Shale Gas Development and Community Distress: Evidence from England.

This research examines psychosocial stress associated with shale gas development through the narratives of residents and the Revised Impact of Event Scale (IES-R). We carried out our research in three of England's communities impacted by shale gas development. To gather data, we conducted qualitative interviews and engaged in participant observation in all three communities and conducted a quantitative survey of residents. From our qualitative interviews it was apparent that the residents we spoke with experienced significant levels of stress associated with shale gas development in each community. Importantly, residents reported that stress was not only a reaction to development, but a consequence of interacting with industry and decision makers. Our quantitative findings suggest that a significant portion of residents 14.1% living near the shale gas sites reported high levels of stress (i.e., scoring 24 or more points) even while the mean IES-R score of residents living around the site is relatively low (i.e., 9.6; 95% CI 7.5-11.7). We conclude that the experiences, of the three English communities, reported in the qualitative interviews and quantitative survey are consistent with the reports of stress in the United States for those residents who live in shale gas communities. We therefore suggest that psychosocial stress is an important negative externality, which needs to be taken seriously by local planning officers and local planning committees when considering exploration and development permits for shale gas.

The Human Right to Water and Unconventional Energy.

Access to water, in sufficient quantities and of sufficient quality is vital for human health. The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (in General Comment 15, drafted 2002) argued that access to water was a condition for the enjoyment of the right to an adequate standard of living, inextricably related to the right to the highest attainable standard of health, and thus a human right. On 28 July 2010 the United Nations General Assembly declared safe and clean drinking water and sanitation a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights. This paper charts the international legal development of the right to water and its relevance to discussions surrounding the growth of unconventional energy and its heavy reliance on water. We consider key data from the country with arguably the most mature and extensive industry, the USA, and highlight the implications for water usage and water rights. We conclude that, given the weight of testimony of local people from our research, along with data from scientific literature, non-governmental organization (NGO) and other policy reports, that the right to water for residents living near fracking sites is likely to be severely curtailed. Even so, from the data presented here, we argue that the major issue regarding water use is the shifting of the resource from society to industry and the demonstrable lack of supply-side price signal that would demand that the industry reduce or stabilize its water demand per unit of energy produced. Thus, in the US context alone, there is considerable evidence that the human right to water will be seriously undermined by the growth of the unconventional oil and gas industry, and given its spread around the globe this could soon become a global human rights issue.

Australia: a continuing genocide?

Debates about genocide in Australia have for the most part focussed on past frontier killings and child removal practices. This article, however, focuses on contemporary culturally destructive policies, and the colonial structures that produce them, through the analytical lens of the concept of genocide. The article begins with a discussion of the meaning of cultural genocide, locating the idea firmly in Lemkin's work before moving on to engage with the debates around Lemkin's distinction between genocide and cultural 'diffusion.' In contrast to those scholars who prefer the word 'ethnocide,' the underlying conceptual contention is that the term 'cultural genocide' simply describes a key method of genocide and should be viewed, without the need for qualification, as genocide. While direct physical killing and genocidal child removal practices may have ceased in Australia, some indigenous activists persuasively contend that genocide is a continuing process in an Australia that has failed to decolonise. Concurring with these views the article argues that the contemporary expression of continuing genocidal relations in Australia can be seen principally, and perversely, in the colonial state's official reconciliation process, native title land rights regime and the recent interventionist 'solutions' to indigenous 'problems' in the Northern Territory.

A tipificação do estupro como genocídio / Rape characterised as genocide / El delito de violación tipificado como genocidio

O presente artigo identifica e analisa algumas das implicações teóricas ao tifipicar o estupro como crime internacional de genocídio, bem como sustenta que tal análise seja essencial para a criação de marcos mais claros para tratar da questão do estupro. Genocídio é definido como violação perpetrada contra grupos específicos. Em contrapartida, o estupro é conceitualizado como um crime contra a autonomia sexual de um indivíduo. Sendo assim, a definição do estupro como uma violação à liberdade sexual individual seria incompatível com a definição deste como uma violação contra todo um grupo, à semelhança do genocídio? A principal conclusão a que se chega neste artigo é que, se for possível estabelecer uma concepção abrangente de genocídio - capaz de englobar tanto a esfera individual, quanto coletiva - o estupro (quando tipificado como genocídio) pode ser compreendido como violação cometida tanto contra o indivíduo, quanto contra o grupo. Entretanto, estas duas esferas - individual e coletiva - nunca poderão ocupar o mesmo patamar, uma vez que a proteção de grupos humanos constitui a própria fundamentação da criminalização do genocídio. Ao relacionar o estupro à idéia de genocídio, concebido, situado e tratado como crime contra inúmeros grupos, seu cerne muda. Neste sentido, estupro não poderá mais ser compreendido como simples violação a um indivíduo - antes, torna-se parte de uma concepção desenvolvida para a proteção do grupo.

This article identifies and analyses some of the theoretical implications of rape being subsumed within the international crime of genocide and argues that such an analysis is essential for creating a clearer framework to address rape. Genocide is defined as a violation committed against particular groups. In contrast, rape is conceptualised as a violation of an individual's sexual autonomy. As such, can rape understood as a violation of an individual's sexual autonomy be compatible with rape being subsumed within the category of a group violation such as genocide? A key conclusion of this article is that if conceptual space can be created within the crime of genocide to include both the individual and the group, then rape (when categorised as genocide) can operate both as a violation against the group and as a violation against the individual. However, the space allotted to each of the individual and the group can never be equal; the group will always need to occupy the majority of the space, because the central motivation for viewing genocide as a crime is the survival of human groups. When rape is subsumed within genocide, which is conceived, placed and treated as a crime against enumerated groups, its dynamic changes. Rape is no longer simply a violation of an individual. Rape becomes part of a notion developed to protect the group.

Este artículo identifica y analiza algunas de las implicancias teóricas de subsumir el delito de violación en el crimen de genocidio y sostiene que este análisis es esencial para la creación de un marco más claro a fin de hacer frente a tal delito. El genocidio se define como una violación cometida en contra de determinados grupos. En cambio, el delito de violación es concebido como un atentado contra la autonomía sexual de una persona. Como tal, ¿puede el delito de violación, entendido como un ataque a la autonomía sexual de un individuo, ser compatible con el delito de violación subsumido dentro de la categoría de violaciones de derechos que afectan a un grupo como el genocidio? Una conclusión clave de este artículo es que si, dentro del espacio conceptual puede considerarse al delito de genocidio incluyendo tanto al individuo como al grupo, entonces, el delito de violación (tipificado como genocidio), puede funcionar tanto como una violación contra el grupo y como una contra el individuo. Sin embargo, el espacio asignado al individuo y al grupo nunca puede ser igual. El grupo siempre necesita ocupar la mayoría del espacio ya que la motivación central para considerar al genocidio como un crimen es la supervivencia de los grupos humanos. Cuando el delito de violación es subsumido en el de genocidio, el cual está concebido como un crimen contra determinados grupos, su dinámica cambia. El delito de violación ya no es simplemente la afectación a una persona sino que deviene como parte de un concepto desarrollado para proteger al grupo.