Environmental Law Commons^™

Beyond The Buzzwords: A Perspective On Integrated Coastal And Ocean Management In Canada, Aldo Chircop, Lawrence Hildebrand

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

It is now more than five years since the Oceans Act came into force as Canada’s modern legal framework for integrated coastal and ocean management (ICOM). Although there have been several integrated management initiatives at the national, regional and provincial level, the assessment of the record to date is not a simple matter.

From Hot Air To Action? Climate Change, Compliance, And The Future Of International Environmental Law, Meinhard Doelle

PhD Dissertations

This dissertation considers the evolution, current state, and future prognosis of the global climate change regime under the umbrella of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The focus of the dissertation is on State compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. Compliance is considered from the perspective of the internal compliance regime developed under the Kyoto Protocol as well as a select set of potential external international law influences. The dissertation concludes with an assessment of the level of compliance to be expected and its potential influence on the future of the climate change regime. Implications for international environmental law …

Slow On The Trigger: The Department Of Fisheries And Oceans, The Fisheries Act And The Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, Arlene Kwasniak

Dalhousie Law Journal

The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans plays an Important role in protecting fish and fish habitat in Canada, primarily under the Fisheries Act. Section 5 of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act requires an environmental assessment when the Department takes certain actions under the Fisheries Act. In the past few years environmental interests have taken the Department to task claiming that it has circumvented assessment. The alleged circumvention occurs when proponents of projects that will harm fish habitat, in consultation with the Department, revamp the project to avoid harm, and the Department issues a letter of advice to the proponent …

The Kyoto Protocol: Reflections On Its Significance On The Occasion Of Its Entry Into Force, Meinhard Doelle

Dalhousie Law Journal

When the Kyoto Protocol was signed in December 1997, there were high hopes in some quarters that it marked the beginning of a global commitment to climate change mitigation. In the past seven years, however, the Protocol has languished while many of the kev, States have done little to implement it. Until the fall of 2004 it was uncertain whether the Protocol would ever enter into force. To the surprise of many, with ratification by Russia, it came into effect on February 16, 2005, only three years before the start of the first period of commitments to reduce greenhouse gas …

Climate Change And The Wto: Opportunities To Motivate State Action On Climate Change Through The World Trade Organization, Meinhard Doelle

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the role of trade in motivating action on climate change, using the specific example of developments within the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The Kyoto Protocol, the first international agreement with legally binding commitments to begin to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is expected to come into force in 2004. With it, most of the developed world will be committed to modest reduction targets over the next decade. The two largest per capita emitters, the USA and Australia, have so far opted not to join this modest effort to address climate change, and developing …

The Allocation Of Civil Liability For Damage To The Marine Environment In The New Canadian Law Of Merchant Shipping, Or The Polluter Pays How Much?, Hugh M. Kindred

Dalhousie Law Journal

Infrequent but catastrophic incidents of pollution by ships have attracted worldwide attention to the regulation of the merchant shipping industry for the protection of the marine environment. Under the detailed legal regime that has been established, ships and their owners are held strictly liable for the pollution of the oceans that they cause. Less well known but equally well established are other principles of maritime law that allow shipowners to limit their liability for the expense and damage their polluting ships incur. Canada has recently undertaken a major reform of its shipping laws and, in the process, it has revamped …

Liability For Damage To The Marine Environment From Ships, Michael White

Dalhousie Law Journal

Marine pollution damage from ships is not a major problem in Australian jurisdictions, but there are regular incidents. The Australian law relating to marine pollution from ships closely follows the international conventions. Australia is a party to almost all of the relevant IMO conventions and, as is required for common law countries, the domestic legislation to give effect to them needs to be put in place. This has been done for the most part by the Commonwealth, the states and the Northern Territory as Australia is a federation. The Commonwealth and the states have established adequate enforcement resources for the …

Welcomed Participants' Or 'Environmental Vigilantes'? The Cepa Environmental Protection Action And The Role Of Citizen Suits In Federal Environmental Law, Marcia Valiante

Dalhousie Law Journal

In the 1999 amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the federal government added a new citizen enforcement tool, known as an "environmental protection action." This was the first "citizen suit" provision in Canadian federal environmental law but it is unlikely to play more than a minor role in advancing enforcement of CEPA and is unlikely to be adopted in other environmental laws. This is because, despite initial interest in and commitment to citizen enforcement, the government was persuaded by industry representatives and others to significantly constrain the action and, shortly afterwards, to drop it entirely from the Species At …

From Kyoto To Marrakech; A Long Walk Through The Desert: Mirage Or Oasis?, Meinhard Doelle

Dalhousie Law Journal

This article reviews the results of four years of negotiations of the parties to the UNFCCC,3 from the Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997 to the Marrakech Accords in 2001. This process was intended to provide the details and operational rules needed for parties to make decisions on whether to ratify and how to implement the Kyoto Protocol in time for the start of the first commitment period in 2008. The author analyzes the Marrakech Accords with respect to the Kyoto Mechanisms, reporting, verification, compliance, and developing country issues, and concludes that the Kyoto Protocol in itself is a negligible step …

The Precautionary Principle And Marine Environmental Protection: Slippery Shores, Rough Seas, And Rising Normative Tides, David Vanderzwaag

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Law and policy implications of the precautionary principle in the field of marine environmental protection are explored in this paper in a three-part analysis. First, seven slippery aspects of the precautionary principle are highlighted, including confusion in terminology, definitional variations, definitional generalities, the spectrum of precautionary measures available, ongoing philosophical tensions and competing socioeconomic interests, debate over who should be responsible for making precautionary decisions, and limited interpretation by international tribunals. Second, the rather feeble precautionary responses to the tempestuous issues of climate change, hazardous chemicals, and overfishing are described. Third, the potential for the precautionary principle to synergize with …

Canada And The Precautionary Principle/Approach In Ocean And Coastal Management: Wading And Wandering In Tricky Currents, David Vanderzwaag, Susanna Fuller, Ransom Myers

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

After reviewing the tricky nature of the precautionary principle/approach, such as confusion over terminology and the spectrum of precautionary measures available, the article through a four-part format describes Canadian initiatives and efforts to implement the precautionary principle/ approach in ocean and coastal management. First, Canada's general steps to adopt the precautionary principle are discussed including caselaw developments and the limited embracing of precaution in environmental impact assessment review and strategic planning processes. Second, the paper reviews Canada's efforts to address marine pollution-ocean dumping, land-based, vessel-source and seabed activities- in light of precaution. Third, Canadian experiences with implementing precaution in the …

The Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy, Arctic Council And Multilateral Environmental Initiatives: Tinkering While The Arctic Marine Environment Totters, David Vanderzwaag, Robert Huebert, Stacey Ferrara

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The Arctic marine environment is not pristine, as commonly imagined, but is facing numerous pressures,' the most serious arguably coming from outside the region. Melting of sea ice, linked to global warming, threatens the long-term survival of various species including polar bears and has potential to seriously disrupt ocean currents. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including pesticides, industrial compounds and combustion by-products, are transported via air and water currents from regions outside the Arctic and become concentrated in the fatty tissues of animals." The pollutants threaten not only the well being of wildlife but the health of northern residents heavily dependent …

The Citizen Submission Process Of The North American Commission For Environmental Cooperation, Jaime Miguel Carreno-Martinez

LLM Theses

In order to address the environmental concerns raised by the existence of a continent-wide free trade zone, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Canada, United States and Mexico created an environmental side agreement, the North American Agreement for Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC). NAAEC established the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), a trilateral body created to help the NAFTA Parties achieve the goal of free trade while at the same time avoiding or lessening environmental industrial degradation. Although imperfect, the NAAEC embodies several processes that were innovative. The key innovation is the Citizen Submission Process that allows citizens and NGOs to …

The Ocean And International Environmental Law: Swimming, Sinking, And Treading Water At The Millennium, Douglas M. Johnston, David Vanderzwaag

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Various images help capture the status and trends of international law and policy efforts to protect the ocean environment. While “treading water” and “sinking” partly describe legal conditions at the millennium, this paper examines seven challenges in the international environmental law field which at the very least promise to make for a “hard swim” in coming decades. Those challenges include: coping with the proliferation of negotiated instruments; overcoming political opposition to environmental commitments; clarifying the jurisprudential underpinnings of international environmental law; sorting out the relation of environmental ethics, science and the rule of law; fleshing out the principles of sustainable …

International Fisheries Management: A Comparative Analysis Of Legal Approaches To Management In The Context Of Polar Fisheries Regimes, Stuart Bruce Kaye

PhD Dissertations

This thesis examines the management of marine living resources in international law. The thesis considers the development of the two principal approaches to fisheries management. The first approach is based upon maximising the yield of particular stocks, and is reflected in the content of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. It has evolved out of fisheries management theory developed since the 1950s, and focuses upon extracting the maximum harvest of a particular stock while still permitting that stock's biological regeneration. The second approach uses the precautionary principle, and may include management directed at the entire …

Environmental Harm In Developing Countries Caused By Subsidiaries Of Canadian Mining Corporations: The Interface Of Public And Private International Law, Sara Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This 1999 publication examines home state responsibility for transnational environmental harm from the perspective of both private and public international law, using Canadian mining internationally as a case study.

Regulation Of The International Transport Of Packaged Dangerous Goods: The Case For Legislative Integration In A World Convention, Mirsada Stasevic

LLM Theses

The multimodal transport of dangerous goods is a high risk enterprise for the participants, the public, and public and private property. This study examines the lack of congruency of safety and environmental protection rules which govern the international transport of dangerous goods, along with the concurrent progressive efforts of the international community to ensure global and inter-modal harmonization of these rules. It discusses their inadequacy and proposes a solution. The analysis of the existing rules, fragmented along modal and geographical fines, shows that they do not sufficiently introduce the safety, environmental protection and liability considerations into the legal regime governing …

International Law And The Maritime Carriage Of Radioactive Materials: Prospects For The Non-Anthropocentric Greening Of International Law, A. Suzette V. Suarez

LLM Theses

A review of the legal regime governing the shipments of radioactive materials reveals an array of preventive and emergency measures as well as liability and compensation measures. The legal regime, however, does not provide any voice to all potentially affected entities, particularly developing Coastal States and the marine environment. The legal regime must be transformed in order to take the above interests into consideration. Any reform in the legal system must start with an evaluation of the ethics and philosophy underlying the system. Understanding the ethical and philosophical basis of the legal regime contributes to the formulation of recommendations for …

Law On Pollution And Debris From Oil And Gas Drilling And Production Operations Offshore Nova Scotia, Boris B. De Jonge

LLM Theses

This thesis examines international and domestic law relating to pollution from offshore oil and gas operations in the Nova Scotia offshore area. The domestic regulatory regime is not integrated, but is contained in various acts. The three main acts deal respectively with ships, including mobile offshore drilling and production units (the 'Canada Shipping Act'); fisheries protection (the 'Fisheries Act'); and the industrial aspects of offshore oil and gas operations (the federal 'Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act'; there is a corresponding provincial act which is essentially identical). These acts are administered by separate regulatory agencies. This results in …

What A Wonderful World: Multilateral Chemical Management Conventions, Liberalisation Policies And The Chemical Industry, Robin Lynne Cowling

LLM Theses

This thesis begins with an examination of the context of risk in which multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) are being drafted and implemented. Through a discussion of the relationship between the characteristics of multinational corporations and the phenomenon of globalisation, the impetus behind globalisation practices is revealed. This is then contextualised with an examination of the contribution of the chemical industry toward the parallel globalisations of production and environmental harm. A discussion of trade and investment liberalisation instruments is then undertaken to illustrate the current hierarchy between these instruments and MEAs. This analysis reveals the present incompatibility of these instruments and …

Taller Internacional Sobre Formación De Capacidades Para El Manejo De Las Costas Y Los Océanos En El Gran Caribe (International Workshop On Management Capacity Building For Coasts And Oceans In The Wider Caribbean, Havana, Cuba), Aldo Chircop

Reports & Public Policy Documents

Spanish Abstract: El Taller Internacional sobre Formación de Capacidades para el Manejo de Costas y los Océanos en el Gran Caribe tue organizado conjuntamente por la Universidad de la Habana, el Comité Oceanógrafico Nacional de Cuba (CON) y el Instituto de los Océanos de Canadá (IOC), y recibió el apoyo del Programa Gubernamental para la Sustentabilidad de los Océanos de la Agencia Canadiense para el Desarrollo Internacional (ACDI), del Centro de Investigación para el Desarrollo Internacional (CIDI), y de la Comisión Oceanógrafica Intergubernamental de la U N E S C O . Fue organizado en respuesta a iniciativas recientes para …

Effective Environmental Enforcement: The Missing Link To Achieving Sustainable Development, Linda Francis Duncan

LLM Theses

In response to the emergence of sustainable development as the dominant environmental and economic paradigm, a number of mechanisms have been developed to assist in the implementation of these principles. Examples of these "super" instruments abound--market measures, eco-covenants, joint implementation and voluntary compliance. Appreciably less enthusiasm has been dedicated to capacity building for other more traditional tools prescribed by international laws. Counted among the disregarded tools is the widely maligned and misunderstood role of enforcement. This thesis argues that the potential for effecting innovative reforms may be significantly threatened by an underlying misunderstanding and failed appreciation of the critical role …

Future Directions In International Environmental Law: Precaution, Integration And Non-State Actors, James Cameron

Dalhousie Law Journal

In this, the Horace E. Read Memorial Lecture for 1995, James Cameron discusses three developments in international environmental law,-the principles of precaution and of integration and the roles of non-state actors. The precautionary principle calls for regulatory intervention to prevent environmental harm even though the risk of damage remains scientifically uncertain. A wide consensus exists in favour of a precautionary approach to environmental management and state practice is sufficient to assert the principle has attained the status of customary international law, but it remains controversial because it demands changes in practice. The principle of integration takes a holistic approach to …

Individual Enforcement Of Canada's Environmental Protection Laws: The Weak-Spirited Need Not Try, Roger W. Proctor

Dalhousie Law Journal

It is no secret that public awareness and concern for environmental protection in Canada has increased significantly in recent years. Legislators have addressed these concerns by implementing new laws to regulate the various practices that impact negatively on the environment. With statutes in hand, environmentally conscious individuals are beginning to intervene personally to monitor compliance and ensure enforcement of these new laws.

Acid Rain And Ozone Layer Depletion: International Law And Regulation, Kernaghan Webb

Dalhousie Law Journal

Although international customary and conventional law have addressed aspects of transfrontier pollution problems for decades,' the regional and global environmental degradations which have come to the forefront in the 1980s and 1990s - acid rain, ozone depletion, and global warming, to name but three - represent new challenges to existing international law institutions and concepts. In a sense, the world has over the past two centuries gone through a period of what could be called "technological adolescence", as individuals and corporations, largely from industrialized nations, exploited the earth's resources with little if any concern for the immediate and long-term implications …

Conflicting Principles Of Canadian Environmental Reform: Trubeck And Habermas V. Law And Economics And The Law Reform Commission, Rod Northey

Dalhousie Law Journal

Early in the 1970s, the American legal scholar, David Trubeck, made a far-reaching observation: Law is a practical science. It does not ordinarily dwell on fundamental questions about the social, political and economic functions of the legal order. Satisfied with implicit working assumptions about these matters, legal thought moves rapidly to more tractable questions. But when law's solutions to social problems fail to satisfy, it becomes necessary to examine the basic theory from which they derive. Trubeck expounded this thesis in connection with legal developments in the Third World. Using an idea he termed the "core conception" of law, Trubeck …

Marketable Pollution Permits: Their Values, Theory, And Application, D. Fraser Macfayden

Dalhousie Law Journal

The Economic Council of Canada recently expressed interest in exploring alternatives to the traditional command and control model of pollution control. The marketable pollution permit (MPP) scheme proposed by Dales is one such alternative.' This idea will be examined to assess its potential for practical application. I conclude that the MPP idea has little potential for widespread application. It is not suited to replace the command and control model. There is potential for the supporting principles of the scheme to provide a useful adjunct to current regulatory controls. The issue will be discussed in three sections. The first section will …

Book Review Of Passion: An Essay On Personality , Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Passion is a cogently structured, compel Jingly argued and seductively enthralling masterpiece which, in years to come, will undoubtedly stand out as an inspirational source for many who seek social transformation. Unger's style, in this essay at least, is lucid and inviting. Substantively, Passion demonstrates not only the depth of his penetrating intellect but also his command of an array of' disciplines. Unger's polymathy is all the more impressive when we remember that ours is an era in which idiosyncratic specialization is the norm.

The International Law Of Pollution: Protecting The Global Environment In A World Of Sovereign States, Bruce H. Wildsmith

Dalhousie Law Journal

A good book must have focus. This may not be the only criteria for evaluating a book, but it is certainly a sine qua non. A scholarly work such as Professor Springer's is a means of communicating ideas; the sharper its focus the clearer the message of its author and the better it and he communicates. When reading this book I wondered about its focus: was there a central unified objective? Having now completed the book, I can see that the author has painted us a useful, but blurred picture. He has not quite brought into focus his objective; much …

Canadian Environmental Law In The Eighties: Problems And Perspectives, Peter Z. R. Finkle

Dalhousie Law Journal

Environmental law in Canada has developed slowly during the last two decades. While the rise and popularisation of the environmental movement of the sixties and early seventies did encourage the creation of a federal Department of Environment and many provincial counterparts, as well as facilitate the passage of a number of pieces of legislation, there is some question as to how substantial an impact the institutions and legislation have made on Canada society. One problem which has beset the development of adequate environmental legislation is the significant gap which has opened up between the words on paper, the "black letter …