Why has it taken so long for member states to appoint women to the Court of Justice? Despite having won relatively significant policy instruments for equal treatment at work and high levels of legislative representation, women in the European Union have been slow to extend the demand for gender mainstreaming to courts. Prior to 1999, the Court of Justice had had one woman member until Ireland a...

Maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services in a changing environment requires a temporal perspective that informs realistic restoration and management targets. Such targets need to be dynamic, adaptive, and responsive to changing boundary conditions. However, the application of long-term data from palaeoecology is often hindered as the management and policy implications are not made explic...

BACKGROUND One of the main obstacles for the mainstreaming of religious traditions as tools for the conservation of nature is the limited applicability of research results in this field. We documented two different restrictions implemented by local people (taboos and sacrifices) related to the use of ritual plants in Benin (West Africa) and Gabon (Central Africa). METHODS To see whether these...

The effects of 'natural' disasters in cities can be worse than in other environments, with poor and marginalised urban communities in the developing world being most at risk. To avoid post-disaster destruction and the forced eviction of these communities, proactive and preventive urban planning, including housing, is required. This paper examines current perceptions and practices within interna...

Research indicates that deaf children can have marked social difficulties compared with their hearing peers. Factors that influence these social interactions need to be reviewed to inform interventions. A systematic search of 5 key databases and 3 specialized journals identified 14 papers that met the inclusion criteria. Methodological quality of the articles was assessed using an adapted check...

Gender mainstreaming, as a consequence of the gender concept, means that there is no such a thing as gender-neutral policies. Gender politics cannot be restricted to special domains such as family politics, and the challenge to overcome gender barriers cannot be managed by isolated measures such as establishing women‘s representatives in organizations [Metz-Göckel/Kamphans 2005]. According to t...

Food and nutrition security are intimately interconnected, since only a food based approach can help in overcoming malnutrition in an economically and socially sustainable manner. Food production provides the base for food security as it is a key determinant of food availability. This paper deals with different aspects of ensuring high productivity and production without associated ecological h...

Forest loss and degradation remains a leading environmental problem. The long history of sustainable forest management has often failed to meet expectations—constrained by funding, governance, capacity and competing interests. Initiatives from the climate change policy arena are opening new ways for a broader mainstreaming of forest management, specially through foreign aid mechanisms towards R...

Handicap International (HI) has supported the Department of Health and Family Welfare (DoHFW), Government of Gujarat, in India for the implementation of a State-wide project for prevention, early identification, intervention and rehabilitation of disability and its complications. Despite the Gujarat health system being better developed than other Indian states health systems, disability has lar...

BACKGROUND Inclusive education/mainstreaming is a key policy objective for the education of children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities. AIMS This paper reviews the literature on the effectiveness of inclusive education/mainstreaming. The focus is on evidence for effects in terms of child outcomes with examination also of evidence on processes that support ...