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Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
New Orleans, The Chesapeake, And The Future Of Environmental Assessment: Overcoming The Natural Resources Law Of Unintended Consequences, Eric Ryan
University of Richmond Law Review
This article tells the stories of the disappearing wetlands ringing the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and the Chesapeake Bay of Virginia and Maryland, which are vanishing under different circumstances but bear the same message for environmental policy makers: more sophisticated natural resource planning is required to avoid the unanticipated consequences that can cause even wellintended policies to backfire. The stories suggest that a model of environmental assessment that better tracks the complex network characteristics of regional ecosystems would yield better long-term results, and this article proposes a network-based model that expands the lateral, temporal, and causal analysis of conventional environmental …
New Orleans, The Chesapeake, And The Future Of Environmental Assessment: Overcoming The Natural Resources Law Of Unintended Consequences, Erin Ryan
Erin Ryan
This piece tells the tale of two disappearing wetlands—those surrounding Louisiana's Gulf Coast and those fringing the Chesapeake Bay—each providing new insight into the old quandary of unintended consequences that lies at the center of natural resource management. Louisiana's losses follow three hundred years of natural resource engineering to accomplish effective flood control along the Mississippi River, while the Chesapeake losses follow implementation of among the most meticulous wetlands-protection programs of its time. And yet, New Orleans suffered a catastrophic flood, and Chesapeake wetlands continue to disappear. How could this happen? Call it the “Natural Resources Law of Unintended Consequences.” …