Issues and Options for the Post-2012 Climate Architecture – An Overview

This article provides a background for the Developing post-2012 scenarios project, an international study which looks at a range of scenarios that countries may wish to consider for a post-2012 framework to tackle climate change. The purpose of the article is threefold. Firstly, it provides a review of the literature for the future climate regime. Secondly, it provides a set of criteria that are used in order to evaluate whether the scenarios provided in the other articles in this Special Edition are likely to be effective. Thirdly, the article spells out some of the more general policy implications rising from these scenarios.     

Financial Institutions between Effectiveness and Legitimacy – A Legal Analysis of the World Bank,Global Environment Facility and Prototype Carbon Fund

Environmental financing is one of the crucial issues of international environmental law and its implementation. From an environmental perspective a prerequisite for success is that financial resources are used in an environmentally effective way. Whether the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) can be perceived as effective environmental actors has to be measured by their objectives, their potential to promote accepted environmental standards and their relevant funding practices. After significant improvements of their environmental policies, the World Bank must be considered the most important institution for environmental financing due to its involvement in environmental trust funds but also in regard to its regular lending practices. The GEF remains exceptional due to its institutional structure and scope, whereas the PCF is an example of public–private partnerships that might be a model for future financing via trust funds. Since acceptance of institutions can only be created if they are considered to be legitimate, legitimacy is closely tied to effectiveness. The main criteria for legitimacy are state consent and the equality of states as well as supplementary considerations such as transparency and public participation. From this perspective the World Bank, GEF and PCF structures of voting and participation have come a long way, and despite their particularities and deficiencies they reflect to a varying degree elements of legitimate decision making.     

Frequency of laryngeal and hyoid bone trauma in nonhomicidal cases who died after a fall from a height

A retrospective study was carried out on 93 autopsy cases who died after a fall from a height. For each case, following parameters were reported: age, sex, manner of death, estimated height of fall, ground type, estimated site of primary impact, type of laryngeal and hyoid bone trauma, presence of associated local trauma in the neck and cephalic region. Mean age of the studied population was about 33 years. Sex ratio (men/women) was 1.8. Mean height of fall was about 15 m. Manner of death was, respectively, suicide and accident in 70 and 23 cases. The type of ground was concrete in 94% of the cases. The site of primary impact was, respectively, head, front of the body, back of the body, feet/lower limbs, and lateral body in 31, 26, 19, 12, and 5 cases. Cervical soft tissue bruising without laryngohyoid fractures was found in 5 cases. Laryngohyoid fractures were found in 5 cases. These fractures could be explained by direct impact of the neck structures against the ground. The mechanism of these fractures could also be indirect fractures due to high muscle strains on the hyoid bone or thyroid cartilage due to cervical hyperflexion or hyperextension or secondary to mandible or cervical vertebral column fractures.     

Public affairs as reality construction: an established paradigm with new implications

• This article was initially a reaction to the special issues of the Journal of Public Affairs on the relative lack of theoretical foundations for the research and practice of public affairs (Vol. 1 no. 4, Vol. 2 no. 1, 2002).
• The social‐scientific approach that is known under the name constructionism has interesting implications for the study and the practice of this field. The authors explore some of its central concepts and implications such as framing, priming, typification, claims making, symbolic power, background, sense making and narrative construction. They test some of these concepts for their applicability and usefulness for research, theory building and practice in the field of public affairs.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Identification of atractyloside by LC-ESI-MS in alleged herbal poisonings

An LC-MS screening method was developed to detect the presence of atractyloside (ATR), the toxic principle of a commonly used medicinal plant in South Africa, Callilepis laureola, in biological matrices such as body fluids and human viscera.     

The Role of Epistemic Cognition in Adolescent Identity Formation: Further Evidence

Following Boyes and Chandler (1992), it is investigated how adolescents’ epistemic understanding relates to the process of identity formation. In a cross-sectional as well as longitudinal study, identity status scores of diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium and identity achievement as assessed by the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status were analyzed as a function of adolescents’ epistemic stance, while simultaneously taking into account individual differences in identity processing styles. The cross-sectional sample was composed of 200 German adolescents from Grades 7, 9, 11, and 13 (mean age: 16.2 years, SD = 2.41). The longitudinal study consisted of 134 participants (mean age at retest: 16.5 years, SD = 1.7) and covered a time interval of 18 months. Findings confirmed the view that the development of epistemic cognition contributes to adolescent identity formation. Specifically, the development of a multiplistic epistemic stance predicted higher moratorium scores, whereas the more advanced evaluativist epistemic position contributed to identity achievement over time. These effects were not due to individual differences in identity processing style.     

Age and Gender Effects on Coping in Children and Adolescents

The aim of this study was to investigate age and gender effects of childrens and adolescents coping with common stressors in 3 age groups (late childhood, early, and middle adolescence). Furthermore, age and developmental differences in situation-specific coping with 2 stress domains were examined. N = 1,123 participants (ages 8 to 13 years) were asked to complete the German Coping Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (Hampel et al., 2001) in response to both an interpersonal and an academic stressor. Adolescent boys and girls, as well as girls from all age ranges scored lower on adaptive and higher on maladaptive coping strategies. With regard to interaction effects, female early adolescents coped maladaptively with common stressors, showing a decreased employment of adaptive (e.g., distraction, positive self-instructions) and an enhanced use of maladaptive coping strategies (e.g., rumination, aggression). Situation-specific coping did not differ consistently with age and gender. Implications of the findings for mental health care and developing clinical treatment of children and adolescents are discussed.Professor of Rehabilitation Psychology, Center of Clinical Psychology and Rehabilitation, University of Bremen, Germany. Received her PhD from the Free University of Berlin in 1994. Major research interests are stress, coping, and stress management in children and adolescents.Professor of Psychology, Center of Clinical Psychology and Rehabilitation, University of Bremen, Germany. Received his PhD from the University of Bonn in 1977. Major research interests are diagnostics, clinical child psychology, and rehabilitation research.     

Public resistance to privatisation in water and energy

Since the 1990s, development agencies and international institutions have promoted private-sector involvement in infrastructure, assuming that this would inject both investment and efficiency into the under-performing public sector. In the water and energy sectors, these expectations have not been fulfilled. Private-sector investment in developing countries is falling, multinational companies have failed to make sustainable returns on their investments, and the process of privatisation in water and energy has proved widely unpopular and encountered strong political opposition. This paper examines the role of this opposition in delaying, cancelling, or reversing the privatisation of water and energy. Local civil society has successfully mobilised highly effective political activity, its opposition being based on the perceived conflicts between privatisation and equity, and over the role of the state and community in these sectors. Such opposition has involved dynamic interactions with existing political parties and structures, including the use of existing electoral and judicial mechanisms. Its success poses challenges for the multilateral and donor community, NGOs, the opposition campaigns themselves, and the future of national systems of electricity and water.     

The Last Word in Court—A Hidden Disadvantage for the Defense

In the legal systems of most western countries, defense attorneys present their sentencing recommendation after the prosecution has presented its sentencing demands. This procedural sequence for criminal cases is intended to balance the impact of both parties on the judge's final decision. Especially the positioning of the defense's plea at the end of the trial follows the fundamental legal principle “in dubio pro reo.” Research on judgmental anchoring, however, suggests that the standard procedural sequence may in fact work against this principle. Consistent with this implication, the present studies demonstrate that the defense's sentencing recommendation is anchored on, and consequently assimilated toward, the preceding recommendation by the prosecution. This influence prevents the defense attorney from effectively counterbalancing the prosecutor's demand. Instead, the biased defense attorney's recommendation partially mediates the impact of the prosecutor's demand on the judge's decision. These findings suggest that the standard procedural sequence in court may place the defense at a distinct disadvantage.