Environmental Law Commons^™

Indigenous Rights, Environmental Rights, Or Stakeholder Engagement? Comparing Ifc And Oecd Approaches To The Implementation Of The Business Responsibility To Respect Human Rights, Sara Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (OECD MNE Guidelines) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability (IFC Performance Standards) are widely viewed as key international standards to which extractive companies operating internationally should comply. Indeed, these standards, together with the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), are promoted by Canada in its November 2014 enhanced corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy for extractive sector companies operating abroad. The strategy states that the Canadian government expects companies operating outside of Canada to “respect human rights …

Ocean Law Reform: A Multi-Level Comparative Law Analysis Of Nigerian Maritime Zone Legislation, Aldo Chircop, David Dzidzornu, Chidi Oguamanam

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Recently, Nigeria introduced a Bill in the House and Senate that aims at modernizing its maritime zone legislation to enable it to maximize benefits it has received from the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982. Although Nigeria has been a party to the Convention for many years, the legislative initiative was triggered only recently by a mixture of events, including a submission to the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf and the delimitation of maritime boundaries and adoption of joint development zones with neighboring States, including the implementation of a judgment of the International …

Functional Interactions And Maritime Regulation: The Mutual Accommodation Of Offshore Wind Farms And International Navigation And Shipping, Aldo Chircop, Peter L'Esperance

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

There is growing interest in Europe and North America in locating wind farms in ocean space within national jurisdiction. For many States, wind is the renewable energy of choice in the search for alternatives to fossil fuels to meet emissions reductions targets established by international agreement on a large scale. Locating windfarms in the marine environment is attractive because of the availability of open spaces to accommodate extensive arrays capable of producing power on a large scale, ideal wind conditions and less likelihood of impacts that trigger public opposition, such as noise, lowering of property values and interference with landscape …

Survey Of Climate Change Considerations In Federal Environmental Impact Statements, 2012-2014, Jessica A. Wentz, Grant Glovin, Adrian Ang

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

Climate change will have a profound effect on humans and our environment. Recognizing this, federal agencies have begun to incorporate a more detailed discussion of climate change considerations into the Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) that they prepare for major federal actions, such as the approval of resource management plans and public infrastructure projects, in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has also issued draft guidance on how agencies should evaluate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate change effects in NEPA reviews.

To provide insight into how federal agencies are accounting for climate …

Hud Doesn't Need New Legislative Authority To Better Integrate Climate Change Resilience Into Its Disaster Recovery Program, Justin Gundlach, Channing R. Jones

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This article examines the interaction between the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s community development block grant disaster recovery program (CDBGDR) and the federal and state governments' resilience and climate adaptation priorities. It identifies and analyzes the statutes that have guided HUD's approach to date, by considering both key statutory language and legislative history. It also examines forms of "soft guidance" issued by HUD for use by various stakeholders, including both HUD CDBG-DR program officers and the state and local officials that interact with them. In reviewing this material, the article identifies a tension between the requirement that all …

A Comparison Between Shale Gas In China And Unconventional Fuel Development In The United States: Water, Environmental Protection, And Sustainable Development, Paolo D. Farah, Riccardo Tremolada

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

China is believed to have the world's largest exploitable reserves of shale gas, although several legal, regulatory, environmental, and investment-related issues will likely restrain its exploitation. China's capacity to face these hurdles successfully and produce commercial shale gas will have a crucial impact on the regional gas market and on China’s energy mix, as Beijing strives to decrease reliance on imported oil and coal, and, at the same time, tries to meet growing energy demand and maintain a certain level of resource autonomy. The development of the unconventional natural gas extractive industry will also provide China with further negotiating power …

Constitutions As Counter-Curses: Revenue Allocation And The Resource Curse, Tom Brower

Journal of Law and Policy

The resource curse—the paradoxical relationship between natural resource abundances and poorer economic growth, weaker political institutions, and higher levels of conflict—remains one of the most confounding issues in international development. Although the literature has proffered a plethora of institutional solutions to the resource curse, they have been vexed by a common theme: their unsuccessful implementation in developing countries without the proper institutional foundations that act as a bulwark against policy reversal and the perpetuation of rent-seeking behavior. This Article introduces constitutionally protected natural resource revenue allocation institutions as a superior mechanism for a state to allocate rents from natural resources. …

Ferc V. Epsa, Jim Rossi, Jon Wellinghoff

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This Essay explores the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in FERC .v. EPSA for state regulation of customer energy resource initiatives, such as net metering policies for rooftop solar and energy storage programs. Unlike many past judicial decision that fixate on a jurisdictional "bright line," EPSA does not define a turf for state policymaking as beyond FERC's reach but instead recognizes how state policies operate adjacent to FERC's regulation of practices affecting wholesale rates. As the first Supreme Court case to explicitly recognize cooperative federalism programs in the regulation of modern energy markets under the FPA, ESPA is …

In Defense Of Ecosystem Services, J.B. Ruhl

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The path of ecosystem services as a theme in environmental law and policy spans my practice (1982-1994) and academic (1994-present) careers. The importance of nature to human well-being seems so obvious one would think it has been front and center in environmental law and policy since the beginning, but, until recently, that has not been the case. Lately, however, the ecosystem services framework has catapulted this theme into prominence, if not dominance, in environmental discourse.

The Dawning Of Disaster Law, Clifford J. Villa

Faculty Scholarship

What really matters, what unites disasters of all stripes, including earthquakes in Japan, tornadoes in Oklahoma, oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, and the terrorist attacks on 9/11, is how you respond during the disaster, how you recover from it afterwards, and how you prepare - or better, prevent - the next disaster from happening. This is what disaster theorists, including Professor Dan Farber at Berkeley Law, term the "disaster cycle." In simplest terms: readiness, response, and recovery.

The Energy Prosumer, Sharon B. Jacobs

Publications

Decentralization is becoming a dominant trend in many industries, and the electricity industry is no exception. Increasing numbers of energy consumers generate their own electricity and/or provide essential grid services such as storage, efficiency, and demand response. This Article offers a positive account of the emergence of these new energy actors, which it calls "energy prosumers. " It then frames several doctrinal and procedural puzzles that prosumers create, including jurisdictional puzzles, distributional concerns, and democratic challenges. Ultimately, it concludes that prosumers can be a positive disruptive force in the electricity industry if courts and regulators can manage these challenges effectively. …

Environmental Law, Big Data, And The Torrent Of Singularities, William Boyd

Publications

How will big data impact environmental law in the near future? This Essay imagines one possible future for environmental law in 2030 that focuses on the implications of big data for the protection of public health from risks associated with pollution and industrial chemicals. It assumes the perspective of an historian looking back from the end of the twenty-first century at the evolution of environmental law during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The premise of the Essay is that big data will drive a major shift in the underlying knowledge practices of environmental law (along with other areas …

Green Infrastructure In The Community Ratings System: A Proposed Path To National Flood Insurance Program Recognition, Kevin Macwhorter, Kathleen Zaratzian

Virginia Coastal Policy Center

No abstract provided.

Implementing A Greener Redd+ In Black & White: Preserving Wounaan Lands And Culture In Panama With Indigenous-Sensitive Modifications To Redd+, Cindy Campbell

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

All’S Whale That Ends Whale: How Correctly Identifying Antarctic-Feeding Grounds Of Oceania Humpbacks Could Save An Endangered Population, Davey Holmes

Pomona Senior Theses

Although major whaling practices have ceased, increasing human involvement and influence in the world’s marine ecosystems continue to adversely effect global whale populations. It is a major concern throughout Antarctic waters, where endangered Oceania Humpback Whales (Megaptera novarangliae) annually feed. This study analyzes the extent to which a proposed marine protected area within the Ross Sea may indirectly harm the last remaining endangered population of Humpbacks. Using current satellite tracks of southern Humpback migrations, this model maps the effects of displaced Toothfish fisheries, and suggests further conservations efforts, based on New Zealand’s Precautionary Approach, to protect these vulnerable whales.

Philosophy Of Law In The Arctic, Dawid Bunikowski, Jaakko Husa, Diana Ginn, Ko Hasegawa, Karol Dobrzeniecki, Patrick Dillon, Francis Joy, Rene Kuppe, Leena Heinämäki, Maura Hanrahan, Tom Svensson, Makoto Usami, Agnieszka Szpak, Rebecca Johnson, Brendan Tobin

Books

This is rather the first book with a title "Philosophy of Law in the Arctic" in the literature. This philosophy of law is a very wide and cross-disciplinary area of research: between law, philosophy, anthropology, history, cultural ecology or environmental studies. I have no doubts that we have done such kind of philosophy in the academia so far, not using this term, but keeping up with the concept, the idea.

The book is a result of research conducted by many members of the Sub-group of Philosophy of Law in the Arctic (the University of the Arctic). This team seems a …

Environmental Law: The Role Of Congress In Environmental Law, Steven Colloton, David Schoenbrod, Eric Claeys, Matt Leggett, Nicholas Robinson

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Implementation Procedures For Puerto Rico's Environmental Laws, Sara Enid Camerón

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In 2004, Puerto Rico's new environmental legislation became part of the penal code with the intention of protecting the island nation's natural resources through criminal prosecution. However, the problem is a dearth of information about the prosecutions of environmental crimes and the law enforcement agent's implementation practices. The purpose of this study was to describe the execution of the law and the few cases prosecuted. Lipsky and Hull and Hjern's theory of implementation were used to help answer the research question: What are the implementation procedures of law enforcement agents on Puerto Rico's environmental crimes law, and what can be …

The Environmental Justice Implications Of Biofuels, Carmen Gonzalez

Faculty Articles

Analyses of the viability of biofuels as alternatives to fossil fuels have often adopted a technocratic approach that focuses on environmental consequences, but places less emphasis on the impact that biofuels may have on vulnerable populations. This Article fills the gap in the existing literature by evaluating biofuels through the lens of environmental justice – including climate justice and food justice. The Article examines the impact of biofuels on the global food system and on the planet’s most food-insecure populations. It concludes that the laws and policies promoting the cultivation of biofuels have contributed to global malnourishment by raising food …

The Human Right To Clean Air: A Case Study Of The Inter-American System, Varun K. Aery

Seattle Journal of Environmental Law

Combatting environmental damage has become a primary goal of the international community. Unfortunately, international human rights law has not taken this aim seriously. Although the Inter-American regional human rights system, one of three regional human rights institutions, empathizes with protecting the environment, it enervates such goals by barring victims of air pollution and climate change from access to judicial remedies. Seeking to bridge the gap between human rights law and environmental protection, this article explains why clean air is a human right, develops the positive content for such a right, and evaluates the practical reasons that justify the right’s importance. …

Ghost Bears: The Plight Of The North Cascades Grizzly Bear, Adam Bowler

Seattle Journal of Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

How The Public Trust Doctrine’S Fiduciary Duty Requirement Requires States’ Proactive Response To Promote Offshore Power Generation, Andrew S. Ballentine

Seattle Journal of Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

A Wholistic, Environmental Approach To Washington’S Repair Methodology Of Its State-Road Culverts, Lillian Kaide

Seattle Journal of Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Cultural Rights V. Species Protection: A Case Study Of Pacific Leatherback Sea Turtles, Mohit Khubchandani, Mehul Parti

Seattle Journal of Environmental Law

The leatherback sea turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), sometimes called the lute turtle, is the largest of all living turtles. It is the fourth- heaviest modern reptile behind three crocodilians. These species are categorized as critically endangered under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. These turtles avail pro- tection under the Convention on Illicit Trade in Endangered Species (CITES); a treaty enacted to protect wildlife against over-exploita- tion and with an aim to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. The said treaty is applicable to species in general …

Power E-Mergency: Combining Renewable Energy With Current Battery Technology For Emergency Medical Professionals, Caitlyn Portz

Seattle Journal of Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Preventive Justice, The Precautionary Principle And The Rule Of Law, Jocelyn Stacey

All Faculty Publications

Despite its largely preventive orientation, environmental law has, with one exception, remained distinct from the burgeoning field of preventive justice. The exception is the precautionary principle, which has become a subject of interest and frequent skepticism amongst preventive justice scholars. The precautionary principle is a central principle in environmental law. Its centrality arises from the pervasiveness of scientific uncertainty in environmental regulation; that is, our inability to reliably predict the consequences of our policy choices on environmental and human health. The precautionary principle squarely addresses the question of how we ought to proceed in the face of unavoidable uncertainty. This …

Eminent Domain And Serrated Power, Steven Ferrey

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

This article provides an examination of the legal issues affecting siting of new wind projects and the ability of states to use preemptive state powers to preempt local zoning and land-use issues to circumvent local opposition to wind power siting, with detailed case studies of law in different states.

Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, January 2016, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

In this section: • United States and France Sign Agreement to Compensate Holocaust Victims • United States Conducts Naval Operation Within Twelve Nautical Miles of Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, Prompting Protests from China • United States Pursues Bilateral and Multilateral Initiatives in and Around the Arctic

Federal Treaty And Trust Obligations, And Ocean Acidification, Robert T. Anderson

Articles

Ocean acidification will have profound effects on the entire human population and natural resources that depend in any way upon Earth’s oceans and lakes. In turn, those effects will be even greater, and potentially catastrophic, for indigenous populations who rely on the seas for physical, cultural, and spiritual sustenance. While most research on carbon dioxide absorption from the atmosphere has focused on oceans and the resulting acidification, many believe that acidification levels also will also increase in the Great Lakes. Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes regions share reliance on marine and freshwater resources, and many …

The Revival Of Climate Change Science In U.S. Courts, William H. Rodgers, Jr., Andrea K. Rodgers

Articles

Science never has been the obstacle to the recognition of climate change. Since Arhennius did his original calculations in 1896, the scientific world was quite aware of the prospect that industrial-age levels of carbon dioxide pollution would result in increasing global temperatures and acidification of the world’s oceans. The brilliant—and striking—graphical display that we know today as the Keeling Curve started in 1957, and year after year it records the relentless upward march of these atmospheric pollutant loadings.

Through the years, necessarily, a vast number of scientific warnings, publications, findings, and predictions would be offered to the public at large, …