world.

Residential Docks and Piers: Inventory of laws, regulations, and policies for the New England region

While the homes threatened by erosion and the developer illegally filling in marshlands are the projects that make the headlines, for many state regulatory programs, it’s the residential docks and piers that take up the most time. When is a dock too long? What about crossing extended property lines? And at what point does a creek have too many docks? There are no easy answers to these questions. At the request of the Georgia Coastal Management Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Services Center published in April 2003 an inventory of residential dock and pier management information for the southeastern U.S. This inventory builds upon that effort and includes five New England states and one municipality: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and the Town of Falmouth, Massachusetts. Federal laws, state laws and regulations, permitting policies, and contact information are presented in a tabular format that is easy to use. (PDF contains 16 pages)

Residential Docks and Piers: Inventory of laws, regulations, and policies for the Southeastern United States

While the homes threatened by erosion and the developer illegally filling in marshlands are the projects that make the headlines, for many state regulatory programs, it’s the residential docks and piers that take up the most time. When is a dock too long? What about crossing extended property lines? And at what point does a creek have too many docks? There are no easy answers to any of the dock and pier related questions. Each state has to craft the laws and policies that are best for its natural resources and its political and legal environment. At the same time, mistakes in judgment can be costly for the organization, the homeowner, and the natural resources. At the request of the Georgia Coastal Management Program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coastal Services Center compiled an inventory of dock information for four states—Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Federal laws, state laws and regulations, permitting policies, and contact information are included in a tabular format that is easy to use. (PDF contaions 18 pages)

Compreensão de manchetes sob a perspectiva da mesclagem e da metáfora conceptual

Nesta dissertação, investiga-se o processo de construção do significado de manchetes jornalísticas. Parte-se do pressuposto que a Metáfora Conceptual, proposta por Lakoff e Johnson (2002[1980]) e a Mesclagem, proposta por Fauconnier e Turner (2002), são as operações cognitivas complexas imbricadas no processo de compreensão e de construção de textos. A metáfora consiste em um importante recurso que estrutura o pensamento, as experiências e as ações humanas e a mesclagem, um mecanismo que permite significar eventos e experiências, aproximando realidades diversas, (des)comprimindo conhecimentos e rotinas cognitivas ativadas na conceptualização. Nesse sentido, este trabalho traz a lume a forma como o processo de construção de significado integra informações armazenadas em na mente, intercambiando domínios estáveis e ativando espaços mentais que se comungam para a culminância de estruturas emergentes. Para tanto, elucidamos as evidências de que metáforas e mesclagens podem explicar os sentidos produzidos pelas manchetes publicadas nos jornais Meia-Hora de Notícias, O Dia e O Globo. As manchetes foram coletadas no período de 18 de abril a 14 de setembro de 2011. Reunido o corpus, foi iniciado o cotejamento das manchetes à luz das referidas teorias. Realizou-se, em seguida, uma pesquisa com alunos do Ensino Médio de um colégio da rede pública estadual, a fim de confrontar as ponderações da análise com a compreensão empreendida pelos estudantes. Os resultados da análise e da mensuração das respostas dos alunos deram conta do papel da mesclagem na compreensão das manchetes analisadas, como um processo cognitivo, imaginativo e criativo, manifestado no uso da língua, de modo a promover a construção do significado. Foi possível também descrever o papel da metáfora nas mesclas postuladas para explicação do sentido das manchetes, na medida em que conceptualizações metafóricas fundamentam espaços mentais de algumas redes de integração postuladas para análise das manchetes

O segredinho que não é mistério: corpo e transexualidade no discurso jornalístico popular

A presente pesquisa consiste em uma análise de discurso sobre as representações que dois jornais populares cariocas (Meia Hora e Expresso) evocam para construir uma abordagem em relação à transexualidade, personificada por Ariadna Silva, participante da edição 11 do reality show Big Brother Brasil. A partir das capas dos dois periódicos, busca-se analisar manchetes, imagens e recursos iconográficos que exploram ou dialogam com convenções de gênero e sexualidade. Parte-se do referencial teórico das mediações, segundo o qual a mídia atua como ponto de encontro entre diversos discursos e códigos culturais. Nesse sentido, a estrutura deste trabalho se inicia com uma discussão sobre o papel da mídia na construção das representações sociais. Em um segundo momento, o gênero jornalismo popular será discutido mais detalhadamente. Por fim, o universo do gênero e da sexualidade, com fundamentação antropológica, será debatido como matéria-prima para a leitura do discurso dos periódicos

Tramando na rede: o Diário de Classe

O estudo apresenta uma análise dos fios/vazios que se traçam na elaboração da fanpage Diário de Classe: a verdade, criada pela adolescente Isadora Faber. A página, que tornou-se manchete em diferentes canais midiáticos, apresenta denúncias sobre a situação de precariedade de algumas instalações que a escola Maria Tomázia Coelho, localizada na cidade de Florianópolis em Santa Catarina, apresentava. Desta forma, o objetivo deste trabalho está em investigar de que maneira a página em questão tornou-se um fenômeno na grande rede a partir das publicações realizadas por Isadora Faber. Para a realização da pesquisa baseamo-nos na entrevista cedida pela autora da página, de algumas reportagens publicadas online e de uma análise exploratória do corpo da fanpage. O trabalho apresenta apontamentos que retratam inicialmente de que maneira as novas Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação estão inseridas em nossas vidas e em especial, na escola, tratando o tema como uma expressão que vem sendo abordada como uma ideia de impacto, todavia. A abordagem rede/nós e vazio/furo foram trabalhados de maneira a estabelecermos um paralelo entre os termos e delinearmos nossa metodologia de estudo, então. Em um terceiro momento, os termos massivo e pós-massivo de comunicação foram tratados nesta pesquisa como forma de entendimento do que se configuraria suas características e de uma relação que o primeiro estabelece no segundo. As considerações do estudo, indica, então, outros furos e nós que serão estabelecidos pelo leitor deste texto, no entanto.

Northern Ireland After the Good Friday Agreement: Victims, Grievance and Blame

Breen Smyth, Morrisey, M., Northern Ireland After the Good Friday Agreement: Victims, Grievance and Blame (Pluto Press, 2002), pp.xiii+247 RAE2008

From stress to distress: Conceptualizing the British family farming patriarchal way of life

‘Rural stress’ and ‘farming stress’ are terms that have become commonly appropriated by British health-based academic disciplines, the medical profession and social support networks, especially since the agricultural ‘crises’ of B.S.E. and Foot and Mouth Disease. Looking beyond the media headlines, it is apparent that the terms in fact are colloquial catch-alls for visible psychological and physiological outcomes shown by individuals. Seldom have the underlying causes and origins of presentable medical outcomes been probed, particularly within the context of the patriarchal and traditionally patrilineal way of life which family forms of farming business activity in Britain encapsulate. Thus, this paper argues that insufficient attention has been paid to the conceptualization of the terms. They have become both over-used and ill-defined in their application to British family farm individuals and their life situations. A conceptual framework is outlined that attempts to shift the stress research agenda into the unilluminated spaces of the family farming ‘way of life’ and focus instead on ‘distress’. Drawing upon theorization from agricultural and feminist geography together with cultural approaches from rural geography, four distinct clusters of distress originate from the thoughts of individuals and the social practices now required to enact patriarchal family farming gender identities. These are explored using case study evidence from ethnographic repeated life history interviews with members of seven farming families in Powys, Mid Wales, an area dominated by family forms of farming business. Future research agendas need to be based firmly on the distressing reality of patriarchal family farming and also be inclusive of those who, having rejected the associated way of life, now lie beyond the farm gate.

Language and Power: A Resource Book for Students

Language and Power offers a comprehensive survey of the ways in which language intersects and connects with the social, cultural and political aspects of power; provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of the field, and covers all the major approaches, theoretical concepts and methods of analysis in this important and developing area of academic study; covers all the 'traditional' topics, such as race, gender and institutional power, but also incorporates newer material from forensic discourse analysis, the discourse of new capitalism and the study of humour as power; includes readings from works by seminal figures in the field, such as Roger Fowler, Deborah Cameron and Teun van Dijk; uses real texts and examples throughout, including advertisements from cosmetics companies; newspaper articles and headlines; websites and internet media; and spoken dialogues such as a transcription from the Obama and McCain presidential debate; and is accompanied by a supporting website that aims to challenge students at a more advanced level and features a complete four-unit chapter which includes activities, a reading and suggestions for further work.