Fathoms. The unit by which depth is measured. 1 fathom = 1,82m = 6 feet. The title of the first book by Australian writer Rebecca Giggs immediately implies a depth of content, a deep-dive into the world in the whale - a book to better understand the order of cetaceans maybe? One might expect a …
Continue reading "Book Review: Rebecca Giggs’ “Fathoms. The World in the Whale.”"
Introduction At the third meeting in August-September of the Open-ended Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework under the umbrella of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) , the first draft of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) was presented. This draft thus constitutes the first attempt to combine all relevant issues for the …
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This review was originally published in Polar Record on 2 April 2019 (here). Whales are indeed fascinating animals. Their gigantic size, their cultural and social characteristics, their being mammals living in a marine habitat all make whales and their benign nature “almost a human dream of alien life: approachable, sophisticated and inscrutable” (p. 26). Over …
Introduction When I started my research in Arctic studies back in 2007, I was confronted with direct impacts of a warming climate right away: the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) presented a case study of the village of Shishmaref in Alaska, which has been forced to relocate due to rising sea levels and melting permafrost. …
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Mine and Otava Ojanperä's peer-reviewed article "Indigenous youth and international conservation law: Five case studies" has been published open access in Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law (RECIEL). Please click here to read the whole piece or click here to read a summary.
Introduction In a forthcoming peer-reviewed study in the Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law (RECIEL) entitled “Indigenous youth and international conservation law: Five case studies”, myself and Otava Ojanperä (University of Helsinki) examine five agreements and in how far they consider indigenous youth as legitimate stakeholders. The study was carried out under the …
(This review was originally published in Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law: https://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12393) The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) has been heralded as one of the most comprehensive and most im- pressive legal instruments ever concluded under the auspices of the United Nations. And indeed, this ‘constitution of …
Introduction On 23 July 2021 the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) adopted Resolution A/75/L.116 'Tackling illicit wildlife trade'. The resolution is the fifth resolution of the UNGA after resolutions in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 on this very issue. While the underlying narrative is essentially the same - i.e. the protection of biodiversity through the …
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Introduction On 2 November 2021 the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use (here). 105 parties to the convention supported the declaration, which puts a strong focus on the conservation of forests and the rights of indigenous …
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Introduction 11 October 2021 marked an important day for the indigenous Sámi in Norway: the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled that traditional reindeer grazing grounds on the Fosen Peninsula in Central Norway cannot be used as a site for wind turbines, operated by Fosen Vind. This means that two large wind farms, Roan and Storheia, may …
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