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GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Public lands

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A Critical 21st Century Role For Public Land Management: Conserving 30% Of The Nation’S Lands And Waters Beyond 2030, Robert L. Glicksman, Sandra B. Zellmer Jan 2022

A Critical 21st Century Role For Public Land Management: Conserving 30% Of The Nation’S Lands And Waters Beyond 2030, Robert L. Glicksman, Sandra B. Zellmer

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The international goal of conserving 30 percent of the world’s lands and water to stave off the ravages of climate change and widespread species extinctions has come to the United States. The Biden Administration’s 30 by 30 Initiative commits the nation to placing 30 percent of its lands and waters in some kind of protected status by 2030. Because a substantial portion of the nation’s land base is owned by the federal government, 30 by 30 goals will be beyond reach if conservation commitments do not cover federal lands and resources. And because nearly 70 percent of the federal lands …


Governance Of Public Lands, Public Agencies, And Natural Resources, Robert L. Glicksman Jan 2012

Governance Of Public Lands, Public Agencies, And Natural Resources, Robert L. Glicksman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Climate change presents serious challenges to the agencies that manage the federal public lands. These changes require new management strategies that may be difficult to design and implement because of internal agency resistance to altering traditional ways of doing business. In addition, there is likely to be a lack of fit between some of the laws from which the agencies derive their management authority and the problems posed by climate change, which differ from those Congress envisioned when it adopted those laws and which undermine some of the key assumptions underpinning those laws. This chapter describes the manner in which …


Solar Energy Development On The Federal Public Lands: Environmental Trade-Offs On The Road To A Lower-Carbon Future, Robert L. Glicksman Jan 2011

Solar Energy Development On The Federal Public Lands: Environmental Trade-Offs On The Road To A Lower-Carbon Future, Robert L. Glicksman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The federal government has endorsed more extensive use of the federal public lands for the production of solar power, both to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change and to bolster the security of domestic energy supplies. Spurred by grant money made available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in 2010 approved nine utility-scale solar projects on public lands in California and Nevada. These projects were designed to avoid adversely affecting the habitats of endangered and threatened species that frequent the desert southwest and cultural resources important to …


Ecosystem Resilience To Disruptions Linked To Global Climate Change: An Adaptive Approach To Federal Land Management, Robert L. Glicksman Jan 2009

Ecosystem Resilience To Disruptions Linked To Global Climate Change: An Adaptive Approach To Federal Land Management, Robert L. Glicksman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Global climate change presents daunting challenges to the federal government’s ability to manage its lands and resources in ways that ensure that the priceless natural heritage that these land and resources comprise remains available in substantially unimpaired condition to both present and future generations of Americans. One of the challenges results from the fact that the laws governing the activities of federal land management agencies have outlasted the scientific assumptions on which those laws were based. In particular, Congress adopted many of those laws on the assumption that ecological systems tend toward a natural equilibrium. Subsequently, the science of ecology …


Sustainable Federal Land Management: Protecting Ecological Integrity And Preserving Environmental Principal, Robert L. Glicksman Jan 2008

Sustainable Federal Land Management: Protecting Ecological Integrity And Preserving Environmental Principal, Robert L. Glicksman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This article explores the application of the principles of sustainability to management of lands and resources under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. These two agencies operate a mandate to manage the resources under their control to achieve sustained yield. In this context, sustainability has operated to date primarily in an aspirational fashion, as a broad objective of public land management, rather than as a useful management tool or an enforceable constraint on agency management discretion. The article urges the adoption of amendments to the laws under which the Forest Service and the …