[GA - FAILED] Land Reclamation Regulation

Status
Not open for further replies.
Cretox

Cretox

Somehow, Palpatine has returned
TNP Nation
Cretox State
Discord
Cretox#0125
ga.jpg

Land Reclamation Regulation
Category: Environmental | Area of Effect: All Businesses - Mild
Proposed by: Orca and Narwhal | Coauthor: Honeydewistania | Onsite Topic​
The World Assembly,

Acknowledging the use of land reclamation in member nations to increase their land area for purposes such as alleviating overpopulation;

Concerned that unregulated land reclamation could lead to serious environmental damage, such as:
  • the destruction of coral reefs and wetlands,
  • erosion of beaches in nations that sell sand to be used in land reclamation,
  • use and harmful depletion of nonrenewable resources during the initial and continued phases of a project;
Hoping that by regulating land reclamation, these environmental damages can be prevented;

The World Assembly Hereby:
  1. Mandates that member nations obtain all resources used in the actual physical construction phase of land reclamation projects in a manner with minimal damage to the environment;

  2. Requires that impact studies be conducted by the Environmental Survey of the World Assembly (ESWA) to evaluate whether any land reclamation causes any of the following:
    1. the extinction of any animal species residing in the land being reclaimed,
    2. significant disruption to a food chain involving endangered or rare animals,
    3. loss of plant or fungal species with a particular, known, unique importance to medicine,
  3. Prohibits member nations from moving forward with a land reclamation project if the ESWA deems a place not suitable to reclaim land or if the land reclamation projects drain or destroy coral reefs, mangrove wetlands or other exceptionally biodiverse areas

  4. Encourages member nations to use other less environmentally destructive methods to alleviate overpopulation while also minimizing the ecological and environmental impact of land reclamation; and

  5. States that clause 1 of this resolution shall apply to both freshwater and saltwater land reclamations projects while the rest of this resolution will only apply to all land reclamations projects in saltwater environments.
Co-authored by Honeydewistania.
Click to expand...
Note: Only votes from TNP WA nations and NPA personnel will be counted. If you do not meet these requirements, please add (non-WA) or something of that effect to your vote.
Voting Instructions:
  • Vote For if you want the Delegate to vote For the resolution.
  • Vote Against if you want the Delegate to vote Against the resolution.
  • Vote Abstain if you want the Delegate to abstain from voting on this resolution.
  • Vote Present if you are personally abstaining from this vote.
Detailed opinions with your vote are appreciated and encouraged!
[TR][TD] For [/TD][TD] Against [/TD][TD] Abstain [/TD][TD] Present [/TD][/TR][TR][TD]2[/TD][TD]17[/TD][TD]1[/TD][TD]0[/TD][/TR]
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The at-vote proposal in the General Assembly, "Land Reclamation Regulation," attempts to serve the noble cause of minimizing environmental damage that may occur through land reclamation (creating new land out of a body of water). Unfortunately, the method in which it does this is peculiar at best and ineffective at worst. By placing the responsibility of impact studies under a committee that will monitor all cases of land reclamation occurring in member-states, it creates an undue burden on the World Assembly when it could just as easily be handled by each individual nation. Additionally, clause two is worded in such a way that these impact studies may simply be required to be done on land reclamation as a whole, as opposed to each individual project that involved land reclamation - which is a fairly unhelpful task and makes the crux of the resolution pointless. Clause one is also worded perhaps a little too strongly, without having any reasonable limits set on what the "minimal" amount of environmental damage would be. While this issue likely deserves being legislated on, this proposal is too heavy-handed to be the legislation that covers it.

For these reasons, the North Pacific Ministry of World Assembly Affairs recommends a vote against the at-vote proposal in the General Assembly, "Land Reclamation Regulation."
 
Last edited:
Strongly against. I don't disagree with the objective here, but the proposal's approach is just so heavy handed. Why, exactly, is a WA committee evaluating every single (saltwater) land reclamation project undertaken in any member nation? Does beach restoration count? Do I need the WA's approval to shore up an eroded coastline? Reclamation projects aren't cheap. Destroying coral reefs isn't cheap. If a member nation is moving forward with a reclamation effort, they probably have a very good reason to do so. Further, clause 1 is pretty problematic in itself due to there being no limits on the extent of "minimal". Does every member nation have to devote enormous amounts of funding to screening every possible source of materials for reclamation? What if this minimally environmentally damaging resource is prohibitively expensive to obtain?

I just feel that this approach is wholly unnecessary for a mild-strength proposal. Why not simply issue regulations and guidelines on how reclamation projects should be evaluated? Also, I can't help but notice that clause 3 is missing end punctuation, the proposal uses bullets and an ordered list seemingly randomly, the last clause alternates between "shall" and "may", and bullet point 3 ends with a semicolon while 2(c) ends with a comma.
 
Last edited:
Strongly against. I can see the logic behind the proposal but for anyone living in a city reliant on reclamation, this ignores very basic issues on housing (house prices in particular), development, and improving living standards.
 
Last edited:
simone_republic:
Strongly against. I can see the logic behind the proposal but for anyone living in a city reliant on reclamation, this ignores very basic issues on housing (house prices in particular), development, and improving living standards.
Click to expand...
Again, I would like to strongly implore against this resolution given trends towards urbanisation in (relatively) coastal cities, the traditional opportunities available in cities vs rural area, and house prices.
 
Last edited:
CD- betterThanFlash:
@Honeydewistan I would like to understand your rationale for placing the responsibility of survey and assessment on ESWA rather than the member nations. Seems to imply a distrust of nations to do their own assessments. Also, the criteria of judgement are overly broad.
Click to expand...
ESWA is independent and since 473 requires ESWA:
Identify areas in member nations' territories as candidates for reforestation, land reclamation, and rehabilitation, where environmental degradation has been artificially made.
Since they do that already, I don't understand why everyone is so up in arms about invoking them.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top