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Globalization has changed the way global society addresses common and global problems.

Genuine Savings (GS), also known as ‘net adjusted savings’, is a composite indicator of the sustainability of economic development. Genuine Savings reflects year-on-year changes in the total wealth or capital of a country, including net investment in produced capita, investment in human capital, depletion of natural resources, and damage caused by pollution. A negative Genuine Savings rate suggests that the stock of national wealth is declining and that future utility must be less than current utility, indicating that economic development is non-sustainable (Hamilton and Clemens, 1999). We make use of data over a 150 year period to examine the relationship between Genuine Savings and a number of indicators of well-being over time, and compare the relative changes in human, produced, and components of natural capital over the period. Overall, we find that the magnitude of genuine savings is positively related to changes in future consumption, with some evidence of a cointegrating relationship. However, the relationships between genuine savings and infant mortality or average heights are less clear.

Dynamic pressure measurements are introduced as a powerful tool to detected filter failures at early stage. Filter failures such as leakages and blockages can be detected during back pressure recleaning pulses. High frequency sensors enable the recording of the recleaning pressure pulse. Patchy cleaning and depth filtration can be detected much faster with dynamic pressure measurements than with differential pressure measurements. Parameters derived from dynamic pressure data can be observed over time and compared with reference data. The method complements conventional pressure difference measurements and is applied at a hot gas filter that implements coupled pressure pulse (CPP) technology. Proceedings of the 20th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 18-22 June 2012, Milan, Italy, pp. 837-843

ON 16 NOVEMBER 2000, the final report of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) was launched in London, in the presence of South Africa’s former president Nelson Mandela. This represented a remarkable milestone in the history of dam policy and politics. During its two-year existence, WCD had conducted the most extensive review of research and evidence regarding the planning, impacts, and management of large dams. It had engaged with numerous stakeholders around the globe. It also made comprehensive recommendations about how to improve dam planning and management.

With an increasing share of regenerative wind and solar energy in electricity supply, the aspect of load flexibility will gain importance, i.e. there is an increasing need for buffer capacities and / or power plants must be able to react more flexibly to changes of the demand. As an alternative or in addition to the new construction of peak­load power plants (pump storage systems, gas power plants), load-flexible dust burner technologies can be used in existing incinerators to increase the load flexibility and the fuel flexibility when using especially local regenerative fuel sources. Flexibility of the burner concept means an increase in changing fuel composition and non-stationary operation, which may cause changes of the combustion behavior and, hence, of the emission behavior. Flexibility in fuel sources changes the combustion and emission behavior, too, especially with regard to low rank fuels with high ash contents containing chlorine and alkali species. To control these non-stationary processes in the burner and downstream boiler area for an efficient operation, contact-free optical measurement methods are applied in addition to the measurement systems existing in the furnace chamber and furthermore control methods based on computational intelligence. Proceedings of the 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-10 June 2011, Berlin, Germany, pp. 1334-1337

Responses to recent climatic changes in the sediment of subarctic Lake Saanajärvi in northwestern Finnish Lapland are studied by comparison of various biological and sedimentological proxies with the 200-year long climate record, specifically reconstructed for the site using a data-set of European-wide meteorological data. The multi-proxy evidence of simultaneously changing diatom, Cladocera, and chrysophyte assemblages along with the increased rates of organic matter accumulation and pigment concentrations suggest that the lake has undergone a distinct typological change starting from the turn of the 20th century. This change, indicating an increase in lake productivity, parallels a pronounced rise in the meteorologically reconstructed mean annual and summer temperatures in the region between ca. 1850 and 1930's. We postulate that, during the Little Ice Age, the lake was not, or was only weakly, thermally stratified during summer, whereas the subsequent increase in air and hence epilimnetic water temperatures resulted in the development of the present summer stratification. The increased thermal stability of the lake created more suitable conditions for the growth of phyto- and zooplankton and changed the overall primary production from benthos to plankton. Mineral magnetic and carbonaceous particle records suggest long-distance pollution, particularly since the 1920's, yet the observed changes in lake biota and productivity can hardly be explained by this very minor background pollution; the 20th century species configurations are typical of neutral waters and do not indicate any response to pollution.

This timely book critically examines the role played by international, regional and national legal frameworks in holding corporations operating in the natural resource sector accountable for human rights violations in the Global South, probing the effectiveness of the mechanisms available to aggrieved communities in pursuit of effective remedies and socio-ecological justice. The book brings together influential scholars from across the world addressing topical and relevant themes concerning the integration of business & human rights standards for better governance of natural resources and the transition towards net zero societies, especially in the context of extractive and multinational companies operating in the Global South. It also considers the application and implementation of transnational and domestic legal remedies for holding corporations accountable with references to case studies in natural resources governance in selected countries and regions, in particular Africa, Asia and Latin America. The book reviews proposals for an enforceable legal framework on the liability of corporations for human rights abuses and environmental damage, taking account of the existing initiatives such as the OECD Guidelines on Multinational Enterprises, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, UN’s Draft Business & Human Rights Treaty and the European Commission’s 2022 proposal for a Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence. The book is essential reading for academics and students working or researching in the fields of business law, human rights and natural resources law; as well as corporate and human rights lawyers and practitioners litigating in the energy and natural resources sectors.

Agentenbasierte Strommarktmodelle werden vielfach eingesetzt, um die Entwicklung des Strommarkts und Energiesystems explorativ zu untersuchen. Häufig werden hierbei auf Basis von Eingangszeitreihen die Investitions- und Dispatch-Entscheidungen von konventionellen Kraftwerken, wie Gas- oder Kohlekraftwerke, und Speichertechnologien nachgebildet . Modelle wie PowerACE und AMIRIS nutzen Brennstoffpreisreihe, Last, Erneuerbaren-Energien (EE)-Erzeugung und Investitionsoptionen sowie den bestehenden Kraftwerkspark als Eingangsdaten. Die zu Grunde gelegte Last und EE-Erzeugung sind hierbei stark vom jeweiligen Wetterjahr, auf denen sie basieren, abhängig. Zum einen ist das Wind- und Strahlungsdargebot als auch der Wärme- und Kältebedarf, welche einen starken Einfluss auf den Strombedarf haben, jedes Jahr unterschiedlich, gleichzeitig führen technologische Entwicklungen dazu, dass eine reine Skalierung historischer Erzeugung zukünftige EE-Erzeugung systematisch unterschätzt. Es soll untersucht werden, ob die Verwendung von nur einem Wetterjahr dazu führt, dass, insbesondere bei Betrachtungszeiträumen von mehreren Jahrzehnten, es beim Vergleich zwischen verschiedenen Wetterjahren zu erheblichen Unterschieden in den Simulationsergebnissen , sowohl bei den Investitionen als auch bei den Marktpreisen, kommt. Ziel ist es die Unsicherheiten in Bezug auf EE-Erzeugung und Stromnachfrage im Agentenverhalten abzubilden. In Rahmen dieser Arbeit soll diese Unsicherheit in den Ergebnissen agentenbasierter Modelle, am Beispiel PowerACE, quantifiziert werden und dargelegt werden, ob die Verwendung von mehreren Wetterjahren oder die Nutzung synthetische Wetterjahren, also eine Kombination verschiedener Wetterjahre auf Erzeugungs- und Nachfrageseite, hier einen Vorteil bieten .

Moral panic, our predisposition to exaggerate threats against our livelihood and start blaming ourselves, is as old as human history. We always feared “others”, people with skin colors or ethnicity other than ours, people coming from other corners of the globe, and the infectious diseases the strangers might bring along. This paper deals with a new version of such moral panics which is arguably even more intense than the previous ones, but which relates to a new dimension of human experience, namely globalization. The health, economic and environmental challenges we are now faced with are posed globally. The moral panic today stems from this triple challenge. Our central thesis is that these three emergencies are interrelated, but there is no simple causal relationship between them. They can only be addressed in a global manner, while we still live in a world which is segmented into sovereign nation-states.