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Waste management is essential for ensuring the earth’s resilience and it remains one of the greatest challenges for our and future generations. As societies experience further population growth and economic development, waste management poses both challenges for the protection of the environment and human health. To face these challenges, environmental law requires shifting attention from media-specific pollution regimes to integrative life-cycle approaches of waste management, i.e., from the prevention of waste generation to the actual handling of wastes. Currently, wastes are regulated incidentally within media-specific pollution regimes, or in relation to certain hazardous substances. In cases where wastes are directly regulated, this regulation is concerned with a particular activity. Additionally, waste management has been traditionally considered as a national affair except in cases dealing with pollution transfer and transboundary movements of wastes. This thesis is concerned with the management of wastes generated on board vessels while at sea and after they are discharged to port reception facilities. Ship wastes are studied from an international and EU law perspective. These wastes were chosen for three reasons. First, ship wastes are incidentally regulated within the regime of marine pollution. Second, the prevention of ship-source pollution is heavily reliant on the provision of adequate port reception facilities on land. However, the coordination between these facilities and further downstream management operations is still an unresolved issue. Finally, ship wastes were chosen due to incidents related to the unsafe management of ship wastes on land. These incidents increased the attention towards the management of ship wastes after their discharge on land and framed the analysis of such management from a conflict of law perspective. Particularly, whether the transboundary movement of waste regime is applicable to ship wastes while at sea and after their discharge on land. This thesis examined the regimes set up to deal with the transboundary movement of wastes and ship-source pollution so as to elucidate the obligations and legal principles governing such regimes. Considering the rationale behind these regimes, the author concludes that treaty obligations concerning transboundary movements of wastes are inapplicable to ship wastes while on board ships and on land. Despite the limitations of the transboundary movement of wastes regime, the thesis argues that the principle of Environmentally Sound Management (ESM) embodied in this regime has gradually transformed into a legal principle. The most important contribution of ESM is its integrative function. This integrative function has several outcomes. First, ESM is the point of departure for addressing legal gaps in the regulation of wastes, and consequently it provides the desired coherence to the legal system since it acts as a bridge between several regulatory and sectoral levels. Second, ESM offers a new light with which to understand and interpret existing obligations. Finally, ESM provides a renewed impetus to regimes that directly and indirectly govern wastes. This impetus translates into greater coordination and the establishment of cross-sectional policies.

Este trabajo estudia el comercio informal “al paso” en la zona norte de Quito, a partir de un análisis de la clase de objetos comercializados. Los objetos ofrecidos en venta, definidos como neokitsch, juegan un papel esencial en tanto se convierten en signos regidos por una lógica particular, la diferencia. Esta lógica se halla inscrita dentro de un proceso de reproducción social determinado —el capitalismo transnacional— el cual a su vez está vinculado al proyecto político de la globalización. Por lo tanto, siguiendo la trayectoria de estos objetos y las articulaciones que provocan en el interior de ese proceso, interesa descifrar la significación que tiene este tipo de venta informal en las calles, a fin de discutir ciertas lógicas culturales derivadas de este particular tipo de comercio. La reflexión sobre el tema se construye a partir de las distintas lógicas que lo explican y se articula alrededor de aspectos tales como: la apariencia y función social de los objetos, la manera en que son vendidos, las estrategias de venta que utilizan los vendedores y sus significados, entre otros. Una de las principales conclusiones es que —a través de la masificación de la cultura y de los valores de la democracia del consumo, de la inducción de las necesidades y la aceleración del ritmo de producción-consumo— el objeto neokitsch, en las sociedades pobres, ha permitido crear una nueva esfera donde lo superfluo se confunde con lo práctico, lo barato y lo distintivo. La venta informal “al paso” en el norte de Quito es testimonio de la transformación de las relaciones sociales y de la aparición de otras nuevas, al constituirse en un resquicio donde la lógica global se confunde con la cotidianidad local, marcando un rompimiento con los patrones culturales dominantes y produciendo un complejo entrecruce de imaginarios. Al ubicarse en el intersticio, elementos como el palabreo y la estética barroca son formas de recrear y enriquecer el mundo de la vida en el interior de una modernidad capitalista cada vez más deshumanizada.

International shipping is subject to many different rules and regulations, which together frame the market conditions of the industry. Framing a coherent – or level – playing field for an industry that by nature is truly international, is not an easy task. By tradition the International Maritime Organisation IMO is the main regulator of international shipping. In the resent years IMO has faced regulatory competition from the European Union (EU). The EU has as a result of what it considers lack of success on the international regulatory arena, itself tried to solve regulatory gaps by preparing regional solutions to identified regulatory needs. The Chapter outlines the interplay between the two organisations as regards GHG emissions from international shipping, asking whether or not a Brussels Effect on the rules and regulations in this area can be observed.