Commentary on an example of a tenancy agreement for an agricultural holding

This paper sets out an example of a standard agricultural tenancy, being one creating a tenancy from year to year and consequently covered by the agricultural holdings legislation. A facing-page commentary gives a clause-by-clause analysis of the agreement, the implications of each provision being discussed in the light of the law of contract, agricultural holdings legislation and, where appropriate, subsequent caselaw.

The vulnerable subject of negligence law

The approach taken by English courts to the duty of care question in negligence has been subject to harsh criticism in recent years. This article examines this fundamental issue in tort law, drawing upon Canadian and Australian jurisprudence by way of comparison. From this analysis, the concept of vulnerability is developed as a productive means of understanding the duty of care. Vulnerability is of increasing interest in legal and political theory and it is of particular relevance to the law of negligence. In addition to aiding doctrinal coherence, vulnerability – with its focus on relationships and care – has the potential to broaden the way in which the subject of tort law is conceived because it challenges dominant assumptions about autonomy as being prior to the relationships on which it is dependent.

The international law implications of the Turkish/Kurdish conflict

This article considers the threaties and customs governing armed conflict in the context of the long standing insurgency in southeast Turkey. The first part of the article analyzes the existing treaty and customary law concerning the threshold of an armed conflict and concludes that the insurgency in Southeast Turkey existing since 1984 rises to the level of an armed conflict based on criteria identified both in treaty and customary international law. The next consideration is the classification of this conflict and this part concludes that this situation is a non-international armed conflict due to lack of involvement of forces of another country. Finally, this article considers international humanitarian law applicable to this non-international armed conflict and reveals that as a result of the monumental International Committee of the Red Cross customary humanitarian law study, particularly with respect to the law of targeting, that the rules applicable to international and non-international armed conflict have never been closer.

Cashew cultivation, access to land and food security in Brong-Ahafo Region, Ghana: Preventing the intergenerational transmission of poverty

This research aimed to investigate the implications of changing agricultural land use from food production towards increased cashew cultivation for food security and poverty alleviation in Jaman North District, Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana. Based on qualitative, participatory research with a total of 60 participants, the research found that increased cashew production had led to improvements in living standards for many farmers and their children over recent years. Global demand for cashew is projected to continue to grow rapidly in the immediate future and cashew-growing areas of Ghana are well placed to respond to this demand. Cashew farmers however were subject to price fluctuations in the value of Raw Cashew Nuts (RCN) due to unequal power relations with intermediaries and export buyer companies and global markets, in addition to other vulnerabilities that constrained the quality and quantity of cashew and food crops they could produce. The expansion of cashew plantations was leading to pressure on the remaining family lands available for food crop production, which community members feared could potentially compromise the food security of rural communities and the land inheritance of future generations.

Humanitarian law, human rights law and the bifurcation of armed conflict

This article offers a fresh examination of the distinction drawn in international humanitarian law (IHL) between international and non-international armed conflicts. In particular, it considers this issue from the under-explored perspective of the influence of international human rights law (IHRL). It is demonstrated how, over time, the effect of IHRL on this distinction in IHL has changed dramatically. Whereas traditionally IHRL encouraged the partial elimination of the distinction between types of armed conflict, more recently it has been invoked in debates in a manner that would preserve what remains of the distinction. By exploring this important issue, it is hoped that the present article will contribute to the ongoing debates regarding the future development of the law of non-international armed conflict.

Relativistic Archimedes law for fast moving bodies and the general-relativistic resolution of the submarine paradox

We investigate and solve in the context of general relativity the apparent paradox which appears when bodies floating in a background fluid are set in relativistic motion. Suppose some macroscopic body, say, a submarine designed to lie just in equilibrium when it rests (totally) immersed in a certain background fluid. The puzzle arises when different observers are asked to describe what is expected to happen when the submarine is given some high velocity parallel to the direction of the fluid surface. on the one hand, according to observers at rest with the fluid, the submarine would contract and, thus, sink as a consequence of the density increase. on the other hand, mariners at rest with the submarine using an analogous reasoning for the fluid elements would reach the opposite conclusion. The general relativistic extension of the Archimedes law for moving bodies shows that the submarine sinks. As an extra bonus, this problem suggests a new gedankenexperiment for the generalized second law of thermodynamics.

Historical land-cover/use in different slope and riparian buffer zones in watersheds of the state of São Paulo, Brazil

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Use of synthetic aperture radar for recognition of Coastal Geomorphological Features, land-use assessment and shoreline changes in Bragança coast, Pará, Northern Brazil

Imagens de radar de abertura sintética (SAR) vem sendo bem mais utilizadas do que antes nas aplicações de geociências em regiões tropicais úmidas. Nesta investigação, uma imagem RADARSAT-1, na banda C, polarização HH adquirida em 1998 foi usada para o mapeamento costeiro e avaliação da cobertura da terra na área de Bragança, norte do Brasil. Imagem do radar aerotransportado GEMS-1000, na banda X, polarização HH, adquirida em 1972 durante o projeto RADAM foi também utilizada para avaliar as variações costeiras ocorridas nas últimas três décadas. A pesquisa tem confirmado a utilidade da imagem RADARSAT-1 para o mapeamento geomorfológico e avaliação da cobertura da terra, particularmente em costas de manguezal de macromaré. Além disso, um novo método para estimar as variações da linha de costa baseado na superposição de vetores extraídos de diferentes imagens SAR, com alta acurácia geométrica, tem mostrado que a planície costeira de Bragança tem estado sujeita a severa erosão responsável pelo recuo de aproximadamente 32 km² e acreção de 20 km², resultando em uma perda de área de manguezal de aproximadamente 12 km². Como perspectiva de aplicação, dados SAR orbitais e aerotransportados provaram ser uma importante fonte de informação tanto para o mapeamento geomorfológico, quando para o monitoramento de modificações costeiras em ambientes tropicais úmidos.

Implications of stillage land disposal: A critical review on the impacts of fertigation

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Language in Political Economy and Market Economy: A Case Study of India

The political philosophy underpinning the Indian Constitution is socialist economy in a multilingual political landscape. The Constitution grants some fundamental rights to all citizens regarding language and to linguistic and other minorities regarding education. It also obligates states to use many languages in school education. Restructuring the economy with free market as its pivot and the growing dominance of English in the information driven global economy give rise to policy changes in language use in education, which undermine the Constitutional provisions relating to language, though these changes reflect the manufactured consent of the citizens. This is made possible by the way the Constitution is interpreted by courts with regard to the fundamental rights of equality and non-discrimination when they apply to language. The unique property of language that it can be acquired, unlike other primordial attributes such as ethnicity or caste, comes into play in this interpretation. The result is that the law of the market takes over the law of the land.

Strategy and Action Plan for Sustainable Land Management in the High Pamir and Pamir-Alai Mountains

This Strategy and Action Plan was written within the framework of the project on Sustainable Land Management in the High Pamir and Pamir-Alai Mountains (PALM). PALM is an integrated transboundary initiative of the governments of the Kyrgyz Republic and the Republic of Tajikistan. It aims to address the interlinked problems of land degradation and poverty within a region that is one of Central Asia’s crucial sources of freshwater and a location of biodiversity hotspots. The project is executed by the Committee on Environment Protection in Tajikistan and the National Center for Mountain Regions Development in Kyrgyzstan, with fi nancial support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and other donors. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the GEF Implementing Agency for the project, and the United Nations University (UNU) is the International Executing Agency. This Strategy and Action Plan integrates the work of three main teams of experts, namely the Pamir-Alai Transboundary Strategy and Action Plan (PATSAP) team, the Legal Task Forces, and a team of Natural Disaster Risk specialists. The PATSAP team was coordinated by the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE), University of Bern, Switzerland. The Legal Task Force was led by the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law of the University of New England (UNE), and responsibility for the Natural Disaster Risk assessment was with the Central- Asian Institute of Applied Geosciences (CAIAG) in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The development of the strategy took place from June 2009 to October 2010. The activities included fi eld study tours for updating the information base with fi rst-hand information from the local level, coordination meetings with actors from the region, and two multi-level stakeholder forums conducted in Khorog and Osh to identify priorities and to collect ideas for concrete action plans. The baseline information collected for the Strategy and Action Plan has been compiled by the experts and made available as reports1. A joint multi-level stakeholder forum was conducted in Jirgitol, Tajikistan, for in-depth discussion of the transboundary aspects. In August 2010, the draft Strategy and Action Plan was distributed among local, national, and international actors for consultation, and their comments were discussed at feedback forums in Khorog and Bishkek. This Strategy and Action Plan is intended as a recommendation. Nevertheless, it proposes concrete mechanisms for implementing the proposed sustainable land management (SLM) activities: The Regional Natural Resources Governance Framework provides the legal and policy concepts, principles, and regulatory requirements needed to create an enabling environment for SLM in the High Pamir and Pamir-Alai region at the transboundary, national, and local levels. The priority directions outlined provide a framework for the elaboration of rayon-level strategies and for strategies on specifi c topics (forestry, livestock, etc.), as well as for further development of government programmes and international projects. The action plans may serve as a pool of concrete ideas, which can be taken up by diff erent institutions and in smaller or larger projects. Finally, this document provides a basis for the elaboration and signing of targeted cooperation agreements on land use and management between the leaders of Osh oblast (Kyrgyz Republic), Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, and Jirgitol rayon (Republic of Tajikistan).

“Delendum est Imperium Ottomanorum“: War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity and the End of the Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman Empire’s status as a full member of the international community of civilized states, which was bound by the rules of international law, had been challenged again and again during the formative period of the international law in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. When the First World War began, it was the first global military conflict, in which these rules of international law were put to the test. In the case of the Ottoman Empire quite a few questions were not yet settled, not least because the country was still bound by unequal treaties and because it had never ratified the renewed Hague Rules of Land Warfare of 1907, which it had only signed under reservations. Against this background the contribution will therefore focus on the debate amongst legal scholars on violations of the laws of war (and humanity) in regard to the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.

Lease Defaults and the Efficient Mitigation of Damages

The traditional law of leases imposed no duty on landlords to mitigate damages in the event of tenant breach, whereas the modern law of leases does. An economic model of leases, in which absentee tenants may or may not intend to breach, shows that the traditional rule promotes tenant investment in the property by discouraging landlord entry. In contrast, the modern rule prevents the property from being left idle by encouraging landlords to enter and re-let abandoned property. The model reflects the historic use of the traditional rule for agricultural leases, where absentee use was valuable, and the emergence of the modern rule for residential leases, where the primary use entails continuous occupation.

Some Law and Economics of Historic Shipwrecks

This paper examines how US and proposed international law relate to the recovery of archaeological data from historic shipwrecks. It argues that US federal admiralty law of salvage gives far less protection to historic submerged sites than do US laws protecting archaeological sites on US federal and Indian lands. The paper offers a simple model in which the net present value of the salvage and archaeological investigation of an historic shipwreck is maximized. It is suggested that salvage law gives insufficient protection to archaeological data, but that UNESCO's Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage goes too far in the other direction. It is also suggested that a move towards maximizing the net present value of a wreck would be promoted if the US admiralty courts explicitly tied the size of salvage awards to the quality of the archaeology performed.