Monist v. dualist systems

In monist systems like the Netherlands, treaties can normally only be ratified only after they are approved by the legislature, but once this is done the treaties become legally binding in domestic law if they are self-executing.

France is an example of a monist system. Under French law ratified treaties are considered to be equivalent or even superior to domestic legislation.^[5] However ratification must often be approved by the Parliament, especially in cases where the treaty "modifies provisions which are matters for statute".^[6] In such cases, incorporation is often either redundant or very little is required.

The dualist position is exemplified by the United Kingdom, where treaty-making are considered to be the exclusive competence of "Her Majesty's Government" (the executive). Hence all treaties must be incorporated if they are to have any effect on domestic legislation. To do otherwise would violate the doctrine of the sovereignty of Parliament which reserves legislative primacy to the British parliament. However treaties may have interpretative value, where a judge does consider that Parliament (in the absence of clear contrary intention) did not intend that an Act conflict with a ratified treaty.

The position of the United States is intermediate to the two extremes described above. The Supremacy Clause (VI.2) of the United States Constitution states that "all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land." However, the term "treaty" has a more restricted sense in United States Law than in international law. Of the more than 16,000 international agreements entered into by the United States between 1946 and 1999, only 912 were ratified by the required two-thirds of the Senate under Article II.2.2 (the "Treaty Clause") of the Constitution ("treaties" under U.S. law).^[7] The Supreme Court has also limited the direct effect of ratified treaties, notably in the case of Medellín v. Texas (2008). Hence, almost all treaties must be incorporated into U.S. federal law by Congress to have effect.

8) Зміни у відносинах між державами в останні десятиліття

Today’s international system is a confusing and hybrid mix of concepts about how states interact and manage their relations. Since the end of the Cold War, the absolute and relative importance of alliances is increasingly being questioned, and new forms of ad hoc cooperation that do not assume permanent shared interests have emerged. Above all, there’s no longer one rule book to govern interstate relations. Instead states in the 21st century work across a full spectrum of approaches, from insistence on absolute state sovereignty on one end of the spectrum to regional integration on the other, with a range of partnerships of varying degrees of obligation and commitment in between.
Today, with the possible exception of North Korea, most governments see the value of working with other countries on shared or mutually beneficial projects, from security, trade and infrastructure cooperation to more ambitious initiatives to improve the human condition. There is nearly always some level of friction in these relationships, as most states seek to maximize their freedom of action and resist infringements on sovereignty.

Watching Cuba and Iran move clumsily to different forms of engagement with the United States recalls the mistrust and avoidance of foreign entanglements that shaped President George Washington’s views of how America, then in its infancy, should conduct its foreign policy. Washington warned against the binding obligations of alliances, even though he advocated active trade and political interaction with other nations. The administration of President Barack Obama is now poised to transform U.S. relations with these two 20th-century revolutionary states, one an orphaned satellite of the defunct Soviet empire that still clings to communism, and the other an original, stand-alone creation with a complex web of governing institutions. Both demonstrate their distrust of the international system and seek to avoid commitments to cooperate with other powers that might limit their freedom of action.
Of the two, the Iranian case is more complicated. Cuba was part of an ideologically coherent alliance structure that has disappeared, and as a result Havana must now adapt to new realities. Iran sends confusing signals that it wants to be accepted and approved by various international institutions, but often defaults to a seemingly defiant position to preserve its revolutionary principles and avoid compromising its sovereignty. The successful completion of negotiations over its nuclear activities this week now creates the kind of new “entanglements” that George Washington once warned against, but it also reflects a greater pragmatism on the part of Iran’s leadership and new interpretations of how to protect its revolutionary identity.
But if even the most compromise-averse states are now choosing engagement, the obligations and benefits of alliances exercise less appeal than in the past. In his 2007 book, “The End of Alliances,” Raj Menon argued that formal alliances can become rigid and limiting, both for the U.S. as the larger party and for the countries that have their security greatly enhanced by a formal agreement with the security provider. Certainly, the weakening of the logic for alliance has been on display for many years within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. When the alliance was created, its members genuinely shared a common and potentially existential threat from the Soviet Union’s ambitions. But since the end of the Cold War, NATO members have questioned whether the alliance can still have such a unifying purpose. Debates over defense spending, out-of-area responsibilities and, more recently, the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan do not suggest that it’s getting easier to sustain that core consensus, even if Russia’s recent revanchist posture has added some urgency to the alliance’s collective security guarantees.
The problem is that NATO is, after all, a military alliance based on a binding commitment to mutual defense, even as most of the problems of the 21st century don’t lend themselves to military solutions. In Afghanistan and Libya, NATO countries found themselves in hybrid coalitions with non-alliance members to respond to terrorism and state instability. Public policy thinkers question whether interventions of this kind meet the threshold of the threats envisioned in the NATO charter. The experience of NATO countries coming to the defense of the United States immediately after the 9/11 attacks, though poignant, highlighted some of the uncertainty about the circumstances in which the alliance’s core function is supposed to be engaged.

At the same time, and in contrast to Europe, global and regional dynamics appear to have strengthened U.S. alliance structures in Asia, at least for the medium term. Despite domestic criticism and resentment of the U.S. military presence, elites in Japan and South Korea continue to seek assurances from Washington with respect to extended nuclear deterrence and other forms of technological and security cooperation. In Japan’s case, the American response to the triple tragedies of 2011 reawakened an appreciation for the alliance and revalidated the bilateral relationship, in all its dimensions, from security to soft power. Asian dynamics regarding China’s rise seem to be the exception to the end of alliances thesis.
Beyond formal alliances are relationships that suggest movement in that direction, such as the “major non-NATO ally” (MNNA) formula created in 1989 by U.S. President George H.W. Bush. The formulation was initially designed to permit advanced defense research and development with a short list of countries: Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan and South Korea. Since then, the list has expanded to 16 and is no longer limited to a core group of countries with which the U.S. enjoys deep security relationships. Instead, it is increasingly used as a political tool, far removed from its earlier specific defense purpose. Moreover, the use of the term “ally” in the formula can be misleading. Israel, for example, has various security agreements with the U.S. but has avoided any form of mutual defense pact to preserve its freedom of action. Its official position on the new nuclear deal with Iran makes it clear that Israel does not feel bound in any way to defend America’s policy decisions and strategy for dealing with a shared threat.
More broadly, the lexicon of international relations relies increasingly on “partnerships,” often characterized as strategic to add an element of gravitas or permanence. It remains a pretty vague term that can be operationalized in many different ways. It allows for fixed-term or discrete cooperation where there are shared interests, but does not bind the partners to assume or assert more commonality of view than is needed. On responding to the acute issues of terrorism or climate migration or refugees, this more flexible approach may become the normal way to conduct business where cross-border cooperation is required.
Countries will choose the forms of engagement that suit their history, political culture and threat perception. Europe, even with the crisis over the eurozone, remains a vanguard region where states willingly gave up sovereignty to establish a larger political unit. Iran, by contrast, still seeks to protect the specific character of its revolution, but the nuclear deal shows a new willingness to adapt to established rules to achieve both domestic and international acceptance. Meanwhile, cooperation at the global level, which requires achieving broad consensus among nearly 200 states, may be beyond reach in many cases. To deal with today’s challenges, and tomorrow’s, the more “supple and creative forms of statecraft” that Menon characterized as “alignment,” rather than “alliance,” might be the best way to proceed.

9. Глобальні проблеми сучасності стратегії і тактики їх розв'язання

Pollution - of the air, the water, the soil.

Solution: Use of Clean Energy. Clean energy is renewable energy which doesn't deplete natural resources or cause environmental harm. Renewable energy includes bioenergy, wind, hydroelectricity, solar and geothermal energy.

Bioenergy is produced from living things such as trees and plants. Certain crops are grown, such as corn and soybeans and harvested to produce energy in the form of biofuel.

Wind turbines convert kinetic energy by moving air into mechanical energy, which is then converted into electricity. No emissions or solid wastes are produced during the production wind energy, but can often have the negative impact of noise pollution.

Hydroelectricity is electricity produced by the gravitational force of falling or flowing water. Many of the world's dams also serve as hydroelectric plants. This is currently the most widely used form of renewable energy.

Solar power is energy produced from the heat and light of the sun.

Geothermal energy is the naturally occurring thermal energy that is produced by the Earth's molten inner core.

Natural resources running out, or being degraded

Solution: We must use minerals sensibly as they are non-renewable natural resources. There is only a limited amount of oil, limestone, iron, coal, etc., found in the Earth. We should use renewable and non-polluting sources of energy like solar energy, wind energy, etc., instead of coal and oil so that they can last longer. We need to stop destroying forests and cutting trees. Forests are the home to many different animals, birds and insects. Trees give us wood that helps in making so many things like furniture, paper, etc. Trees help in purifying the air and also hold the soil with their roots and stop soil erosion. We must protect our forests.

Nuclear weapons; the imminent danger of worldwide catastrophe

Military means and thinking as a way of resolving political problems

Terrorism

Hunger

Solution: 1. Sustainable Food

Heifer International is an organization that helps transform agriculture. They fund projects so people can provide food for themselves in a sustainable way. This is very powerful, because ultimately we would like to see many impoverished areas not reliant on aid from foreign countries (which often causes debt) and able to create their own, steady, supply of food.

2. Access to Credit

Many organizations are helping people in poor countries to gain access to credit. Most of these credit loans are repaid, and they have created many industries, such as farms, that help create a sustainable provision for people and also develop nations economically. If these people do not have access to credit, they cannot start up industries that combat poverty.

3. Food Donations

Although ideally it would be better to get the entire world to a place of self-sustainability, it is not something that will happen overnight. In the meantime it is important to lend a helping hand. The impact of donations, both cash and food, have had an immense impact on world hunger. Organizations such as Food for All have customers donate $1-5 when checking out. Last year they raised a whopping $60 million to fight world hunger.

4. Transitioning

Many families dealing with poverty need help transitioning into a state of self-dependance. 15 Feeds Family is an organization that helps with this transition. They start by providing families with food, but then slowly find solutions to empower families to be self-sufficient. This is important, because self-sufficiency allows for a certain food income, when relying on donations does not always guarantee food.

5. Urban Farming

Almost one-quarter of undernourished people live in an urban environment. Recently, there has been a big push for urban farming. Urban farming empowers families to gain control over their own food source.

6. Access to Education

Education is the best weapon against poverty and hunger. It is especially powerful in underdeveloped countries. Education means better opportunity and more access to income and food. Additionally, some countries have food-for-education programs where students are given free food for coming to school. This may seem like a basic idea in the United States, but it is life saving in many under developed nations.

7. Social Change

This is extremely hard and will not take place overnight. However, many social issues, such as war, pose a fundamental problem to halting world hunger. Ideally, this will happen when world powers, such as the United States and many western European nations, choose to focus on solving these issues instead of exacerbating them. However, this can only start when people in developed nations begin to care about those issues as well and pressure their governments to be productive in ending conflict.

8. Government Intervention

Aid to foreign nations needs to be more focused on government intervention, like programs that provide food to mothers and their children in poor areas. This is not much different from many programs available in the United States.

10. Провідні міжнародні організації, що здатні розв'язувати проблеми на глобальному рівні

Solutions to current challenges facing the international community can only be found through cooperative effort under the auspices of the United Nations, the President of the General Assembly has said.

“The 21st century has witnessed a number of global crises; from the global financial and economic crisis, the escalating food prices to environmental degradation and the increasing prevalence of natural disasters,” said Ali Treki in a speech to the Argentine Parliament in Buenos Aires yesterday.

“The United Nations is the only forum where all nations can collectively work together to achieve durable solutions to these and other challenges,” he said.

UN is permanently doing a large piece of work for solving global problems. It creates respective international instruments, programs and so on. It organizes different funds for dealing with such problems.

UN Programs and Funds

UN programs and funds are financed through voluntary contributions rather than assessed contributions.

They include the following programs:

• United Nations Development Program (UNDP) – On the ground in 166 countries, UNDP is the UN’s global development network, focusing on the challenges of democratic governance, poverty reduction, crisis prevention and recovery, energy and environment, and HIV/AIDS. UNDP also coordinates national and international efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals aimed at poverty reduction. Recently UNDP helped Liberia prepare for national elections that put Africa’s first woman president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, in office. It has helped Thailand build solar-power water pumping stations. And it has helped earthquake damaged regions of Pakistan with long-term development planning. UNDP also publishes the annual Human Development Report.

• Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) – Headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, UNHCR protects refugees worldwide and facilitates their return home or resettlement. UNHCR is working on the ground in over 116 countries, helping 20.8 million persons in areas including Lebanon, Darfur, southern Sudan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

• United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) – UNICEF provides long-term humanitarian and development assistance to children and mothers. Recent UNICEF initiatives have included polio immunization for 5.5 million children in Angola, helping girls enroll and stay in school in 34 African countries, and reintegrating child soldiers in Sierra Leone into civil society.

• World Food Program (WFP) – WFP, which aims to eradicate hunger and malnutrition, is the world’s largest humanitarian agency. Every year, the program feeds almost 100 million people in over 80 nations. WFP has delivered aid to Darfur, to Pakistan in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake, and to southern Asia following the tsunami.

• United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) – UNDCP helps Member States fight drugs, crime, and terrorism. Aside from providing laboratory services, this Program helps to improve cross-border cooperation.

• United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) – UNFPA works on the ground in 140 nations to “ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.”

• United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) – UNEP coordinates the United Nations’ environmental activities. It develops international environmental conventions, assesses global environmental trends, encourages new civil sector partnerships, and strengthens institutions so they might better protect the environment.

ЛЮДИНА І ПРИРОДА

1.Еволюція відносин людини й природи

More recent changes in the human-environment relationship, such as accelerated globalization and global environmental change, have deep roots in humanity’s relationship with nature over the past millennium. While we often associate the term “global change” with the greenhouse gas warming evident in the last decade, socio-ecological changes at continental and global scales were put in motion over at least the past 1000 years (e.g. many European landscapes looked much like they do today far earlier than this). Important phenomena include a rise in human population, the strengthening of nation states, the global transfer of inventions and values, the beginning of industrialization and the rise of global communications, and associated with these the dramatic modifications of land use and biodiversity, hydrological and energyflows, and key ecological processes.

The last 1000 year period is also interesting because it’s a period when broad swings in temperature as well as clusters of extreme weather events arguably changed the trajectory of history. The fourteenth century in Europe saw the end of the Medieval Warm Period. Particularly during the period from 1315–1317 Western Europe witnessed a combination of rainy autumns, cold springs, and wet summers that led to crop failures and a dramatic slowdown in urban expansion. These early Europeans were further subjected to the last major locust invasion (1338), the “millennium flood” (1342), and the coldest summer of the millennium in 1347. From 1347 to 1350 the “Black Death” devastated populations. The clustering of extreme events in the fourteenth century fundamentally undermined social order and was a key factor in a major wave of anti-Semitic pogroms and systematic discrimination. In the same period, agricultural land was abandoned and forests increased. Many would argue that it also led to the end of the feudal system, improved land and employee rights and, through the enlightenment period, paved the way for the modern age. The Little Ice Age affected food availability in many parts of Europe, leading to the development of technological, economic and political strategies as ways to reduce vulnerability. The exceptional 1788-1795 ENSO event reverberated around the world in places as far afield as the first British colonial settlement in Australia, the Indian monsoon region, Mexico and western Europe (13). Thus, the present nature and complexity of socio-ecological systems are heavily contingent on the past; we cannot fully understand the present condition without going back centuries or even millennia into the past. An important implication is that societal actions today will reverberate for centuries into the future in climatic and many other ways.

Turning to the more recent past, the 20th century witnessed several sharp changes in the evolution of socio-ecological systems, at both global (two world wars and the Great Depression) and regional (e.g. the failure of Soviet farming, its reliance on grain from the U.S., and subsequent collapse as a polity) discontinuities. Variations in the growth rate of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere occurred in response to both climatic controls over land-atmosphere-ocean fluxes (for example, CO₂ increases more rapidly in El Niño years because of climate effects on terrestrial ecosystems) and political events (the growth rate slowed during the 1970s oil shock and after the breakup of the Soviet Union because of changes in fossil fuel use). The 20th century also marks the first period for which instrumental records of many environmental parameters have become available and for which detailed statistical records of many human activities have also been collected.

The most remarkable phenomenon on Earth in the 20th century was the “Great Acceleration,” the sharp increase in human population, economic activity, resource use, transport, communication and knowledge–science–technology that was triggered in many parts of the world (North America, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia/New Zealand) following World War II and which has continued into this century (Figure 1, 14, 15). Other parts of the world, especially the monsoon Asia region, are now also in the midst of the Great Acceleration. The tension between the modern nation-state and the emergence of multinational corporations and international political institutions is a strong feature of the changing human-environmental relationship. The “engine” of the Great Acceleration is an interlinked system consisting of population increase, rising consumption, abundant cheap energy, and liberalizing political economies.

Globalization, especially an exploding knowledge base and rapidly expanding connectivity and information flow, thus acts as a strong accelerator of the system. The environmental effects of the Great Acceleration are clearly visible at the global scale—changing atmospheric chemistry and climate, degradation of many ecosystem services (e.g., provision of freshwater, biological diversity, etc.), and homogenization of the biotic fabric of the planet. The Great Acceleration is arguably the most profound and rapid shift in the human–environment relationship that the Earth has experienced.

Towards the end of the 20th century, there were signs that the Great Acceleration could not continue in its present form without increasing the risk of crossing major thresholds and triggering abrupt changes worldwide. Transitions to new energy systems will be required. There is a growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor, and, through modern communication, a growing awareness by the poor of this gap, leading to heightened material aspirations globally—a potentially explosive situation. Many of the ecosystem services upon which human well-being depends are depleted or degrading, with possible rapid changes when thresholds are crossed. The climate may be more sensitive to increases in carbon dioxide and may have more inertia than earlier thought, raising concerns of abrupt and irreversible changes in the planetary environment as a whole.

From the past, we know there are circumstances in which a society is resilient to perturbations (e.g.,climate change) and there are circumstances in which a society is so vulnerable to perturbations that it will be unable to cope. The evolutionary biologist and biogeographer Jared Diamond identifies what he considered to be the 12 most serious environmental problems facing past and future societies—problems that often have led to the collapse of historical societies:

Ø Loss of habitat and ecosystem services;

Ø Overfishing;

Ø Loss of biodiversity;

Ø Soil erosion and degradation;

Ø Energy limits;

Ø Freshwater limits;

Ø Photosynthetic capacity limits;

Ø Toxic chemicals;

Ø Alien species introductions;

Ø Climate change;

Ø Population growth; and

Ø Human consumption levels.

2.Екологічна характеристика людської діяльності

A full understanding of the challenges facing humanity requires knowledge of the evolution of the roles of technology, population expansions, cultural mores, climate, disease and warfare in changing human attitudes and responses through time. This is especially the case if the past is to be used in more sophisticated ways than as a simplistic analogue of projected future conditions. We also know that assessment of the sensitivity or vulnerability of modern landscapes and ecosystems to future human activities and climate can be greatly improved by knowing the rates and directions of past trajectories in key processes such as land cover, soil erosion and flooding, observing how thresholds have been transgressed and deducing the natural or pre-impact patterns of environmental variability. Already, such knowledge is leading to the improved formulation of resource management strategies.

Human history has traditionally been cast in terms of the rise and fall of great civilizations, wars, specific human achievements, and extreme natural disasters (e.g. earthquakes, floods, plagues). This history tends to leave out, however, the important ecological and climatic context and the less obvious interactions which shaped and mediated these events (Figure 1). Socio-ecological systems are intimately linked in ways that we are only beginning to appreciate. Furthering the research agenda on such systems poses great methodological challenges. Events can be selectively chosen from the past to support almost any theory of historical causation. While Figure 1 puts a range of environmental indicators and historical events together on the same graph, it can show only coincidence, not causation. The causal links are more complex and not self-evident. For example, water availability is related to complex developments resulting from social organization, engineering and climate (see the Roman Empire period on Figure 1). While we use the timeline to illustrate the parallels between human and environmental change, the complex web of causation that resulted in the sequence of events depicted cannot be easily represented on such a graph.

Human societies respond to environmental (e.g., climate) signals through multiple pathways including collapse or failure, migration and creative invention through discovery. Extreme drought, for instance, has triggered both social collapse and ingenious management of water through irrigation. Human responses to change may in turn alter feedbacks between climate, ecological, and social systems, producing a complex web of multidirectional connections in time and space. Ensuring appropriate future responses and feedbacks within the human-environment system will depend on our understanding of this past web and how to adapt to future surprises. To develop that understanding, we need to look at multiple time and space scales.

The interplay of multiple factors is almost always more critical than any single factor. Societies on the edge become brittle and lose resilience (including the ability to adapt social values to new circumstances) making them more susceptible to the impacts of potential perturbations of several kinds, including climate change, political corruption, war, and terrorism. In addition, what happens to any society is an emergent phenomenon, the result of individual decisions and conflicts in combination with environmental factors.

To make further progress, we need to construct a framework to help us understand the full range of human-environment interactions and how they affect societal development and resilience. We now have the capacity to develop this framework in the form of more comprehensive integrated models, combining approaches from geophysical, systems dynamics and agent-based models to implement approaches including simulation games and scenario analysis. Insights from modeling and analysis of the rich array of well-documented integrated historic events can be used to structure, test and further develop these models. A few examples of integrated dynamic historical simulation models now exist, including Turchin’s work on historical dynamics with several case studies on everything from the rise and fall of religions to imperial expansion and dynastic cycles, and agent-based simulation models of the growth and decline of the Anasazi in the Southwestern U.S.

The fundamental question we need to ask is: how does the history of human-environment systems generate useful insights about the future? In trying to gain insights from the past, tests of alternate models must play a central role. While in the natural sciences, alternate models can be tested against numerical data sets, in testing models (conceptual and computational) of the human-environment system, we need to use the full range of data from numerical time series to historical narratives. We also need to develop new skills and techniques for integrating these disparate data sources of fundamentally different characters. The extent to which we can (or cannot) reproduce historical behavior in socio-ecological systems determines the confidence we can place in future projections. An array of different modeling approaches, some focused strongly on the biophysical aspects of the Earth System (e.g., General Circulation Models of climate) and others centered on socio-economic aspects (e.g., models of the global economy) have been developed for projecting Earth System behavior into the future. Integrated models at multiple spatial and temporal scales have also been developed. Recognizing that no single approach has intrinsic advantages, a strategy of comparing, synthesizing and integrating the results from different modeling approaches is probably more productive, paralleling the use of multiple working hypotheses. Developing an integrated historical narrative and database will allow testing of alternate models, more rapid evolution of paradigms, and better answers to IHOPE related questions.

3.Джерела екологічної загрози

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