Law Commons^™

Current Challenges In The Rio Grande/Río Bravo Basin: Old Disputes In A New Century, Regina M. Buono, Gabriel Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

The Rio Grande River traverses 2000 kilometres of the international border between Mexico and the United States. The river and its tributaries are governed by a series of border treaties and institutions, as well as under the domestic laws of each nation. Often lauded for enabling innovative and collaborative governance, in recent years the complicated regime has come under pressure as domestic and international water governance institutions struggle under the strain of climate change, population growth, and other stressors on water supply and demand in the region. This chapter considers three of the major challenges currently facing the Rio Grande …

Impact Assessment And Responsible Business Conduct Tools In The Extractive Sector: An Environmental Human Rights Toolbox For Government, Business, Civil Society, And Indigenous Groups, Sara L. Seck, Charlotte Connolly, Penelope Simons, Audrey Axten

Responsible Business Conduct and Impact Assessment Law

This toolbox provides guidance on how governments, businesses, civil society, and Indigenous groups may encourage and adopt a human rights approach to impact assessment (IA). It forms part of a broader research project aimed at highlighting the interrelationship between IA laws and Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) tools, funded by the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Knowledge Synthesis Grant: Informing Best Practices in Environmental & Impact Assessments (the “KSG”).

Making Me Ill: Environmental Racism And Justice As Disability, Britney Wilson

Articles & Chapters

Civil rights legal scholars and practitioners have lamented the constraints of the largely intent-based legal framework required to challenge racial discrimination and injustice. As a result, they have sought alternative methods that seemingly require less overt proof of discrimination and are more equipped to address structural harm. One of these proposed solutions involves the use of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—due to its affirmative mandate to address discrimination by reasonable modification or accommodation—and the framing of issues of racial injustice in terms of disability or the deprivation of medical rights. Environmental justice, an area in which issues of both …

Developing Solar Energy In Rural Virginia: An Analysis Of Legal, Environmental, And Policy Issues, Reza Kameli, Sun Shen

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

This paper focuses on the legal, environmental, land use, and policy issues associated with developing solar energy projects in Virginia, with a particular focus on large-scale installations in rural areas. Part II discusses state laws, regulations, and recent legislative actions that relate to solar development, including the Virginia Stormwater Management Act and Erosion and Sediment Control Law. Part III reviews local strategies for managing solar development, including comprehensive plans, ordinances, siting agreements, and conditional use permits. Part IV addresses the challenges localities may face when balancing land preservation and Virginia’s ambitious clean energy goals. Finally, Part V provides recommendations for …

How Environmental Litigation Has Turned Pipelines Into Pipe Dreams, Madison Hinkle, Jesse J. Richardson

Law Faculty Scholarship

Proposed oil and gas pipelines have faced a myriad of legal challenges in the past several years. Even where pipeline proponents have prevailed, the cost and delay of protracted litigation has often caused cancellation of pipeline projects. In addition, presidential transitions have led to abrupt reversals of pipeline policies, which courts have often reviewed skeptically. This Article explores the regulatory framework for pipeline construction and analyzes recent lawsuits, describing the legal requirements that agencies must follow to change policies and discussing policies of the Obama and Trump Administrations in context of the legal challenges. It concludes by analyzing the approaches …

Governing For Transformative Change Across The Biodiversity-Climate-Society Nexus, Unai Pascual, Pamela D. Mcelwee, Sarah E. Diamond, Hien T. Ngo, Xuemei Bai, William W. L. Cheung, Michelle Mei Ling Lim, Nadja Steiner, John Agard, Camila I. Donatti, Carlos M. Duarte, Rik Leemans, Shunsuke Managi, Aliny P. F. Pires, Victoria Reyes-Garcia, Christopher Trisos, Robert J. Scholes, Hans-Otto Portner

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Transformative governance is key to addressing the global environmental crisis. We explore how transformative governance of complex biodiversity–climate–society interactions can be achieved, drawing on the first joint report between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services to reflect on the current opportunities, barriers, and challenges for transformative governance. We identify principles for transformative governance under a biodiversity–climate– society nexus frame using four case studies: forest ecosystems, marine ecosystems, urban environments, and the Arctic. The principles are focused on creating conditions to build multifunctional interventions, integration, and innovation across scales; coalitions of …

Come Hell Or No Water: The Story Of Sandbranch And The Unincorporated Community Fight For Public Services, Daeja Pemberton

Student Scholarship

Sandbranch is the only unincorporated community left in Dallas County, and the residents of this majority-Black, impoverished community have had their cries for basic necessities—such as clean, running water—largely ignored. With the County and the City of Dallas not remedying the problem so far, there is a question as to who is responsible for providing water and other public services to the community’s eighty residents. As it currently stands, Texas law simply permits local governments to offer assistance to unincorporated communities but does not mandate that affirmative measures be taken to ensure that these communities are provided for. What is …

A Plea For Survival: Can The Return To Eco-Centrism Strengthen The Legal Protection Of Nature In Sri Lanka?, Asanka Edirisinghe, Michelle Mei Ling Lim

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The right to life of all living beings and the duty of humans to co-exist with nature have been recognized in Sri Lankan tradition and religious practice for centuries. Yet, environmental destruction, degradation and pollution due to human activities have become a common phenomenon in contemporary Sri Lanka. Anthropocentric thinking pervades Sri Lankan jurisprudence. Laws and judicial decisions have largely failed to recognize the rights of nature to be protected for its relational and intrinsic values. There is also limited acknowledgement that the very survival of human beings depends on the continuous existence of Mother Earth. Significant shifts from human-centred …

Natural Transplants, Vanessa Casado-Pérez, Yael R. Lifshitz

Faculty Scholarship

Policymakers are constantly faced with the complex task of managing novel challenges. At times, these challenges result from new technologies: Consider fights over allocating air rights for drones or decisions about how to share scarce vaccines in a pandemic. Other times the resources are old, but the challenges are new, such as how to fairly allocate water in times of unprecedented drought or previously undesirable rare earth minerals that are in demand for modern manufacturing and energy production. Often, instead of carefully tailoring a regime to the new resource, decisionmakers simply rely on mechanisms they are familiar with. When jurisdictions …

Lumpy Social Goods In Energy Decarbonization: Why We Need More Than Just Markets For The Clean Energy Transition, Daniel E. Walters

Faculty Scholarship

To avoid the worst consequences of global climate change, the United States must achieve daunting targets for decarbonizing its electric power sector on a very short timescale. Policy experts largely agree that achieving these goals will require massive investment in new infrastructure to facilitate the deep integration of renewable fuels into the electric grid, including a new national high-voltage electric transmission network and grid-scale electricity storage, such as batteries. However, spurring investment in these needed infrastructures has proven to be challenging, despite numerous attempts by regulators and policymakers to clear a path for market-driven investment. Unchecked, this problem threatens to …

From “Trust” To “Trustworthiness”: Retheorizing Dynamics Of Trust, Distrust, And Water Security In North America, Nicole J. Wilson, Teresa Montoya, Yanna Lambrinidou, Leila M. Harris, Benjamin J. Pauli, Deborah Mcgregor, Robert J. Patrick, Silvia Gonzalez, Gregory Pierce, Amber Wutich

Articles & Book Chapters

Assumptions of trust in water systems are widespread in higher-income countries, often linked to expectations of “modern water.” The current literature on water and trust also tends to reinforce a technoscientific approach, emphasizing the importance of aligning water user perceptions with expert assessments. Although such approaches can be useful to document instances of distrust, they often fail to explain why patterns differ over time, and across contexts and populations. Addressing these shortcomings, we offer a relational approach focused on the trustworthiness of hydro-social systems to contextualize water-trust dynamics in relation to broader practices and contexts. In doing so, we investigate …

Law Article By Prof. Rob Fischman Selected For Land Use & Environmental Law Review, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

No abstract provided.

How Algorithm-Assisted Decision Making Is Influencing Environmental Law And Climate Adaptation, Sonya Ziaja

All Faculty Scholarship

Algorithm-based decision tools in environmental law appear policy neutral
but embody bias and hidden values that affect equity and democracy. In effect,
algorithm-based tools are new fora for law and policymaking, distinct from
legislatures and courts. In turn, these tools influence the development and
implementation of environmental law and regulation. As a practical matter,
there is a pressing need to understand how these automated decision-making
tools interact with and influence law and policy. This Article begins this timely
and critical discussion.

After introducing the challenge of adapting water and energy systems to
climate change, this Article synthesizes prior multidisciplinary work …

Helping New Jersey State Agencies And Departments Align Their Actions With Ghg Reduction Mandates And Environmental Justice Principles, Jennifer Danis, Zoe Makoul

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This white paper analyzes New Jersey’s implementation gap in both the climate and justice space. Its findings are potentially applicable to the many other states who have set climate and justice goals, without robustly embedding them into their existing legal and administrative landscapes. New Jersey already has GHG reduction targets, a plan, and mapped pathways. While more aggressive tactics and targets may be required to meet evolving scientific knowledge, and cost-effective technology and markets will evolve over time, New Jersey’s climate-alignment tools and pathways are clear. The EMP, the 2020 GWRA 80x50 Report, and EO-274, among other strong state initiatives, …

Cle Working Paper No. 2/2022--Mexican Salsa And Mexican Farm Workers: How International Agricultural Development Marginalizes Farm Labour, Celia White

Centre for Law and the Environment

International food systems have become ever-more complex through systems of globalization, industrialization and technologization, and have been significantly influenced by, and entrenched in concepts of international development. One small meal can have countless intersections with international laws, domestic laws, environments and people. A simple salsa recipe, for example, containing merely tomatoes, lime juice, garlic, onions, and cilantro, contains in its history a complex story of power, privilege, poverty and possibility. Where did these ingredients come from? Who grew them? Where are those people from? What rights do they have? Innumerable personal stories are hidden within the seemingly innocuous act of …

Incorporating Climate Change In Nepa Reviews: Recommendations For Reform, Michael Burger, Romany M. Webb, Jessica A. Wentz

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

The National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) requires federal agencies to conduct an environmental review prior to moving ahead with any major federal project, plan, or program that could significantly affect the environment. As part of the environmental review, agencies must share information with, and solicit feedback from, the public. The goal is to improve federal decision-making by ensuring that agencies take a hard look at the environmental effects of their actions and fully inform the public about those effects.

In guidance issued in 2016, the Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”)—the federal body charged with implementing NEPA—identified climate change as a …

Does Ceqa Need A Rewrite Or Just A Better Public Relations Manager?, Brian Gillis

GGU Law Review Blog

I’ve recently been tempted to blame my existential climate-change-induced dread on a 50-year-old environmental law that may be exacerbating California’s contributions to the climate crisis. The impacts of climate change are here and will only grow more severe. I’m angry, and I am scared for the future because we aren’t doing nearly enough to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. The climate action pledges taken by many countries are insufficient, and we aren’t even on track to meet these pledges. The calls-to-action are all about urgency: “we need to act yesterday to avoid a climate catastrophe.” So, an environmental …

Transcript, Zulene Mayfield, Carol Kazeem, Kearni Warren, Kyle Powis Whyte, Ana Baptista, Jacqui Patterson, Dorcas Gilmore

Panel III: Moving Forward

No abstract provided.

Transcript, Zulene Mayfield, Will Jones, Tyler White, Chantal Reyes, Maria Lopez-Nuñez, Steph Tai

Panel II: Reshaping EJ Law & Social Policy

No abstract provided.

Transcript, Zulene Mayfield, Louis Morse, Sheila Foster, Michael Churchill, Gilbert Carrasco, Mike Ewall

Panel I: Learning from Title VI

No abstract provided.

Groundwater Laws And Regulations: Survey Of Sixteen U.S. States, Abigail Adams, Jack Beasley, Rebekah Bratcher, Justin Clas, Jackson Field, Ian Gaunt, Ashley Graves, Merrick Hayashi, Jenna Lusk, Matthew Maslanka, Erin Milliken, Connor Pabich, Margaret Reed, A. Wesley Remschel, Lauren Thomas, Ashley Wilde

EENRS Program Reports & Publications

This report is the second volume in a continuing project designed to explore and articulate the groundwater laws and regulations of all fifty U.S. states. This particular report presents surveys for sixteen states throughout the country. The first volume featured thirteen state surveys and can be found at: http://www.law.tamu.edu/usgroundwaterlaws.

The purpose of the project is to compile and present the groundwater laws and regulations of every state in the United States that could then be used in a series of comparisons of groundwater governance principles, strategies, issues, and challenges. Professor Gabriel Eckstein at Texas A&M University School of Law and …

Fast Fashion: A Price The Planet Has To Pay, Abby Gager

Environmental Law Journal blog

With fashion trends rapidly changing, the fashion industry is placed under pressure to produce new styles quickly and for a cheap price. Although consumers enjoy having the latest trends at their fingertips with the convenience of online shopping, the rise of fast fashion will have a long-lasting detrimental impact on the environment. Fashion is considered “fast” for a variety of reasons; the constant change in trends is fast, the rate of production is fast, the consumer’s decision and methods of buying are fast, delivery is fast, and articles of clothing are worn fast before they are tossed and to never …

Protecting Terrapins With Teds In Virginia: Lessons From Other States, Bridget Verrekia, Shelby Fuchs

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

This paper highlights case studies about other states' efforts to require or incentivize the use of TEDs [terrapin excluder devices] and recommends policies for Virginia to adopt that have proven successful elsewhere. First, it outlines the threats to terrapins at large, as well as the threat posed by commercial and recreational crabbing, specifically. Next, it details the efforts that other East Coast states have made to combat the problem, including policies that require or incentivize the use of TEDs on crab pots, and discusses the regulatory framework currently in place in Virginia. Finally, this paper concludes by analyzing the approaches …

Cle Working Paper No. 2/2022--Mexican Salsa And Mexican Farm Workers: How International Agricultural Development Marginalizes Farm Labour, Celia White

Transnational Business Governance Interactions Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Inclusion Of Incentive And Punitive Measures In Multilateral Environmental Agreement: A Suggestion On How The United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change Can Be Utilized To Influence The Reduction Of Gas Flaring In The Oil And Gas Exploration Fields Of Nigeria, Temiloluwa Elijah Olanrewaju

Dissertations & Theses

Gas flaring is categorized as one of the important contributors to greenhouse gases, which increases the risk of global warming and climate change. The overdependence of the modern economy and most industrial technologies on fossil fuels has created a situation in countries where fossil fuels are exploited. The governments rely majorly on the revenue from exporting oil. The IOCs that are engaged in the mining of oil and gas have been able to influence policy and law enforcement on gas flaring to such an extent that the National laws are not enforced, or the stipulated fines are abysmally low that …

Pricing Plastics Pollution: Lessons From Three Decades Of Climate Policy, Jonas J. Monast, John Virdin

Connecticut Law Review

Plastic is now the most widely used human-made substance on the planet, and plastics pollution impacts marine and coastal ecosystems, local economies, and human health. Local and national governments are increasingly responding by banning plastic bags and other specific plastic products, taxing the use of certain plastics, and improving waste management and recycling. These are important steps, but alone they will not result in a meaningful reduction in cumulative plastics pollution or encourage development of sufficient alternatives to plastic. Additional policy measures are necessary.

This Article argues that climate change and plastic pollution share numerous similarities, and these similarities allow …

Recommendations For Strengthening The Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia's Management Of Non-Hazardous Solid Waste Informed By A Comparative Assessment Of The Management Of Non-Hazardous Solid Waste In The United Arab Emirates, Saud Hani Arab

Dissertations & Theses

Despite significant changes in the category and volume of waste, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) still manages refuse the same way it did decades ago. Before 1975, waste generators were responsible for collecting and disposing of nonhazardous solid waste (NSW). The KSA later set up the Ministry of Municipalities and Rural Affairs (MOMRA) in 1975 as a result of the oil boom. One of the initial tasks of MOMRA was to manage and develop NSW system. In addition to management, MOMRA also distributed waste bins throughout the KSA and hired waste haulers to be responsible for NSW. As I …

Abandoned And Derelict Vessels In The Commonwealth: How To Improve Virginia's Adv Program, Anthony Cusato

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

Vessels abandoned or lost by their owners can get stuck on a shoreline or in a marsh, aimlessly float adrift, or sink in a waterway. As the number of ADVs [abandoned and derelict vessels] increases, efforts to address them similarly intensify. Typically, state government agencies handle most ADVs, and their approaches to ADV control and removal vary widely across jurisdictions. Virginia faces an increasing number of ADVs and can learn from other states to improve its approach. This paper examines the current Virginia ADV program and considers how it can be amended to make it more effective. It then identifies …

In-Lieu Fee Program Case Studies: Lessons Learned For Potentially Expanding In-Lieu Fee Habitat Coverage In Virginia, Erika Bosack, Luke Miller

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

This white paper contains case studies of coastal ILF [in-lieu fee] programs across the United States: Maine Natural Resources Conservation Program (“MNRCP”), Northwest Florida Water Management District (“NWFWMD”) ILF Program, Keys Restoration Fund (“KRF”), Sacramento District California ILF Program, Maryland Department of the Environment ILF Program, and Virginia Aquatic Resources Trust Fund (“VARTF”). The Conclusion will provide general recommendations and questions to consider in deciding whether and how to implement an in-lieu fee program for wildlife habitats in Virginia. Each program has a unique regulatory structure and method for selecting projects on which to spend their funds. The programs do …

Informational Regulation, The Environment, And The Public, Katrina F. Kuh

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Informational Regulation, the Environment, and the Public generates a typology to analyze how public disclosure functions in informational regulation. In the environmental context, informational regulation compels the public disclosure of environmental information without mandating substantive environmental outcomes in the expectation that disclosure itself will prompt beneficial change in the environmental context. Application of the Article's typology reveals that the emperor has no clothes: Communication of environmental information to the public is considered central to policies employing informational regulation, but the information produced pursuant to these measures largely fails to reach or be understood by lay individuals. For example, empirical data …