Digital Commons Network^™

Climate Torts And Ecocide In The Context Of Proposals For An International Environmental Court, Patrick Foster

Dissertations and Theses

"This thesis is an exploration of two questions that are neither novel nor lacking in exploration: Is an International Environmental Court (IEC) needed? Is such a court feasible? Proposals for an IEC have a rich history, are well founded and numerous. On the issue of necessity, this thesis attempts to pull together historical and current information on two distinct areas of international environmental law and use these analyses to contextualize the need for an international environmental tribunal. Arguments for and against an IEC are presented within a discussion of environmental diplomacy. This thesis begins with a legal discussion of potential …

Crisis: Capitalism, Economics And The Environment, Raj Navanit Patel Mr

Undergraduate Economic Review

The basic thesis of this paper is that there is an undeniable tension between maximization of individual welfare and a sustainable and healthy environment in a finite world. Following from this, the further claim is that our current capitalist system of private production and ownership is fundamentally in tension with the environment and should be changed. Without a change in attitude toward our conceptualization of these problems, that is, without contextualizing these problems outside of the market-based solutions and free market solutions, crisis is inevitable. Homo economicus needs to be replaced by homo environmentus.

Curriculum And The Elements Of The Earth: Deconstructing Sustainability And Reconstructing Responsibility, Elizabeth Alford Pollock

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In October, 2009, I attended a presentation on Sustainability where the argument was made this concept is an issue for government and administrative agencies. The problem with this summation is in its exclusion of individuals existing outside of these agencies who interact with their environment on a daily basis. This exclusion potentially encompassed an extinguishing effect in that it closed off the term to multiple interpretations and possibilities I believe sustainability possesses; a "closing" that does not provoke the liberating nature associated with more open forms of dialogue and engagements. My dissertation explores the myriad ways sustainability can be interpreted …

Pining For Sustainability, Timothy M. Mulvaney

University of Richmond Law Review

In the legal academic community, there are significant positive signs demonstrating attention to sustainable practices, from course offerings to many day-to-day operations. Scholarly research also reflects this positive trend. Much of this recent scholarship assesses sustainability-focused regulatory and normative efforts to address the impacts associated with a warming planet in marked detail, and there is an additional plethora of writing on the many topics beyond the changing climate that raise sustainability questions.

Finding The Proper Forum For Regulation Of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: The Legal And Economic Implications Of Massachusetts V. Epa, George F. Allen, Marlo Lewis

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ahistorical Indians And Reservation Resources, Ezra Rosser

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The article is an in-depth exploration of the impacts of an Indian tribe's decision to pursue an environmentally destructive form of economic development. The history of Navajo Nation's coal leasing provides the background for the tribe's recent proposal to build a coal-fired power plant and the controversies surrounding the proposal and the environmental review process.

Green Local Governments In Florida: An Analysis Of Sustainability And Green Building Policies, Naimish S. Upadhyay

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sustainable development is increasingly being integrated within local government planning across United States. Many communities are attempting to translate this general principle into specific and measurable terms. The urban sustainability planning literature has mostly focused on descriptive case studies of pioneering cities that have been characterized as true innovators in their sustainability efforts. Noticeably absent from the literature, however, has been an examination of the sustainable development claims made by local governments undergoing 'green' certifications. This study evaluates the commitment and efforts of municipalities and counties of Florida within the framework of Florida Green Building Coalition's 'Green …

Strip-Mining And Grassroots Resistance In Appalachia: Community Lawyering For Environmental Justice, Dean Rivkin

Scholarly Works

Environmental justice campaigns have been a dynamic feature of public interest lawyering for over four decades. These community lawyers, sensitive to the democratic imperatives of their grassroots clients, employ a viscous blend of legal and nonlegal strategies to achieve their clients’ aims. This article is the story of an environmental justice campaign, still being waged, in the Appalachian mountains of east Tennessee. The campaign seeks to halt the destructive practice of mountaintop removal strip-mining for coal through the deployment of traditional litigation and more unconventional extrajudicial strategies, both of which are designed to build the voices and power of the …

Care Local Partnerships Healthy Communities: Promising Practices (Draft), Environmental Protection Agency

Mickey Leland Center Information Portal

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) program is a competitive grant program that offers communities an innovative way to address the risks from multiple sources of pollution in their environment. The CARE program awarded its first series of grants in 2005; to date there are 68 CARE communities.

Green Sports Facilities: Why Adopting New Green-Building Policies Will Improve The Environment And The Community, Alex B. Porteshawver

Marquette Sports Law Review

No abstract provided.

Infectious Agents: Race And Environment In Nineteenth-Century America, Kristen Renee Egan

Dissertations

This dissertation critically examines the relationship between race and nature in nineteenth-century America by analyzing texts that attempt to discover, create, or preserve a pure national identity. Historical events in the nineteenth-century U.S. - such as mass immigration, Native American displacement, industrialization, westward expansion, and the rise of science - frustrated the quest for a unified American identity. While these events seem various, each one exacerbated a nation already bewildered by one central question. What is the traffic between body and space? Nineteenth-century American literature frequently portrays the American environment as an ideal space in need of preservation and at …

Social Capital Determinants Of Environmentalism In Spatial Context, Kim Marie Steil

Theses and Dissertations

Sociological studies of society-environment interactions are based on a premise that population well-being is dependent on the environment. Here, I argue that not only are people innately connected to the environment, but the environment also bonds people to one another. That is, people have a mutual obligation to one another to care for the environment. An often ignored factor is that individual participation toward protecting and improving the quality of the environment rests upon the local social and spatial context in which the individual is situated. The ability of individuals in a local environment to come together to identify issues, …

The Aridity Of Grace: Community And Ecofeminism In Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams And Prodigal Summer, Richard M. Magee

English Faculty Publications

In both Animal Dreams and her later novel Prodigal Summer, Kingsolver constructs narratives of community inhabited by characters with a vivid awareness of the natural world and the threats to that world; furthermore, both novels feature strong female characters who long for a more harmonious life within nature. The novels develop and present forthright ecofeminist themes, with the women in the texts representing ideals of ecologically sensitive living who seek to educate their communities about threats to the environment and the defenses against those threats.

Kingsolver's ecofeminist vision, however, is frequently complicated and contradictory; just as the desert landscape …

El Surgimiento Del Derecho Ambiental Global, Robert V. Percival

Faculty Scholarship

Legal systems across the globe are responding to environmental concerns in surprising new ways. As nations upgrade their environmental standards, some are transplanting law and regulatory policy innovations derived from the experience of other countries, including nations with very different legal and cultural traditions. New national, regional, and international initiatives have been undertaken both by governments and private organizations. Greater cross-border collaboration between government officials, nongovernmental organizations, multinational corporations and other entities is shaping environmental policy in ways that blur traditional private/public land domestic/international distinctions. The result has been the emergence of a kind of “global environmental law” – law …

Slides: Environmental Justice: Comprehensive Approach, Nicholas Targ

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Nicholas Targ, Holland & Knight, former Associate Director for Environmental Justice Integration, Office of Environmental Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

16 slides

A Soil Contamination Survey Of Timbisha Shoshone Tribal Lands Within Close Proximity To The Nevada Test Site, Bonnie Eberhardt Bobb, Tuppipuh Project

Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CAREs)

The Tupippuh Project consists of members and descendants of the Western Shoshone Nation’s Timbisha Shoshone People whose traditional homeland includes the area that is now the vicinity of Death Valley National Park, CA and north including Beatty, NV and Lida, NV. The mission of the Tupippuh Project is to preserve and strengthen traditional Western Shoshone cultural values for future generations.

The objectives of this study were: 1) to perform soils analyses of the parcels to determine if radioactive contamination is present; 2) to conduct interviews with elders who may have relevant knowledge of contaminant pathways in the soil, air, plants, …

Indigenous People And Environmental Justice: The Impact Of Climate Change, Rebecca Tsosie

University of Colorado Law Review

The international dialogue on climate change is currently focused on a strategy of adaptation that includes the projected removal of entire communities, if necessary. Not surprisingly, many of the geographical regions that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are also the traditional lands of indigenous communities. This article takes the position that the adaptation strategy will prove genocidal for many groups of indigenous people, and instead argues for recognition of an indigenous right to environmental selfdetermination, which would allow indigenous peoples to maintain their cultural and political status upon their traditional lands. In the context of climate …

Historic And Current Discharges From Los Alamos National Laboratory: Analysis And Recommendations, Amigos Bravos, Concerned Citizens For Nuclear Safety

Amigos Bravos

The movement of pollutants in stormwater is an issue of grave concern at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). For the past 63 years, LANL’s nuclear and industrial activities have generated an enormous amount of solid, hazardous, and radioactive waste. Most of the waste has been stored or buried on-site in unlined disposal pits, trenches and shafts. These contaminated areas are referred to as Solid Waste Management Units (SWMUs), Areas of Concern (AOCs), or Potential Release Sites (PRSs).

Amigos Bravos and Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety (CCNS) have reviewed the historic and current discharges from LANL and taken steps toward ensuring …

The Yucca Mountain Legacy Project, Healing Ourselves And Mother Earth (Home), Jennifer Viereck, John Hadder, George Rice

Healing Ourselves and Mother Earth (HOME)

HOME envisions the Yucca Mountain Legacy Project as a proactive initiative to develop an environmental/health baseline before contamination from the NTS or the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository reaches surrounding communities. Phase I of the project is a stakeholder driven process to assist current residents immediately downstream. Our study will also be important to future generations who will be downgradient of the Pahute Mesa underground nuclear weapons testing area.

This research was completed money allocated during Round 6 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works.

If you have any …

Interests And Expectations Of The Confederated Tribes Of The Umatilla Indian Reservation Regarding Hanford And Hanford-Affected Lands, Confederated Tribes Of Umatilla Indian Reservation

Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation

This document updates the previous document “Scoping Report: Nuclear Risks in Tribal Communities” prepared by Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) in 1995. At the time, “no comprehensive or sitewide evaluation of risks and costs has been performed at Hanford.” A decade later, this is still true. It is also still true that “a full risk picture must include addressing the impacts over time.”

This report provides a more docused perspective on how to establish both technically and politically defensible environmental management approach in an era of continued fiscal constraints. This was true in 1995 and is even …

Zion National Park Environment Assessment/ Assessment Of Effect, Engineering-Environmental Management, Inc.

Elusive Documents

This environmental assessment I assessment of effect examines in detail two alternatives: no action and the National Park Service preferred alternative. The preferred alternative considers rehabilitation of the roadway and associated structures on either side of Route 10 (Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway) tunnel. The road work would primarily occur on the east side of the tunnel in a 0.25-mile segment beginning at the east tunnel entrance. Modifications on the east side of the tunnel would include slurry sealing the road surface and scaling rock slopes on both sides of the road; re-configuring two parking areas; creating a painted center median with …

Smart Energy Paths: How Willie Nelson Saved The Planet, Joseph P. Tomain

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

In examining the need to move away from traditional energy policy and toward Smart Energy, the article draws a connection between physicist Amory Lovins and singer Willie Nelson. Both believe that our country's century-old traditional energy policy no longer meets our needs. Rather, they feel that such an antiquated policy ignores the challenges that the country and the world face today. Smart Energy is not only a promising vision of the future, it is the only realistic vision. It is pro-growth, because it promotes the development of new industries and new technologies. Smart Energy is protective of the environment by …

Impediments To Environmental Justice: The Inequities Of The Maryland Standing Doctrine, Daniel W. Ingersoll Iv

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

A Scientific And Technial Review Of The Use Of Bioremediation As A Clean Up Technique At The Savannah River Site, Harambee House, Inc., Mildred Mcclain

Harambee House, Inc.

This report provides an overview of the fundamentals and field applications of in situ bioremediation in contaminated soil and groundwater. Bioremediation has been presented to the impacted communities as a technology that is currently being used and tested at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The primary focus this report explain bioremediation as a clean-up technology and analyze what role the technology will play in the new accelerated clean up strategy at SRS as approved by Environmental Management at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The objective is to understand how bioremediation is being used at SRS for clean up.

This …

Radioactive Pathways, Norm Buske, The Radioactivist Campaign (Trac)

The RadioActivist Campaign

In November 2004, a non-profit scientific organization, The RadioActivist Campaign (TRAC), conducted a radiological survey around the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. TRAC collected 15 environmental samples from 8 candidate, radiological pathways from ORR into the surroundings. TRAC selected samples based on official reports, concerns expressed by citizens, and availability of material. This is a full report of those results.

Context Sensitive Design – Thinking Beyond The Pavement: Documentation Of Workshop Development And Training, Jerry G. Pigman, Donald L. Hartman, Theodore Hopwood Ii, Kenneth R. Agent, Lenahan O'Connell, Nikiforos Stamatiadis, Patrick Tyndall

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

This report documents the development and presentation of the workshop titled “Thinking Beyond the Pavement – A Workshop on Context Sensitive Design”. Work began on the workshop development in 1998 after the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet was selected as one of the pilot states to implement a training program for context sensitive design. The Kentucky Transportation Center at the University of Kentucky was selected to develop and deliver the training to state personnel and consultants who were commonly involved with project development. The training course was comprised of the following four modules:

• Facilitated Communication and Public Involvement,
• Environmental Issues,
• Liability Issues, …

The Oak Ridge National Security Complex: Human Health And The Environment As Casualties Of Hot And Cold Wars, Global Green Usa, Jasmine Aimaq Dr.

Global Green USA

This report reviews lingering and emerging dangers at the largest NWC site, the Oak Ridge National Security Complex in Tennessee. The Oak Ridge site is both a high- value target for terrorist attack, a source of environmental contamination, and a potential public health threat. This report examines the nexus between environment, health and security at Oak Ridge, and discusses known and potential dangers in each of these areas.

This research was completed money allocated during Round 5 of the Citizens’ Monitoring and Technical Assessment Fund (MTA Fund). Clark University was named conservator of these works.

If you have any …

Book Review Of 'Histoire Et Devenir Des Paysages En Himalaya: Representations Des Milieux Et Gestion Des Resources Au Nepal Et Au Ladakh' Edited By Joelle Smadja, Ben Campbell

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies

No abstract provided.

Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Water: Evaluating Water As A Human Right And The Duties And Obligations It Creates, Amy Hardberger

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

Immigrant Vulnerability In High-Risk Industry: A Socio-Occupational Examination Of Counties With Large Meatpacking Plants In Iowa And Nebraska, Mary Patricia Everist

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The decade of 1990-2000 saw a 53 percent increase in the number of Hispanics to 35.3 million, 20.6 million whom are of Mexican origin, signifying the fastest growing cohort in the U.S. today. This decade has also seen a surge in Hispanic migration to the Midwest region, particularly to communities with large meatpacking plants (LMPPs). Although overall literary consensus underscores the fact that this educationally disadvantaged ethnic group is over-represented in service and labor-based industries, few attempts have been made to empirically link the ir growing participation in high-risk industries like meatpacking with socioeconomic and occupational indicators of immigrant vulnerability. …