Environmental Law Commons^™

Temporary Nuclear Waste Siting Is A Major Problem But Not A Major Question, Dylan Cohen

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

Mitigating global warming requires robust change in the country’s energy policy. One area ripe for such change is nuclear waste storage, which has long confounded the federal government. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) seems to have found a solution. It empowered private industry. But it might have run into a problem: the major questions doctrine. Though the major questions doctrine can indeed operate to constrain overzealous agencies, the NRC has acted within its authority, and private industry—by virtue of its Executive-branch grant of authority—should be allowed to help.

Permitting Co2 Pipelines, Martin Lockman

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Both emissions reductions and removal of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere are essential if we hope to minimize the damage caused by climate change and globally reduce our net emissions of greenhouse gasses to zero. Some CO2 removal techniques, like “direct air capture” that uses chemical and electrochemical processes to capture atmospheric CO2 at relatively low concentrations, generate a stream of captured CO2 that is then injected into underground rock formations referred to as “geologic storage.” CO2 pipelines represent the most efficient way to transport high volumes of captured CO2 to geologic storage locations. However, while …

Abolition And Environmental Justice, Allegra M. Mcleod

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

During the coronavirus pandemic, movements for penal abolition and racial justice achieved dramatic growth and increased visibility. While much public discussion of abolition has centered on the call to divest from criminal law enforcement, contemporary abolitionists also understand public safety in terms of building new life-sustaining institutions and collective structures that improve human well-being, linking penal divestment to environmental justice. In urging a reimagination of public safety, abolitionists envision much more than decriminalization or a reallocation of police functions to social service agencies or other alternatives to imprisonment and policing. Instead, for abolitionists, meaningful public safety requires, among other things, …

2023-2024 Executive Board Announcement, Cardozo Environmental Law Society

2023–2024 Flyers

No abstract provided.

Balancing Justice And The Planet: Navigating The Path To Sustainable Law Practice, Cardozo Environmental Law Society

2023–2024 Flyers

Professor Dov Greenbaum of Reichman University will be giving a lecture on how a law practice can be climate friendly or not.

Liability For Oil Pollution Damage And Recommendations For Response In The Case Of The Non-Spilling Ship In Marine Collision Incidents, Shiwei Wei

World Maritime University Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Determining An Effective Regulatory Framework For Businesses To Report On The Environment, Climate, And Human Rights, Paco Mengual

Pace International Law Review

The objective of this article is to identify the existing dynamics and clarify the reasoning behind reporting on environmental, climate, and human rights information in search of effective and binding frameworks to enhance transparency. To that effect, this article relates the evolution from a corporate sustainable business focus to reporting on environmental social and governance and increasing corporate accountability. It then expands on defining non- financial information and ESG reporting with regards to recent European Union Regulations (SFDR, Taxonomy) as well as the challenges associated with defining sustainable investments. This article aims to compare and understand the various regulatory strategies …

Lone Star Crime: The Criminal Enforcement Of Environmental Law In The State Of Texas, Dr. Joshua Ozymy, Dr. Melissa Jarrell Ozymy

St. Mary's Law Journal

Most transgressions of environmental law in the United States are remedied with civil or administrative tools. When crimes involve significant harm or culpable conduct, criminal enforcement tools may be applied. With the importance of environmental criminal enforcement for punishing offenders and deterring future offenses, we still have little empirical understanding of this phenomenon in Texas. We use content analysis of 2,588 federal environmental criminal prosecutions that result from EPA criminal investigations from 1983 to 2019 and select all prosecutions occurring in Texas. Our approach allows us to explore prosecution patterns over time, examine charging and sentencing trends, and draw out …

Indonesian Compliance With Tripartite Agreement In Controlling Marine Environmental Pollution In The Malacca Strait, Vita Cita Emia Tarigan, Akmal Handi Ansari Nasution, Mohammad Ekaputra, Rizki Nanda Saputri

Indonesian Journal of International Law

Indonesia bears interest in the Malacca strait as one of its stakeholders in its effort on maritime navigational safety and environment in navigational safety and environment. Its efforts are fundamental in controlling, preventing, and recovering pollution from vessels. Referring to the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982, Indonesian contribution to controlling marine life pollution is vital. Therefore, Indonesia signed a tripartite agreement with Malaysia and Singapore (Agreement on Safety of Navigation in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore 1977). The Tripartite Agreement needs to be used as a reference in making regulations in Indonesia and implemented …

Response To Conophillips' Opposition To Un Rapporteurs Amicus Brief, William Snape, David Hunter

Amicus Briefs & Court Filings

Defendant-Intervenor ConocoPhillips made a number of incorrect and misleading statements in their opposition to the UN Special Rapporteurs proposed amicus brief. This response explains the relationship of the UN Special Rapporteurs to American University’s Washington College of Law, as well as the employment status of the two attorneys who authored the UN Rapporteurs’ amicus brief.

Racial Impact Assessment In Land Use Planning And Zoning, William West

Pace Environmental Law Review

Racial impact assessments are tools that attempt to predict the effects of actions to help policymakers evaluate the consequences of those actions before their implementation. This article explains the history of race and land use in the United States, the development of racial impact assessments, and the emerging trend of racial impact assessments in land use planning and zoning. The article concludes with an analysis of how racial impact assessments in land use might develop in the future.

The Green Future And The Golden Past: Issues And Approaches Regarding The Sustainability Of Historical Structures And Sites, Steven Moctezuma

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Article illustrates the harmonies and conflict between historic preservation and environmental law in the context of urgently meeting climate change challenges. The Article presents an overarching analysis of the relationship between historic preservation and environmentalism, discerning unifying aspects and modern conflicts through statutory laws and case studies. It begins with detailing the parallel goals between the two causes, drawing on key similarities between the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, the main tools for ensuring federal review for each field, and highlighting sustainable refurbishment as a prime example on achieving both ends with the same …

The Need To Reconceptualize Wild Animals Post-Covid 19: Miscoordination Of Wildlife Regulations In China’S Food Legal Order, Yi Seul Kim

Pace Environmental Law Review

Today, China is one of the largest markets for wild animal trading. Yet, wild animals are in a regulatory grey area. There is an increasing need to revisit how wild animals are simultaneously but differently regulated in the food and wildlife protection regimes. Rarely do attempts to understand these two regimes occur, making this article's analysis of miscoordination in these bodies of law crucial in addressing the hindrance of nationwide food safety improvement efforts.

Virtuous Cycles: The Interaction Of Public And Private Environmental Governance, Elodie O. Currier

Pace Environmental Law Review

The climate crisis has provoked a call for action from all sides. Private governance, public regulation, and individual behavior are all vital pieces of our path toward decarbonization and climate adaptation. Despite this, some scholars and policymakers argue that private environmental governance undermines public efforts to regulate climate harms. This paper draws on existing scholarship in law, policy, and psychology to answer these critiques, proposing four taxonomies of beneficial public-private collaboration on environmental governance. It then applies these models, tracking the shift in U.S. environmental legislation from “polluter pays” to “beneficiary pays” strategies to show a shift from rivalry to …

Beyond The North–South Divide: Litigation's Role In Resolving Climate Change Loss And Damage Claims, Maria Antonia Tigre, Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Within the international climate regime, legal aspects surrounding loss and damage (L&D) are contentious topics, implicating liability, compensation and notions of vulnerability. The attribution of responsibility and the pursuit of redress for L&D present intricate legal and governance challenges. The ongoing debates under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are characterized by a pronounced North–South divide and have done little to provide tangible support to those most affected by L&D. This apparent neglect has prompted exploration of alternative avenues for climate harm redress. The burgeoning field of litigation for liability and compensation of climate harm holds potential significance …

Does The Community Choice Aggregation Approach Advance Distributed Generation Development? A Case Study Of Municipalities In California, Robin M. Rotman, Jun Deng

Faculty Publications

Globally, decentralized energy systems are gaining popularity due to their potential for energy accessibility, energy resilience, and sustainability benefits. Existing research on an energy system decentralization approach, community choice aggregation (CCA), shows its ability to lower energy costs and increase renewable electricity consumption for U.S. communities. Nevertheless, research on the relationship between CCA and distributed electricity generation development is lacking. This paper fills this gap by investigating if the CCA approach associates with distributed generation capacity interconnection in California municipalities. The finding shows that although the average capacity has increased for all municipalities throughout the study period, contrary to proponents’ …

Provisions On Liability For Decommissioning Upstream Offshore Oil And Gas Infrastructure In Investor–State Contracts, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Esteban F. Fresno Rodríguez, José Luis Gallardo Torres

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

Offshore oil and gas operations are inherently hazardous to the environment, posing environmental risks and impacts throughout all stages of the operations: exploration, development, production, and decommissioning. Offshore decommissioning consists of the process of planning, funding, and implementing measures aimed at safely closing, repurposing, or removing the infrastructure and equipment used in the exploration and production of oil and gas in the marine environment, and at mitigating their impacts. It encompasses a series of activities, including the safe plugging and closure of wells, the removal of equipment and pipelines, the repurposing of platforms, the disposal of non-usable materials and potentially …

Decommissioning Liability At The End Of Offshore Oil And Gas: A Review Of International Obligations, National Laws, And Contractual Approaches In Ten Jurisdictions, Martin Lockman, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Esteban F. Fresno Rodríguez, José Luis Gallardo Torres

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Offshore oil and gas infrastructure faces an existential threat: the increasingly pressing need to address the climate emergency. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that GHG emissions from existing and planned fossil fuel infrastructure will push global warming past the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C threshold, and more detailed projections estimate that “nearly 60 per cent of oil and fossil methane gas ... must remain unextracted to keep within a 1.5 °C carbon budget.” The growing urgency of climate action, coupled with the increasing adoption of renewable energy systems and energy-efficient technologies, may strand thousands of offshore oil and gas installations …

Criminalization Of Community-Based Ecotourism (Cbet) In Indonesia: The Cases Of Pari Island, Kepulauan Seribu, Janthi Dharma Shanty, Bono Budi Priambodo

Journal of Indonesian Tourism and Policy Studies

Pari islanders have revamped their island into cultural ecotourism destination since 2010. It has been successful because the activities have diverted the islanders’ dependence on the hard-pressed local coastal and fisheries resources and supplemented their income. This is a win-win situation the Indonesian government seeks to create with the 2007 Coastal Zone and Small Islands Management Law where natural conservation benefits local populace economically. The Law stipulates, among others, that community participation is one of the integrated coastal zone management principles. The Law also prioritizes coastal zones for conservation and tourism activities. Pari islanders thus have already implemented the imperatives …

Prioritizing Regional Wildlife Conservation By Rejuvenating The Western Hemisphere Convention On Nature Protection, Shade Streeter, David Hunter, William Snape Iii

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Last year, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (“CBD”), representing nearly every nation, signed a milestone agreement committing, among other things, to conserve thirty percent of Earth’s lands and oceans to stave off the rapid diminution of the planet’s biodiversity. Implementing these global commitments will require not only strong domestic measures, but also enhanced regional cooperation targeting the conservation of the region’s migratory wildlife and shared resources. Although the United States is the sole major holdout from the CBD, it can still reassert its leadership in regional wildlife conservation by rejuvenating the Convention on Nature Protection and Wildlife Preservation …

Unclos, Undrip & Tartupaluk: The Grim Tale Of Hans Isle And Graense, Christopher Mark Macneill

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

“Inuit have lived in the Arctic from time immemorial.” The Arctic, in the face of climate change, has become a hot spot for exploration, resource extraction, and increased shipping and scientific activity. “[The] Inuit . . . have had a common and shared use of the sea area and the adjacent coasts” among their own communities, and contemporaneously with the world. This vast circumpolar Inuit Arctic region includes land, sea, and ice stretching from eastern Russia (Chukotka region) across the Berring Strait, to Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, and Greenland, representing an Inuit homeland known as Nunaat. Hans Isle, a small …

The Great Climate Migration: A Critique Of Global Legal Standards Of Climate-Change Caused Harm, Mariah Stephens

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Approximately 2.4 billion people, or about forty percent of the global population, live within sixty miles (one hundred kilometers) of a coastline. The United Nations (“U.N.”) determined that “a sea level rise of half a meter could displace 1.2 million people from low-lying islands in the Caribbean Sea and the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with that number almost doubling if the sea level rises by two metres.” The U.N. also reports that “sudden weather-related hazards” have internally displaced an annual average of 21.5 million people since 2008. Within the next few decades, this number is likely to continue to increase. …

The Future Of Crypto-Asset Mining: The Inflation Reduction Act And The Need For Uniform Federal Regulation, Liz Guinan

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Crypto-asset mining is energy-intensive and environmentally harmful, presenting challenges and opportunities for federal, state and local governments, regulators, and society as a whole. As of December 2021, the United States has thirty-eight percent of the global crypto network hash rate, which is the total amount of computational power used to mine and process crypto transactions, making the United States the world’s largest crypto-asset mining industry. The total electricity consumption of crypto-asset mining in the United States is estimated to be around 121.36 terawatt-hours (“TWh”) per year, which is equivalent to the electricity consumption of approximately 10.9 million households in the …

Editors' Note, Rachel Keylon, Meghen Sullivan

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

For more than two decades, the Sustainable Development Law and Policy Brief (“SDLP”) has published works analyzing emerging legal and policy issues within the fields of environmental, energy, sustainable development, and natural resources law. SDLP has also prioritized making space for law students in the conversation. We are honored to continue this tradition in Volume XXIII.

Higher Altitudes And Higher Standards: Advocating The Fcc Require Environmental Assessments For Mega- Constellations, John Latson

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This article will explore why the FCC’s current regime on categorical exclusions is ill-prepared for the developing mega-constellation industry, why the regime should be revised to require that companies launching mega-constellations file an Environmental Assessment (EA) as defined in the National Environmental Policy Act, and how such a change might fiscally impact these companies. Part II of this article will explore the National Environmental Policy Act, discussing the purpose of the Act and the goals Congress sought to accomplish. Part III will consider the FCC’s policy on categorical exclusions and EAs, with a comparison of how some other federal agencies …

Federal Environmental Justice Legislation And Regulations, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fostering Resilience Within Ecological Civilization: Contributions Of Environmental Law, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

My presentation will examine water, to illustrate the questions that Ecological Civilization presents. I shall address five points: (1) Often proposals for attaining Ecological Civilization raise issues relevant to environmental law, but do not examine the roles that environmental law can serve; (2) environmental law is essential to resolving unsustainable water management issues; (3) scientific studies indicate that trends in global environmental degradation limit the time available for implementing reforms to attain Ecological Civilization; (4) environmental legal systems for environmental impact assessment (EIA) can accelerate efforts to attain Ecological Civilization; and (5) For Ecological Civilization to ensure a firm foundation …

The Dawn Of Environmental Human Rights In New York, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

On Election Day in 2021, New York's voters added Section 19 to the state's constitutional Bill of Rights. They reaffirmed a human birthright to clean air, clean water and a healthful environment. New York's constitutional Bill of Rights now guarantees the liberty that “each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.

New York's Legislature had previously concurred, recognizing that these rights are “elemental.” At the New York State Bar Association's Environment and Energy Law Section's annual meeting on Jan. 25, 2022, I was privileged to deliver a lecture entitled “A New Era …

Modelling Climate Litigation Risk For (Re)Insurers, Martin Lockman

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

In response to the growing threat of climate change, the insurance industry has made significant investments in modelling and quantifying physical climate risks. However, the emerging risk of climate litigation has proven particularly difficult to model. In 2015 Mark Carney, then-Governor of the Bank of England and Chairman of the Financial Stability Board, warned that climate litigation poses “long-tail risks” for insurers that may be “significant, uncertain and non-linear.” Since that warning, the number of climate-related cases has more than doubled, and the scope and financial significance of climate litigation has become increasingly clear. However, insurers and regulators still struggle …

Carajás Corridor In Brazil: Could An Sea Have Reconciled Shared-Use Infrastructure And Environmental Protection?, Perrine Toledano, Martin Dietrich Brauch

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The 998km Carajás railway corridor connects the world’s largest iron ore mine, operated by private mining company Vale S.A. (Vale) in Brazil’s northern state of Pará (PA), to the company’s maritime terminal in São Luís, the capital of the northeastern state of Maranhão (MA). Carajás is one of the few integrated railway corridors financed by a mining company that, apart from transporting the iron ore that made the infrastructure investments viable, also transports general cargo and operates passenger services along the corridor. This corridor was born from the Brazilian government’s plans in the mid1950s that foresaw the iron ore reserves …