Law Commons^™

Assessing Impact Of Urban Densification On Outdoor Microclimate And Thermal Comfort Using Envi-Met Simulations For Combined Spatial-Climatic Design (Cscd) Approach, Shreya Banerjee, Rachel X.Y. Pek, Sin Kang Yik, Graces N. Ching, Xiang Tian Ho, Dzyuban Yuliya, Peter J. Crank, Juan A. Acero, Winston T. L. Chow

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Future urban planning requires context-specific integration of spatial design and microclimate especially for tropical cities with extreme weather conditions. Thus, we propose a Combined Spatial-Climatic Design approach to assess impact of urban densification on annual outdoor thermal comfort performance employing ENVI-met simulations for Singapore. We first consider building bylaws and residential site guidelines to develop eight urban-density site options for a target population range. We further classify annual weather data into seven weather-types and use them as boundary conditions for the simulations. Comparing such fifty-six combined spatial-climatic simulation outputs by analyzing Outdoor Thermal Comfort Autonomy, we report the influence of …

Environmental War, Climate Security, And The Russia-Ukraine Crisis, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

This Article addresses the Russia-Ukraine conflict’s broad implications for energy security, climate security, and environment protections during wartime. I assert that in the short-term the Russian-Ukraine war is poised to hinder much-needed international climate progress. It will stymie international decarbonization efforts and cause greater uncertainty in other climate-destabilized parts of the world, such as the Arctic. While Russia has become a pariah in the eyes of the United States and other Western nations, it has forged new partnerships and capitalized on new, lucrative energy markets outside the West and Global South. But in the long term, the global renewable energy …

Maurer Environmental Law Expert Is Lead Author On Science Insights Policy Forum Article, James Owsley Boyd

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

Environmental champions and conservationists will mark the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act later this month. That is the law requiring federal agencies to use all methods necessary to prevent extinctions and ensure that federal actions not jeopardize the continued existence of species on the brink of disappearing from the face of the Earth.

In the leadup to the December 27th anniversary, several publications have begun examining the Act’s history and impact over five decades.

Science, the world’s third-most influential scholarly journal based on Google Scholar citations, invited experts from around the country to look ahead as well …

Research On Renewable Energy Project Opposition Selected For Environmental Law And Policy Annual Review Award, James Owsley Boyd

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

A publication co-authored by Indiana University Maurer School of Law Dean Christiana Ochoa and 2021 Law School alumna Kacey Cook has been selected to appear in the 17th edition of the Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review.

“Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help” was authored by Ochoa, Cook, and University of Minnesota Law School third-year student Hanna Weil and was published in January 2023 in the Minnesota Law Review.

Maurer Environmental Law Expert Is Lead Author On Science Insights Policy Forum Article, James Owsley Boyd

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

The Indiana University Maurer and McKinney Schools of Law jointly will convene leading scholars and practitioners to discuss the implications of the 2023 United States Supreme Court case of Sackett v. EPA. The event, “Sackett v. EPA: What the Supreme Court’s Decision Means for Regulation and Wetlands Conservation,” will take place November 10 in the Wynne Courtroom and Steve Tuchman and Reed Bobrick Atrium at IU McKinney in Indianapolis.

A Reflection Of Change: Evolutions In International Water Law Principles Through The Lens Of Euphrates-Tigris Dispute, Maeve Sullivan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As climate change intensifies, water scarcity will increase. Coupled with a growing global population, water security is a major modern challenge. To bring stability to international watercourses, states must establish effective sharing agreements. On this matter, international water law can help. International water law captures some of the major principles and considerations that states must account for while considering issues related to water security. This paper uses primary interviews and secondary sources to identify some of the major characteristics, features, and developments in international law to develop a conceptual framework for the topic. It then moves into a case study …

Climate Change And The Courts: Balancing Stewardship And Restraint, Susan Glazebrook

Judicature International

No abstract provided.

Prioritizing Proximity In Phasing Out Oil And Gas Extraction, Wyatt G. Sassman

Connecticut Law Review

To avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change, most of the world’s oil and gas reserves must remain in the ground. In the United States, this would require a dramatic phaseout of oil and gas extraction nationwide over the coming decades. How could we accomplish this? While recent legal scholarship emphasizes the importance of a just transition away from oil and gas extraction, little work has been done to navigate the legal, political, and equity hurdles associated with phasing out oil and gas extraction.

This Article seeks to start this conversation by offering one way to approach phaseouts of …

What’S Scope 3 Good For?, Madison Condon

Faculty Scholarship

Opposition to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) new rule on updated climate risk reporting has focused on one category of disclosures as particularly objectionable: Scope 3 emissions.⁷ Otherwise known as “supply chain emissions,” Scope 3 emissions have been voluntarily reported by a growing number of companies since the term was invented as part of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol in 2001.⁸ They include all the emissions both up and downstream of a corporations’ own activities: the emissions of the privately-owned factory that produced the shoes Target sells, as well as the emissions you burn while driving to the …

Climate Services: The Business Of Physical Risk, Madison Condon

Faculty Scholarship

A growing number of investors, insurers, financial services providers, and nonprofits rely on information about localized physical climate risks, like floods, hurricanes, and wildfires. The outcomes of these risk projections have significant consequences in the economy, including allocating investment capital, impacting housing prices and demographic shifts, and prioritizing adaptation infrastructure projects. The climate risk information available to individual citizens and municipalities, however, is limited and expensive to access. Further, many providers of climate services use black box models that make overseeing the scientific rigor of their methodologies impossible— a concern given scientific critiques that many may be obfuscating the uncertainty …

Towards Meaningful Research And Engagement: Indigenous Knowledge Systems And Great Lakes Governance, Deborah Mcgregor, Nicole Latulippe, Rod Whitlow, Kristi Leora Gansworth, Lorrilee Mcgregor, Stephanie Allen

Articles & Book Chapters

For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples governed their relations in the Great Lakes region, guided by distinct political, legal, governance, and knowledge systems. Despite historic and ongoing exclusion of Indigenous peoples from Great Lakes governance in the Canadian context and other assaults on Indigenous sovereignty, authority, jurisdiction and responsibilities, Indigenous peoples have maintained their relationships with the Great Lakes. In recent years, Indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) have made inroads in Great Lakes governance, thanks primarily to First Nation political advocacy. However, it remains a challenge to include Indigenous knowledge and implement approaches that bridge Indigenous and Western ways of knowing. …

Expedition To Washington State: The Pacific Crest Trail, Mt. Rainier, Okanogan-Wenatchee, And Lake Chelan, Riley J. Nolan

CAFE Symposium 2023

Within the United States there are many different agencies that have been tasked with the management of America's Public Lands. Due to America's unique inception, there are many different ideas and concepts that affect how we view these same land units today. This poster delves into four specific land units in Washington State (The Pacific Crest National Trail, the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area, The Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, and Mount Rainier National Park) to discuss each area's history and management issues, as well as discuss the effects of society's preconceived notions on each destination. Finally, the poster also discusses what …

Science, Technology, Society, And Law, Paolo Davide Farah, Justo Corti Varela

Book Chapters

Traditionally, science and technology have been granted as sources of knowledge and objective truth. However, much more recently, they are also seen as human activities, conducted in a social environment. This new approach focuses on the intersections between science, technology and society, and particularly their regulation by the law. Concerns on how to best regulate the interaction come up in modern societies, and when either their use or their impacts are global, international law and international organizations become involved. The impact of the fourfold relation is so high that science and technology are seen as one of the reasons for …

The Interlinkages Science-Technology-Law: Information And Communication Society, Knowledge-Based Economy And The Rule Of Law, Giovanni Bombelli, Paolo Davide Farah

Book Chapters

This chapter focuses on the circular and complex relationship between science, technology, society, and law. The technology/society connection focuses on the democratic deficit issue. The democratic deficit would be a consequence of the lack of adaptability of western democracy to complex (information) societies, where technology (and the increasing access to data that it permits) is separating the connection between information and knowledge (as well as the classical legitimacy couple of democracy-truth) moving these societies towards a technocracy. On one hand, the technology-law circle deals with the progressive reduction of law to a normative technique (since the law is always late …

The Market-Essential Role Of Corporate Climate Disclosure, George S. Georgiev

Faculty Articles

This Article focuses on capital market efficiency as an often-downplayed legal rationale for mandating corporate climate disclosure, and explores it alongside the notion of investor demand, which has assumed a prominent and, increasingly, contested role in debates on climate disclosure. Because market efficiency (encompassing both securities price accuracy and overall capital market allocative efficiency) is generally unobservable, many commentators have instead emphasized the highly visible investor demand for climate-related disclosure as evidenced by shareholder proposals, voting behavior, stewardship policies, and public statements. Unfortunately, investor demand can be disputed, fairly or unfairly, because investor preferences are heterogeneous, dynamic, and difficult to …

Climate Change And The Law Of National Security Adaptation, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

The Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest employer in the world, owns and operates an enormous global real estate portfolio, and emits more Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) than many nations. Entrusted with the national security, the DoD is now threatened by a new enemy—climate change. Climate change imperils national security infrastructure while undermining the military’s capacity to respond to climate-driven disasters at home and abroad. However, legal scholarship has yet to address what I call “the law of national security adaptation” and related questions. For example, how do environmental and climate change laws apply to the U.S. military? What laws …

The Intersections Among Science, Technology, Policy And Law: In Between Truth And Justice, Paolo Davide Farah, Justo Corti Varela

Book Chapters

Different visions on the interaction between science, technology, policy and law have been presented. As common axe, we can detect the continuous search for truth and justice. Science and Law as social constructs, the distinction between truths and opinions through procedural method based on evidence and rationality, or how natural science “things” became facts, and consequently “truth”, are examples of this search. The evidence-gathering process that integrates scientific evidence into trial (sometimes by procedure and other times by a more substantive approach) is another possible approach. Of course, that the game of mutual influence among the four elements creates contradictions …

Sustainability In Public Procurement, Corporate Law And Higher Education (Introduction), Paolo Davide Farah

Book Chapters

Lela Mélon’s edited collection brings a fresh perspective to the intricate relationship between corporations and sustainability. The book focuses on the role of state actors in boosting environmental protection and the increasing importance of state awareness on environmental crises. Whether it is procurement, or education or corporate governance, we are witnessing a proactive stance of the state that is balancing economic growth with ecological concerns. The difficulties faced in forcing a particular conduct in the private sphere is reviewed in detail in the book, along with national laws and regulations that, rather than promoting environmental protection, have had the opposite …

Climate Security Insights From The Covid-19 Response, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

The climate change crisis and COVID-19 crisis are both complex collective action problems. Neither the coronavirus nor greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions respect political borders. Both impose an opportunity cost that penalizes inaction. They are also increasingly understood as nontraditional, novel security threats. Indeed, COVID-19’s human cost is staggering, with American lives lost vastly exceeding those lost in recent armed conflicts. And climate change is both a threat accelerant and a catalyst for conflict—a characterization reinforced in several climate-security reports. To counter COVID-19, the President embraced martial language, stating that he will employ a “wartime footing” to “defeat the virus.” Perhaps …

Comments On U.S. Funding For Ghg Corporate Reporting Standardization, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment, Sabin Center For Climate Change Law

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (“CCSI”) and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law (“Sabin Center”) are pleased to submit our joint comments on how appropriations made to the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (“IRA”) can best be used to enhance the agency’s efforts to standardize corporate climate commitments, improve transparency around greenhouse gas reductions, and accelerate progress towards decarbonization in the corporate sphere. This Comment focuses on the funding provided to the EPA under Section 60111, on Greenhouse Gas (“GHG”) Reporting.

Net Zero Roadmap For Copper And Nickel, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment, Carbon Trust, Rmi, Payne Institute For Public Policy

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

As we seek to meet the challenges of climate change impacts, many commodities will play an increasing role in decarbonizing economies. There are increasing challenges of addressing the emissions from extraction of these commodities needed to support the zero-carbon transition.

CCSI, in a consortium with Carbon Trust, RMI, and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines, developed the Net Zero Roadmap to 2050 for Copper and Nickel Value Chains to support the copper and nickel mining sectors in taking collective, coordinated action by providing a clear, approachable, and accepted roadmap for decarbonization.

Our key messages …

Climate Justice In The Anthropocene And Its Relationship With Science And Technology: The Importance Of Ethics Of Responsibility, Paolo Davide Farah, Alessio Lo Giudice

Articles

Climate change is a global phenomenon. Therefore, globalization is the necessary hermeneutical horizon to develop an analysis of the metamorphosis climate change could cause at a political, social, and economic level. Within this horizon, this Article shows how the relationship between the concept of the Anthropocene epoch and the request for justice allows for framing a climate-justice and intergenerational equity–focused political interpretation of the effects of climate change. In order to avoid reducing such an interpretation to merely an ideological critique of capitalism, the conception of climate justice needs to be grounded in a rational, ethical model. This Article proposes …

Public Ownership And The Wto In A Post Covid-19 Era: From Trade Disputes To A 'Social' Function, Paolo Davide Farah, Davide Zoppolato

Articles

Public ownership is closely bound to the need of the government to protect and guarantee the well-being of its citizens. Where the market cannot, or does not want to, provide goods and services, the State uses different tools to intervene, influence, and control some aspects of the private sphere of expression of its citizens in the name and interest of the collectivity. Although, in the past century, this behavior was accepted as one of the expressions of the public authority and part of the social contract, this perception has shifted partially in accordance with the wave of privatization programs initiated …

Climate Change And The Specter Of Statelessness, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

What happens when climate change extinguishes entire nations? Neither international nor environmental law has provided a satisfactory answer to this weighty question. Climate change-induced flooding, storm surge, and sea level rise threaten the territorial integrity and habitability of several small island developing states, raising the specter of statelessness. We know that climate catastrophe is coming, but we have failed to take the necessary steps to safeguard several developing nations. This Article argues that innovative legal and policy solutions are needed today to prevent nation extinction tomorrow. I focus on two potential international governance solutions: the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate …

Urgenda Vs. Juliana: Lessons For Future Climate Change Litigation Cases, Paolo Davide Farah, Imad Antoine Ibrahim

Articles

No abstract provided.

"Green" Corporate Governance, Madison Condon

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter explores the rise and future of “green” corporate governance, including how concerns about the changing climate are shaping long-extant debates in corporate law.² This area is difficult to survey in one short chapter, both because it has exploded in importance, and because it intersects in its own way with many of the topics discussed in the above chapters. Compliance, directors’ duties, corporate purpose, corporate groups, and investor stewardship, are just a few of the issues bound up in the rapid and recent shift toward thinking about climate change and its intersection with corporate governance.³

The rise …

Scaling Investment In Renewable Energy Generation To Achieve Sustainable Development Goals 7 (Affordable And Clean Energy) And 13 (Climate Action) And The Paris Agreement: Roadblocks And Drivers, Mithatcan Aydos, Perrine Toledano, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Ladan Mehranvar, Theodoros Iliopoulos, Sunayana Sasmal

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The zero-carbon energy transition is the solution to the 2022 energy crisis and a fundamental part of the solution to the global climate crisis. Yet, there are relatively low levels of investment in renewable energy in developing countries, hindering their achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and contribution to the Paris Agreement goals.

In 2021, the Asia–Pacific region (excluding China) accounted for less than 8% of investments in energy transition technologies, Latin America and the Caribbean for less than 4%, and Africa and the Middle East for less than 2%. Annual investment in zero-carbon energy in developing economies other …

Conflicts Between Ghg Accounting Methodologies In The Steel Industry, John Biberman, Perrine Toledano, Baihui Lei, Max Lulavy, Rohini Ram Mohan

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Accurate, verifiable, and comparable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data throughout supply chains in the materials sector are necessary to drive decarbonization. This is particularly the case for the steel supply chain, a major source of GHG emissions with untapped potential for reduction. However, emissions accounting methods used by the steel industry suffer from gaps and misalignment, resulting in significant differences in reported GHG emissions. The result is a patchwork reporting landscape vulnerable to manipulation and miscommunication, generating little actionable data for policymakers, producers, customers, and investors. These shortcomings highlight the need for a harmonized carbon accounting framework for the steel …

Scaling Investment In Renewable Energy: Roadblocks And Drivers – Executive Summary, Mithatcan Aydos, Perrine Toledano, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Ladan Mehranvar, Theodoros Iliopoulos, Sunayana Sasmal

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The zero-carbon energy transition is the solution to the 2022 energy crisis and a fundamental part of the solution to the global climate crisis. Yet, there are relatively low levels of investment in renewable energy in developing countries, hindering their achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and contribution to the Paris Agreement goals.

In 2021, the Asia–Pacific region (excluding China) accounted for less than 8% of investments in energy transition technologies, Latin America and the Caribbean for less than 4%, and Africa and the Middle East for less than 2%. Annual investment in zero-carbon energy in developing economies other …

A Not-So-Clean Slate: A Progress Report Of Pa’S Automated Record Sealing Law, Matt B. Saboe, Tekia Huger-Burton

Sustainability Research & Practice Seminar Presentations

Professor Matt B. Saboe, Economics and Finance, and Tekia Huger-Burton - A Not-So-Clean Slate: A Progress Report of PA’s Automated Record Sealing Law