Law Commons^™

Keeping It Legal: Transboundary Management Challenges Facing Brazil And The Guarani, David N. Cassuto

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This paper examines the legal and ecological problems facing the Guarani Aquifer System. Because the majority of the Guarani Aquifer System underlies Brazil, the Brazilian legal regime forms the paper’s principal focus. The importance of the region makes the need for accurate information crucial. Yet relying on such information to manage a complex resource presents risks. Too often, the role of uncertainty in regulating is underplayed. Increasing knowledge over the resource demands categorizing “hard” and “soft” uncertainties, especially those presented by climate change. In addition, regulators must acknowledge the unitary nature of the aquifer while remaining sensitive to differing national …

Slides: Smart Fallowing: New Strategies In Ag Forbearance, Bonnie Colby

Navigating the Future of the Colorado River (Martz Summer Conference, June 8-10)

Presenter: Dr. Bonnie Colby, Department of Agriculture & Resource Economics, University of Arizona

34 slides

Materials For Presentation: Water Banks: Voluntary And Flexible Water Supplies For The Colorado River's Uncertain Future [Outline], Robert Wigington

Navigating the Future of the Colorado River (Martz Summer Conference, June 8-10)

4 pages.

"Robert Wigington, The Nature Conservancy"

Fact Sheet: Study Of Long-Term Augmentation Options For The Water Supply Of The Colorado System, Black & Veatch, Ch2m Hill

Navigating the Future of the Colorado River (Martz Summer Conference, June 8-10)

1 page.

"March 2008"

Material submitted by Les Lampe, Colorado River Water Consultants, for "Augmentation Options" program, Session 3: Mapping a New Course, Panel F: Some Policy Options and Solutions.

Colorado River Water Consultants is a project-specific partnership of engineering firms Black & Veatch and CH2MHill.

Agenda: Navigating The Future Of The Colorado River, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center, Western Water Policy Program

Navigating the Future of the Colorado River (Martz Summer Conference, June 8-10)

Competition for scarce Colorado River water resources is nothing new, but the conflicts that prompted the seven basin states to negotiate the 1922 Colorado River Compact have grown considerably fiercer and more complex in recent decades. In 2007, responding to the challenges of increasing demand and sustained drought, the seven basin states and a number of other affected interests agreed to a set of interim guidelines for allocating Colorado River water in the event of shortages. This agreement represents an important evolution in the governance of the Colorado River, suggesting that the many interests in the basin can work together …

Slides: Arctic Ecosystem Services Measurement And Modeling Project, Eric Biltonen

Best Management Practices (BMPs): What? How? And Why? (May 26)

Presenter: Eric Biltonen, PhD, Environment Economist, Houston Advanced Research Center

8 slides

Slides: Environmental Water In Australia, Chris Arnott

Conversation with Water Management Reps from Colorado and Australia: "Adapting to Climate Change: Lessons Learned from Australia" (February 14)

Presenter: Chris Arnott, Managing Director, Alluvium Consulting

30 slides

Conservation Easements At The Climate Change Crossroads, Jessica Owley

Journal Articles

The essence of a conservation easement as a static perpetual restriction is coming to a head with the understanding that the world is a changing place. This demonstration is nowhere more dramatic than in the context of global climate change. In response to this conflict, users of conservation easements face the decision of either (1) changing conservation easement agreements to fit the landscape or (2) changing the landscape to fit the conservation easements. Both of these options present benefits and challenges in implementation. Where conservation easement holders’ ultimate goal is to keep a maximum number of acres under protection from …

A Tale Of Two Carbon Sinks: Can Forest Carbon Management Serve As A Framework To Implement Ocean Iron Fertilization As A Climate Change Treaty Compliance Mechanism?, Randall S. Abate

Journal Publications

Any post-Kyoto climate change treaty regime must seek to fully engage the use of carbon sinks to complement emissions reduction measures in order to comply with the treaty's mandates. The Kyoto Protocol did not include avoided deforestation as a mechanism for earning emission reduction credits. However, reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) quickly gained popularity as a viable climate change compliance strategy in the period immediately preceding the negotiations at the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen in 2009. The Copenhagen Accord is replete with references to REDD as a focus for the international community's progression …

Unnatural Resource Law: Situating Desalination In Coastal Resource And Water Law Doctrines, Michael Pappas

Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers the first legal analysis of desalination, the process of converting saltwater into freshwater. Desalination represents a key climate change adaptation measure because the United States has exploited nearly all of its freshwater resources, freshwater demands continue to grow, and climate change threatens to diminish significantly existing freshwater supplies. However, scholarship has yet to address the legal ambiguities that desalination raises in the context of property, water law, and coastal resource doctrines.

This Article addresses these ambiguities and suggests the legal adaptations necessary to accommodate desalination as a climate change adaptation. Under current legal doctrines, the chain of …

Conservation Easements At The Climate Change Crossroads, Jessica Owley

Articles

No abstract provided.

Gaming The Past: The Theory And Practice Of Historic Baselines In The Administrative State, J.B. Ruhl, Robin Craig

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article explores in detail the attributes and operation of historic baselines. That historic baselines are found throughout regulatory law is no accident. Particularly when the policy goal involves turning back the clock or halting an undesirable trend, historic baselines have distinct advantages compared to alternative techniques for standard setting. These advantages include rhetoric, familiarity, and flexibility. The use of the temporal reference point lies at the heart of what makes historic baselines distinct in this respect, yet it is also what makes them qualitatively different for purposes of gaming. Leveraging the past provides an additional dimension to the gaming …

Sequential Climate Change Policy, Edward A. Parson, Darshan Karwat

Articles

Successfully managing global climate change will require a process of sequential, or iterative, decision‐making, whereby policies and other decisions are revised repeatedly over multiple decades in response to changes in scientific knowledge, technological capabilities, or other conditions. Sequential decisions are required by the combined presence of long lags and uncertainty in climate and energy systems. Climate decision studies have most often examined simple cases of sequential decisions, with two decision points at fixed times and initial uncertainties that are resolved at the second decision point. Studies using this formulation initially suggested that increasing uncertainty favors stronger immediate action, while the …

Macro-Risks: The Challenge For Rational Risk Regulation, Michael P. Vandenbergh, Jonathan A. Gilligan

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Drawing on the recent financial crisis, we introduce the concept of macro-risk. We distinguish between micro-risks, which can be managed within conventional economic frameworks, and macro-risks, which threaten to disrupt economic systems so much that a different approach is required. We argue that catastrophic climate change is a prime example of a macro-risk. Research by climate scientists suggests disturbingly high likelihoods of temperature increases and sea level rises that could cause the kinds of systemic failures that almost occurred with the financial system. We suggest that macro-risks should be the principal concern of rational risk assessment and management, but they …

Distributed Graduate Seminars: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Studying Land Conservation, Jessica Owley, Adena R. Rissman

Articles

No abstract provided.

Innovation Cooperation: Energy Biosciences And Law, Elizabeth Burleson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article analyzes the development and dissemination of environmentally sound technologies that can address climate change. Climate change poses catastrophic health and security risks on a global scale. Universities, individual innovators, private firms, civil society, governments, and the United Nations can unite in the common goal to address climate change. This Article recommends means by which legal, scientific, engineering, and a host of other public and private actors can bring environmentally sound innovation into widespread use to achieve sustainable development. In particular, universities can facilitate this collaboration by fostering global innovation and diffusion networks.

The Arctic Council At 15 Years: Edging Forward In A Sea Of Governance Challenges, David Vanderzwaag

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

With the impacts of climate change on the Arctic, including the thinning and decreasing extent of sea ice and projected dramatic increases in access to and development of regional resources, the adequacy of existing governance arrangements for the Arctic is increasingly being questioned. Through a two-part format, this article reviews how the Arctic Council is faring as the key regional governance institution for the Arctic since being established pursuant to a Declaration adopted by the eight Arctic States in September 1996. How the Council has edged forward the regional cooperation agenda through its six working groups and Ministerial meetings is …

From Global To Polycentric Climate Governance, Daniel H. Cole

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Global governance institutions for climate change, such as those established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, have so far failed to make a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions. Following the lead of Elinor Ostrom, this paper offers an alternative theoretical framework for reconstructing global climate policy in accordance with the polycentric approach to governance pioneered in the early 1960s by Vincent Ostrom, Charles Tiebout, and Robert Warren. Instead of a thoroughly top-down global regime, in which lower levels of government simply carry out the mandates of international negotiators, a polycentric approach provides …

Shopping For State Constitutions: Unequal Gift Clauses As Obstacles To Optimal State Encouragement Of Carbon Sequestration, Nicholas Houpt

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Carbon capture and sequestration technology (CCS) could drastically reduce CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants, thereby mitigating climate change. CCS, however, faces a difficult barrier to market entry: liability for the technology’s many long-term risks. States would like to alleviate this long-term liability problem to capture CCS’s social benefits. Some state constitutions, however, have provisions called “gift clauses” that prohibit giving aid to private parties. This Note argues that some state constitutions’ gift clauses prevent indemnification of private CCS developers. As this Note’s fifty state survey shows, other state constitutions allow indemnification. This asymmetry in constitutionally-allowed financial encouragement results in …

The Curious Case Of Greening In Carbon Markets, William Boyd, James Salzman

Publications

Over the last several years, so-called carbon markets have emerged around the world to facilitate trading in greenhouse gas credits. This Article takes a close look at an unexpected and unprecedented development in some of these markets--premium "green" currencies have emerged and, in some cases, displaced standard compliance currencies. Past experiences with other environmental compliance markets, such as the sulfur dioxide and wetlands mitigation markets, suggest the exact opposite should be occurring. Indeed, buyers in such markets should only be interested in buying compliance, not in the underlying environmental integrity of the compliance unit. In some of the compliance carbon …

Beyond Adjudication: Resolving International Resource Disputes In An Era Of Climate Change, Anna Spain

Publications

This Article examines the role of international adjudication as a mechanism for resolving international disputes and promoting global peace and security in an era of climate change. The central claim is that adjudication has limitations that make it ineffective as a tool for resolving international resource disputes. The Article argues that adjudication is limited due to source and process challenges and it illustrates this claim by reviewing cases adjudicated by the International Court of Justice, the Permanent Court of Arbitration and other international courts and tribunals. Four categories of adjudication limitation emerge: a) cases where the parties refused to submit …

How Much Should China Pollute?, John C. Nagle

Journal Articles

The debate concerning how much China should pollute is at the heart of international negotiations regarding climate change and environmental protection more generally. China is the world’s leading polluter and leading emitter of greenhouse gases. It insists that it has a right to emit as much as it wants in the future. China interprets the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” to mean that China has a responsibility to help avoid the harmful consequences associated with climate change, but that its responsibility is different from that imposed on the United States and the rest of the developed world. In fact, …

China's "Green Leap Forward" Toward Global Environmental Leadership, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that China may be on the verge of a “Green Leap Forward” that could make it a global environmental leader. This article argues that two principal forces have contributed to this development. First, Chinese officials now realize that a global shift away from fossil fuels will create enormous business opportunities on a global scale. Chinese companies are now making enormous strides in the development of green technology, such as solar power, wind energy, and electric cars, with the active assistance of the Chinese government. Second, realizing that climate change severely threatens China, and stung by the criticism …

Climate Change And The Wto: Expected Battlegrounds, Surprising Battles, Daniel M. Firger, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the issue of climate change policy and international trade law. While conventional wisdom may have predicted that conflicts in trade law would emerge through climate-related protectionist measures, such as carbon tariffs on imports from countries with less stringent controls on greenhouse gas emissions, the authors point out that government support for climate-friendly technologies has in fact emerged as the primary battleground. The authors examine two recent disputes—between the United States and China and between Japan and Canada – over green subsidies and their implications for the future of clean energy.

A Tradable Conservation Easement For Vulnerable Conservation Objectives, W. William Weeks

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The critical conservation objectives in some conservation easements will probably be compromised by the effects of climate change in the relatively near future. Prompted to consider that likelihood, we can similarly predict that landscape fragmentation, invasive species, and other catastrophes— anthropogenic and natural—may also seriously diminish the capacity of particular parcels of land to serve narrowly defined conservation purposes, and especially, the conservation of a particular element of biodiversity.

Changing Property In A Changing World: A Call For The End Of Perpetual Conservation Easements, Jessica Owley

Articles

No abstract provided.

Environmental And Energy Legislation In The 112th Congress, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

When Barack Obama succeeded George W. Bush in January 2009, backed by solid majorities in both the House and the Senate, the country seemed poised for the first major environmental legislation since 1990, the year of the Oil Pollution Act and the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. Under the leadership of Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), the House passed a comprehensive climate change bill based on an economywide cap-and-trade system. The House also passed a bill to lift oil spill liability caps and adopt additional reforms in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico spill. …

United States Of America, Michael B. Gerrard, Gregory E. Wannier

Faculty Scholarship

The prospect of carbon liability in the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon. It is only in the last decade that US environmental lawyers and policy-makers have begun to turn their attention to climate change, as climate-related litigation has surged, government action on several fronts has begun, and climate change has generally been recognised as a factor to consider in decision-making across the economy. This chapter lays out existing options to establish liability for greenhouse gas (‘GHG’) emissions along legislative, regulatory and judicial channels.

See The Mojave!, John C. Nagle

Journal Articles

This article examines how the law is being asked to adjudicate disputed sights in the context of the Mojave Desert. The Mojave is the best known and most explored desert in the United States. For many people, though, the Mojave is missing from any list of America’s scenic wonders. The evolution in thinking about the Mojave’s aesthetics takes places in two acts. In the first act, covering the period from the nineteenth century to 1994, what began as a curious voice praising the desert’s scenery developed into a powerful movement that prompted Congress to enact the CDPA. The second act …

The End Of Energy: The Unmaking Of America's Environment, Security, And Independence – Chapters 11 And 12, Michael J. Graetz

Faculty Scholarship

With the permission of MIT Press, this document includes Chapters 11 and 12 from my 2011 book, The End of Energy: The Unmaking of America’s Environment, Security, and Independence. These two chapters discuss some of the history and merits of taxes, subsidies, and regulation (including cap and trade) as mechanisms to implement policies to curb greenhouse gases. In light of the renewed interest in and discussion of command and control regulations and carbon taxes, these chapters may be useful to readers who do not have the book. The bibliographic material relating to these chapters is contained in the book and …