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Legal Adaptive Capacity: How Program Goals And Processes Shape Federal Land Adaptation To Climate Change, Robert L. Glicksman, Alejandro E. Camacho

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

The degree to which statutory goals are pliable is likely to affect significantly the ability of an agency with regulatory or management responsibilities to achieve those objectives in the face of novel challenges or changing circumstances. This Article explores this dynamic by comparing the degree of “give” provided by the goals of the regimes governing management of the five types of federal public lands in responding to the challenges posed by climate change. It asserts that the extent of climate change adaptation in which an agency engages is influenced by a program’s legal adaptive capacity — the mutability of the …