Latin America has seen significant advances in both women’s rights and gender equality in the last three decades thanks both to external pressures (since the Beijing conference in 1995) and the strength of the women’s movements in the continent. However, these advances are being threatened by populist regimes and strong conservative and reactionary groups within civil society, especially among Catholic and Protestant churches. This kind of anti-‘gender ideology’ reactions is part of a backlash that slides in a scale from constant and structural discrimination to open reversals of gender equality previous gains. This chapter will try to illustrate how left and right-wing populism in the case of Mexico and Brazil, limit or setback gender equality gains in several areas, particularly regarding political parity and the fight against gender-based violence (GBV). We chose these two cases as we think they represent two sorts of backlashes, but also because they represent two examples of populism, different in their ideological positioning but not so different in their defence of patriarchal structures and support of family values.

Linking Norbert Elias’s concept of the triad of controls, to Andrew Willard Jones’ analysis of the ‘complete act’, the paper outlines the relation between culture and personality and the implications of this for any project of localization and the re-embedding of the economy. Re-iterating the reality that degrowth cannot be a liberal project, the paper goes on to explore the relation between Western individualism and Judeo-Christianity. Shorn of the overarching ontology and orienting architecture of Christianity, individualism has become corrosive, unstable and, in the end, self-destructive. The socially conservative preoccupation with a decline in virtue is linked to eroding social capital, anomie, and unhappiness arising from a surfeit of freedom. Hyper-social and -spatial mobility is linked to the suppression of the domain of Livelihood, with its bottom-up, communitarian and family-based forms of social regulation; and a corollary expansion of both top-down collectivist regulation by the State and the transactional logic of the Market. Livelihood is a function of embedded individuals enmeshed in relations not only with other individuals and groups, but with God. In contrast, the materialist metaphysics of Market and State both depend on disembedded, free-wheeling citizen-consumers, severed from any relation to transcendent values. But these same phenomena are also the principal drivers of consumption and ecological degradation. On this basis it is argued that any culture of ecological restraint predicated on the re-embedding of markets must also entail an ontological re-embedding of the sacred conception of the individual (the Imago Dei) into a relation with the divine. Such a project implies a very different understanding of freedom predicated on an external, legitimate authority; a freedom that is ‘fullest not when it serves itself but when it serves truths freely held” ([1], Loc. 419). Applying Christopher Alexander’s theory of pattern languages, the paper goes on to explore what such a sustainability project might look like.

The Bayano region, in Panama, has been linked to many different stakeholders who were or are influenced by the Bayano dam, which was completed in 1976 and flooded a large area. Stakeholder Tables are a good way of exploring the views of stakeholders and their relationships. They can also help in identifying Hidden Stakeholders. Hidden Stakeholders refer to stakeholders who use or are impacted by regions or events, but are generally ignored. In this study, several sources, including discussions with community members and workshop results, were used to develop a Stakeholder Table for the Bayano region. Stakeholders include displaced Guna and Embera indigenous communities. In order to identify Hidden Stakeholders, the table was applied to relevant court cases and agreements, with Hidden Stakeholders being those who were not addressed in these documents. Hidden Stakeholders include indigenous individuals who raise cattle or are involved in tree felling, along with tourism industries. Using some follow-up workshops to collect potential interventions, a Relational Values approach was used to find sustainable projects and methods that can target multiple Hidden Stakeholders at the same time.

Within vivacious international relations, human rights dictums developed whilst racing to advance offensive and defensive capacities. Lately, artificial intelligence (AI) systems have been utilized in the spectrum of these advancements. This has led to a new form of arms race and human rights abuses whilst resisting any attempt to conclude a binding regulation in developing or using AI technology, and although AI has been a frontline issue in many disciplines from various angles, it nonetheless has not been as much in the legal profession, and specifically in international law.

The unprecedented AI technology changes, despite the many advantages, alarms the need to continuously explore its impact within various aspects of international law. The absence of a conclusive international threshold for AI development and use might cause hindering international relations if international law orthodoxies in humanitarian law and human rights become improperly effected. Accordingly, this paper examines whether there is a need to develop the existing international legal order, whether directly or indirectly, and suggest establishing an IGO entity with a mandate to reshape rules and embedded values in the face of a rapid AI technological advancement.

Capturing the various facets of sustainable development is the main objective of sustainability assess- ment studies. Scientists and practitioners use sustainable development criteria and indicators as instruments to link the theoretical definitions with the evaluation of the effectiveness of management strategies; therefore, identifying and selecting indicators are the most critical processes in evaluating the implementation of sustainable development strategies and progress toward achieving sustainability goals and objectives. The manuscript argues the need for increasing credibility in the identification and selection of criteria and indicators through stakeholder engagement, participation and management. Sustainability aims to primarily address and balance the [social, economic, environmental] needs and expectations of stakeholders; therefore, reaching consensus amongst the various groups of stakeholders became the determining factor in the design, implementation, and assessment of sustainable development strategies. Because a precise definition of sustainability that is universally agreed upon is yet to be introduced, the process of identifying and selecting indicators to assess progress toward achieving sustainable development is embedded in subjectivity and vagueness and can be easily manipulated to meet particular interests. Furthermore, the absence of rigorous and standardized methodological frameworks contributes to continuously proposing set indicators that best capture the notion of sustainable development which creates distrust in the assessment process and directly affects the credibility of the sustainability concept. Departing from acknowledging the relevance of stakeholders groups in decision-making and management processes, the manuscript identifies and discusses three credible and reliable frameworks designed by consensus (FDC) to identify and select criteria and indicators to assess the sustainability performance of cities and communities: (1) ISO 37130:2018 which is complemented by ISO 37122:2019, (2) United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) with focus on Goal 11, and (3) customized frameworks for sustainable cities (CFSS). To minimize subjectivity and strengthen credibility, the manuscript also makes the case for the need of embedding FDC into sustainability assessment processes to identify and select criteria and indicators. Because of the methodology adopted for their development, FDC provide scientists and practitioners with reliable and credible sources to identify and select criteria and indicators for the assessment of the sustainability performance of cities and communities.