STAKEHOLDER APPROACH TO CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY: RECIPE FOR SUSTAINABLE PEACE IN THE NIGER DELTA REGION?

Sunday Bontur Lugard*

ABSTRACT

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a pathway to positive and sustainable engagement of business-stakeholders in general and its host community in particular, especially when the operations of such enterprise have a way of negatively impacting the environment or other interests of such a community. Empirical research has shown that such engagement has a way of not just improving corporate-community relations but acts as a strategic roadmap to allow stakeholders take ownership of and buy in into corporate sustainability plans. This is one area International Oil Companies (IOCs) operating in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region have arguably floundered, and hence the ensuing and seemingly intractable confrontations from the host communities and militant groups who perennially feel left out of topdown CSR initiatives. This paper discusses the concept of “emotional equity” as a missing piece in community involvement in corporate sustainability in Nigeria. It examines how a stakeholder approach to CSR could serve as a participatory and level playing approach that would engender peaceful, symbiotic engagement and cohabitation between the IOCs and their host communities.

Keywords: Corporate social responsibility, development, environment, pollution

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* LL.B, BL, LL.M is a Lecturer in the Department of International Law and Jurisprudence, Faculty of Law, University of Jos, Nigeria. Email: lugards@unijos.edu.ng.

THE CHALLENGES OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN POST-COLONIAL AFRICAN STATES: A REVIEW OF ADAMU USMAN’S SIEGED

Solomon Adedokun Edebor*

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses and contributes to debates on the critical governance challenges faced by post-colonial African states such as bribery and corruption, lack of democratic and participatory governance, insecurity, lack of justice and equality before the law, and illiteracy as some of the impediments to sustainable development in Africa. These issues have been variously discussed by literary scholars with an attempt to portray and expose them. One such excellent attempt is Adamu Usman’s Sieged. This paper analyses some of the fundamental threads in Usman’s submissions on how lack of good governance and purposeful leadership remain the bane of African states. It then takes the analyses further by showing that no meaningful social, economic, political or environmental development can take place in Africa until African masses demand for good governance and engage in ideology-based social revolution in ending the reins of corrupt leadership.

Keywords: post-colonialism, politics, corruption, sustainable development, independence.

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* Solomon Adedokun Edebor is of the Department of English and Literary Studies, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, (ABUAD), Ekiti State, Nigeria.

UNQUENCHED THIRST: THE NEED FOR A CONSTITUTIONALLY RECOGNIZED RIGHT TO WATER IN GHANA

Tia Crosby*

ABSTRACT

The practice of privatizing water is often discussed as the leading method for improving access to adequate water in developing countries. Notably, this method has a cost that frequently impedes access to water in the developing world, while exploiting the profitability of a natural resource that is vital to human life. In Ghana, the failure of water privatization initiatives and the growing scarcity of adequate water have caused a public health crisis that necessitates a quick and efficient solution. As demonstrated in South Africa, the codification of the right to water in its constitution has improved access to adequate water, sparked government concern and action on water and sanitation issues, and provided citizens with various avenues to compel government adherence to the constitutional right. Is constitutional recognition of the right to water an adequate alternative to privatization of water? If so, can such recognition solve Ghana’s water woes? This paper examines how constitutional recognition of the right to water in Ghana can successfully encourage the substantive realization of access to adequate water to all Ghanaians and an efficient procedural process that assures government accountability in water governance.

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* BA (University of North Carolina, NC, USA), JD (Florida A&M School of Law, USA), Certificate in International Human Rights Law and Global Justice Studies; Human Rights Fellow (2014), Florida A&M University College of Law, Orlando, USA.

INTERNATIONAL ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE: LESSONS FROM UNEA AND PERSPECTIVES ON THE POST-2015 ERA

Joseph Nyangon*

ABSTRACT

The inaugural meeting of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) held in June 2014 in Nairobi, was a culmination of more than four decades of environmental governance since the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was established in 1972 in Stockholm. The meeting addressed weighty and contentious issues including strengthening of UNEP’s role in promoting environmental governance and enhancing science-policy interface. Yet despite the historical significance of the meeting following universalization of the governing body of UNEP and current debates on the post-2015 development agenda, questions persist about the role of UNEP, its establishment, performance, and fragmentation of programmes and secretariats of the multilateral environmental agreements associated with it. This paper reviews the outcome of the inaugural UNEA session, while developing a political economy account of institutional arrangements of international environmental governance to clarify the potential for, and barriers to effective environmental reform. Multilaterally, international environmental governance continues to exhibit elements of complexity, fragmentation, lack of coordination as well as redundancy. In more critical terms, lack of policy integration between environmental regimes is a concern of environmental governance that the new UNEA should address as a matter of priority. Furthermore, incoherent policy objectives in international environmental law often characterised as a governance patchwork have been criticized for their economic orthodoxies that only serve to marginalize and delegitimize alternative modes of environmental governance. In this regard, a core part of UNEA’s institutional legitimacy depends on its success in coevolving to keep up with environmental challenges as they themselves change, as well as enhancing consensus-based stakeholder engagement, perspectives, and participation on environmental governance. This will be its true litmus test on how it responds coherently and effectively to international environmental governance in a post-2015 development world.

Keywords: International environmental governance, institutional arrangements, UNEA, political economy, fragmentation, SDGs, post-2015 goals

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* Joseph Nyangon, Ph.D. Researcher, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy (CEEP), University of Delaware, U.S.A., jnyangon@udel.edu.

BUYING BACK THE RIGHT TO HEALTH: LEGAL AND POLICY FRAMEWORK FOR FACILITATING ACCESS TO ESSENTIAL MEDICINES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Tanvi Mani*

ABSTRACT

The concept of public healthcare has perennially involved the institution of measures that are necessary for the prevention of large scale epidemics. This preventive approach embodies principles of sanitation, water purification and more recently vaccination. However, the advent of new strains of viruses and an unprecedented increase in the susceptible population has expanded the ambit of primary healthcare to include effective treatment. Especially in developing countries, treatment through affordable medicines is considered fundamental to the achievement of public health goals. Thus, there exists a humanitarian obligation on the international community and the respective governments of nations, to provide effective medication to those who cannot afford it, in the larger interest of maintaining a sense of equity in the sustenance of human life. This paper analyses relevant international treaties and domestic judicial interventions that could effectuate positive change in the formulation of international trade and intellectual property policies, with regard to healthcare, at national as well as an supranational levels. The paper argues for the transfer of the decision making powers, with regard to the distribution of drugs, from the private pharmaceutical industry to the governments of countries. This, it argues, would result in a shift in prioritization from profit making motives, to the universal realization of the right to health.

Keywords: Healthcare, intellectual property, human rights

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* Tanvi Mani is of the School of Law, The WB National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkota, India. Email: tanvi2493@gmail.com, Tel: +91 8420285425.

AS THE WORLD WELCOMES ITS SEVEN BILLIONTH HUMAN: REFLECTIONS ON POPULATION, LAW, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Robert Hardaway*

ABSTRACT

Twenty years ago, Praeger Publications of Westport Connecticut published this author’s book “Population, Law and the Environment”,1 in which the case was made for identifying human population expansion as the key environmental issue of our times. This case rested in large part on linking together cultural and legal issues, which theretofore had not always been considered to be related to environmental protection, such as abortion, the rights of women, contraception, immigration, family planning, and policies of economic growth. There have been considerable developments in these areas which have spurred this author to update his book, this time in the form of this article which both condenses the content of his previously published book where apposite (including passages which are incorporated verbatim from his previous work), and updates the most recent data supporting its original premise. The case is renewed herein for linking those areas which continue to be widely ignored or rejected as relevant to environmentalism, while at the same time urging that the environmental movement and the law that supports it expand its current narrow focus on the “A” and “T” factors of Holdren’s2 brilliantly conceived equation (I=PAT), and recognize the more critical “P” component, which in turn is a reflection of how both domestic and international law promulgates and enforces law in the areas identified in this article. The name that the author has adopted for this proposed change of focus is “Environmental Malthusianism.”3 Keywords: Population, Environment, Law, Climate Change

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* Professor of Law at the Sturm College of Law, University of Denver, Colorado, United States. This article is reprinted with permission from Sustainable Development Law and Policy, (2014) Volume XIV, Issue 1, American University Washington College of Law.

1. Praeger Publications is now a part of the publishing house of ABC-CLIO, Santa Barbara, California.

2 Although Holdren’s name is used herein to describe the equation, the equation has been recognized as a joint effort of John Holdren, Barry Commoner, and Paul Ehrlich.

3 Although the author has not found any usage of this term in other literature, he claims no credit for its coinage given that it seems such an obvious term to describe the linkage of population to the environment.

CONSTRUCTING THE LEGAL SAFEGUARD FOR CHINA’S CARBON TAXATION

Haifeng Deng * and Anna Wang **

ABSTRACT

Environmental protection practices of developed countries prove carbon taxation is an effective tool to reduce greenhouse effect, and China has already put it into official agenda. Based on Chinese environmental law system, the enforcement of carbon tax mainly faces four key challenges, contradiction with the existing taxes items; conflict with carbon trade system; adjustment of carbon tax collection and administrative structure; and coordination with international trade rules. In order to solve those problems, it is high time to build a legal protection system for carbon taxation. The essence of the legal protection system includes at least three aspects: Firstly, adjusting the existing environment tax rates. Secondly, coordinating with carbon trade system and make tax reduction policy for enterprises which have achieved reduction goals. Thirdly, constructing a dynamic balance administrative system and a comprehensive database system for carbon taxation.

Keywords: Carbon Tax; Legal protection; Function; Construction

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* Haifeng Deng, Associate Professor of Law School, Tsinghua University, Haidian District, Beijing, China,100084, email: denghaifeng@126.com.

** Anna Wang, PhD Candidate of Law School, Tsinghua University, Haidian District, Beijing, China,100084.

IMPOSITION OF A COPYRIGHT LEVY IN NIGERIA: LEGAL JUSTIFICATIONS AND COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Ifeoluwa A. Olubiyi*

ABSTRACT

Copyright owners have the exclusive right to control the reproduction of their works. Since the advent of recording and copying technology, reproducing copyright works has become easier. Cases such as Sony Corp of America v. University City Studios, Inc indicate that copyright owners cannot stop technological advancements since they have both infringing and non-infringing uses. The reality is that private copying/reproduction is damaging to the right of owners and the entire copyright industry. One of the ways this situation is addressed is the imposition of copyright/private copying levies in some jurisdictions. Different rationales have been advanced for the imposition of this levy such as harm/compensation rationale and the statutory licence rationale. Nigeria is joining other jurisdictions in imposing this levy as the Copyright Levy Order 2012 was recently signed into law. This paper discusses the origin and justifications for the imposition of copyright levies. This practice is examined particularly in the light of the ‘fair dealing for private use’ exception under the Nigerian copyright law and in other jurisdictions such as the European Union, Germany, United Kingdom and the United States. It provides a detailed understanding of ‘fair dealing for private use’ and also a justification for the Nigerian Copyright Levy Order under the Nigerian legal system.

Keywords: copyright levy, fair use, fair dealing, private use

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* Intellectual Property Law Lecturer, Department of Private and Business Law, College of Law, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria; LL.M [IPLKM] (Maastricht), B.L (NLS, Abuja), LL.B (OAU, Ife). E-mail: ifejemilugba@gmail.com.