Natural Resources Law Commons^™

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

University of Colorado Law Review

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 …

Study On The Implementation Of Indigenous Rights Based Fisheries, Constance Macintosh

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Thank you once again for inviting me to speak with you on March 22, 2022. It was an honour. I really appreciated the questions that members posed, and the dialogue. As per your request, I am providing my core recommendations for you to consider as you develop your report on implementing the Indigenous rights-based fishery.

Navigating The Structural Coherence Of Sea Life, Aldo Chircop, Philip Steinberg, Greta Ferloni, Claudio Aporta, Gavin Bridge, Kate Coddington, Stuart Elden, Stephanie C. Kane, Timo Koivurova, Jessica Shadian, Anna Stammler-Gossmann

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Ice breaking by ships can cause irreparable harm to the ecologies and cultures of northern regions. This chapter revolves around a central question: what are the barriers preventing the development of a legal mechanism to limit this act of environmental violence? The chapter suggests that the central barrier is not so much legal as it is ontological: foundational conceptions of space that underpin Western legal institutions are unable to value the form of water, reducing it instead to an ed space that is used for movement or resource extraction. This chapter demonstrates how a consideration of the environmental violence of …

How Icebreaking Governance Interacts With Inuit Rights And Livelihoods In Nunavut: A Policy Review, Breanna Bishop, Jade Owen, Lisette Wilson, Tagalik Eccles, Aldo Chircop, Lucia Fanning

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Sea ice is a contested space when it comes to navigation in ice-covered regions. For Inuit in Nunavut, Canada, sea ice is an integral platform of coastal connectivity, allowing access to areas of subsistence and cultural value. For vessels transiting Arctic waters, sea ice poses potential risks to vessel, crew, and passenger safety consequently, icebreaking is considered an essential service. Yet, many communities in Nunavut have described icebreaking as having, or potentially having significant negative impacts on community and ecological wellbeing. Several policies regulate and provide guidance to icebreakers operating in ice-covered waters. With anticipated increases to icebreaking demand in …

Social Equity Is Key To Sustainable Ocean Governance, Katherine M. Crosman, Edward H. Allison, Yoshitaka Ota, Andrés M. Cisneros-Montemayor, Gerald G. Singh, Wilf Swartz, Megan Bailey, Kate M. Barclay, Grant Blume, Mathieu Colléter, Michael Fabinyi, Elaine M. Faustman, Russell Fielding, P. Joshua Griffin, Quentin Hanich, Harriet Harden-Davies, Ryan P. Kelly, Tiff-Annie Kenny, Terrie Klinger, John N. Kittinger, Katrina Nakamura, Annet P. Pauwelussen, Sherry Pictou, Chris Rothschild, Katherine L. Seto, Ana K. Spalding

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Calls to address social equity in ocean governance are expanding. Yet ‘equity’ is seldom clearly defined. Here we present a framework to support contextually-informed assessment of equity in ocean governance. Guiding questions include: (1) Where and (2) Why is equity being examined? (3) Equity for or amongst Whom? (4) What is being distributed? (5) When is equity considered? And (6) How do governance structures impact equity? The framework supports consistent operationalization of equity, challenges oversimplification, and allows evaluation of progress. It is a step toward securing the equitable ocean governance already reflected in national and international commitments.

Introduction: Responding To A Changing Arctic Ocean: Canadian And Russian Experiences And Challenges, Viatcheslav Gavrilov, David Vanderzwaag, Susan J. Rolston

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article is the guest editors' introduction to the special series entitled Responding to a Changing Arctic Ocean: Canadian and Russian Experiences and Challenges.

The (Un)Just Use Of Transition Minerals: How Efforts To Achieve A Low-Carbon Economy Continue To Violate Indigenous Rights, Kathleen Finn, Christina A.W. Stanton

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Unified Theory Of Clean Water Act Jurisdiction, Robert W. Adler

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

As it reaches its half century mark, the modern version of the federal Clean Water Act (CWA) remains a definitional quagmire. The U.S. Supreme Court, lower courts, and the two federal agencies charged with implementing the law have struggled to interpret its scope ever since its 1972 enactment. As a result, we still lack clarity regarding the most basic questions about the law’s reach. That causes massive uncertainty for regulated businesses and landowners, the federal and state agencies that implement the law, and members of the public Congress intended to protect. A unified interpretive approach focuses on the statutory text …

Playing The Long Game: Expediting Permitting Without Compromising Protections, Jamie Pleune

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The Biden Administration’s efforts to expedite a transition to clean energy have prompted calls for permit reform. Clean energy relies heavily upon critical minerals and transitioning to a clean energy economy demands a global increase in mineral production. Some commentators suggest that environmental standards must be loosened in order to achieve efficiency. This premise offers short term gain in exchange for long-term pain. It also poses a false dilemma by failing to distinguish between productive and unproductive causes of delay in the permitting process. The permit process creates opportunities to eliminate, reduce, or mitigate risks. These opportunities may cause short-term …

Borders And Water Conflicts: Mitigating Conflicts With Love And Cooperation, Peter J. Longo, Anthony B. Schutz, James M. Scott

Natural Resources Journal

Borders are political constructs, not constructs derived from laws of nature. Borders carry more potential for conflict than any other matter in political relations. In international relations, wars have been fought over borders and territory. But, territory does not necessarily entail a dispute about the geographic location of a border. Trans-boundary natural resources disputes emerge because the laws of nature do not bend to this peculiar human construct. As much can be seen in international and intra-state water conflicts, where political boundaries provide individuals with a tribal identity that eclipses the power of natural resources to tie people together in …

Is The Shipwreck I Found In Lake Michigan Mine? Great Lakes Shipwreck Legal Research Basics And Sources, Kincaid C. Brown

Law Librarian Scholarship

There have been approximately 6,000 shipwrecks claiming an estimated 30,000 lives in the Great Lakes and new shipwrecks continue to be located, such as the recently discovered Atlanta. There are many opportunities for divers, boaters, and other users of the Great Lakes to come across found and new shipwrecks. This article discusses the basic framework of federal, state, and other law governing these shipwrecks.

This Land Is Your Land: The Dark Canon Of The United States Supreme Court In Natural Resources Law, Oliver A. Houck

Natural Resources Journal

This article treats four Supreme Court opinions that have had a lasting impact, largely negative, on public lands and resources. They rest on highly selective statements of fact, and dubious footing with precedent and statutory law. As a quartet they make the protection of natural resources extremely difficult. Resources that, in law, belong to us all. The first case, Southern Utah Wilderness Association, opened up a designated Wilderness Area too off-road vehicle use, where these uses are explicitly prohibited by law. In this opinion Justice Scalia managed, inter alia, to turn congressionally-mandated management plans into (unenforceable) wish lists, and find …

State Ballot Initiatives And Federal Preemption: How Colorado Voters Have Changed Cooperative Federalism In Wildlife Management, Lucas O'Brien

Natural Resources Journal

In United States wildlife management, there is a notion that the federal government manages land while states manage wildlife. While it is true that states have historically held authority over wildlife, federal agencies often also have the authority, and often an obligation, to manage and conserve wildlife. This overlapping jurisdiction has led to the frequent preemption of state wildlife laws and management tactics by federal statutes or objectives, eroding state authority in this area over the past century. In the 2020 election, Colorado voters passed Proposition 114, a state ballot initiative that requires Colorado Parks and Wildlife to reintroduce wolves …

Legislature Expands State’S Jurisdiction Over Freshwater Wetlands, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan

Faculty Scholarship

Regulation of wetlands is one of the most significant ways that the government controls land use. While federal jurisdiction over wetlands is buffeted by the political and judicial winds, the New York Legislature has just expanded considerably the authority of the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to protect these areas and inhibit development there.

Lands, commonly labelled as bogs, swamps or marshes, which are inundated with water frequently enough to develop particular soils, hydraulic regimes or vegetative communities are generally classified as “wetlands” under certain environmental laws. The Tidal Wetlands Act and Freshwater Wetlands Act, added to the New …

Same As It Ever Was : The Tijuana River Sewage Crisis, Non-State Actors, And The State, James M. Cooper

Faculty Scholarship

Sewage—a scary mixture of human waste and industrial toxins—flows into the Tijuana River Valley, an environmentally sensitive watershed that straddles the United Mexican States ("Mexico") and the United States of America. Treatment plants, a deteriorating one in Punta Bandera with limited capacity south of the border, and another in San Diego County completed in 1997, are inadequate to process the volume of sewage. So much sewage made its way into the Tijuana River that CBS 60 Minutes broadcast a special report on the binational environmental disaster in 2020.

Border factories and a population spike contribute to the sewage. Maquiladoras, …

Sovereign Lands, Brent D. Chicken, Amanda J. Dick

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.

Wyoming, John R. Chadd

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.

West Virginia, Andrew Graham

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.

Virginia, Zachary H. Barrett

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.

Utah, Jim Tartaglia

Oil and Gas, Natural Resources, and Energy Journal

No abstract provided.