Natural Resources Law Commons^™

Community-Driven Climate Solutions: How Public-Private Partnerships With Land Trusts Can Advance Climate Action, Jessica Grannis

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

In 2018 and 2019, several landmark developments demonstrated the failings of past efforts to address climate change and the need for new and more ambitious solutions. In October 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) released a dire report indicating that the window is rapidly closing for countries to dramatically reduce emissions in order to avoid the worst consequences of climate change and predicting dramatic consequences to the environment and public health if countries fail to take action; young activists started taking to the streets to demand more ambitious action to address climate change; and, at the 25th Conference …

Don’T Throw Caution To The Wind: In The Green Energy Transition, Not All Critical Minerals Will Be Goldmines, Perrine Toledano, Martin Dietrich Brauch, Solina Kennedy, Howard Mann

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The green energy transition will be exceedingly mineral intensive. Manufacturing solar panels, wind turbine and batteries to power cleaner energies is set to significantly increase the demand for co-called “critical” minerals. Such a forecast prompts high expectations in mineral-rich countries and suggests promising opportunities for developing countries.

However, the projects to increase the primary extraction of critical minerals rest on bullish forecasts and uncertain terrain due to a number of factors explored in the paper that threaten to leave these investments obsolete and economically stranded.

Governments, international actors, and mining advocates seeking to optimize the value of green energy mineral …

A Review Of Sierra Leone’S Mines And Minerals Act, Tehtena Mebratu-Tsegaye, Perrine Toledano, Sophie Thomashausen

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

With the support of Oxfam, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment reviewed select provisions in the Mines and Minerals Act 2009 and corresponding policy statements from the Minerals Policy 2018 to provide recommendations for how to best align the anticipated new mining law with international best practice. The 2009 law was reviewed with a focus on the following topics:

• Fiscal regime;
• Climate change;
• Access to and use of land;
• Community consultations and participation;
• Human rights; and
• Community development agreements.

The policy brief aims to support the Government of Sierra Leone in the ongoing law reform process.

Preparing Legal Frameworks For Environmental Disasters: Practical Considerations For Host States, Brooke Guven, Perrine Toledano, Lise Johnson

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Projects in the extractives sector carry risks of lasting, and sometimes irreversible, damage to the environment. Nonetheless, these projects are important for accelerating the economic development of host countries. Governments seeking to mitigate the adverse effects of foreign investment often face pushback from investors that are unwilling to change their practices in order to avert environmental disaster. This report sets forth certain steps that host-governments can take during the pre-investment, operation, and enforcement phases of extractives projects to provide financial and other protection in the context of environmental disasters associated with private sector investments.

Upon comparative review of five Case …

Electric Utility Alignment With The Sdgs & The Paris Climate Agreement, Perrine Toledano, Aniket Shah, Nicolas Maennling, Ryan J. Lasnick

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda poses a unique and critical challenge to the energy sector: how to scale access to clean energy to power sustainable, economic development for a growing population, while simultaneously decarbonizing global energy supply. Expanding access to clean energy will play a crucial role in achieving nearly every one of the Sustainable Development Goals, including those related to agricultural production, health outcomes, educational performance, water systems, access to infrastructure, and reducing inequalities. However, practices by some actors in the energy sector, and continued over-reliance on greenhouse gas-intensive fossil fuels also undermine global efforts to mitigate climate change …

Water Law And Climate Change In The United States: A Review Of The Scholarship, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Climate change’s effects on water resources have been some of the first realities of ecological change in the Anthropocene, forcing climate change adaptation efforts even as the international community seeks to mitigate climate change. Water law has thus become one vehicle of climate change adaptation. Research into the intersections between climate change and water law in the United States must contend with the facts that: (1) climate change affects different parts of this large country differently; and (2) United States water law is itself a complicated subject, with each state having its own laws for surface water and groundwater and …

Climate Perspectives Across The Generations, Dan Farber

Natural Resources Journal

Climate change is a multi-generational problem, but it does not impact all generations in the same way. Correspondingly, older Americans and younger ones differ greatly in how they perceive the issue and how they respond. The wave of youth activism epitomized by Greta Thunburg is on one side of this generation gap. Donald Trump’s climate skepticism is on the other. We’re talking about large groups of people, so there is a range of attitudes on both sides, but these two individuals represent the generational differences in dramatic form. My goal today is to explore these generational differences. I want to …

Creative Legal Approaches To Protect Youth’S Constitutional Rights In The Face Of Climate Change, Andrea Rodgers

Natural Resources Journal

This interview with Andrea Rodgers was produced through written responses to prompts from Ariel MacMillan-Sanchez in April 2020.

Reflections On Rural Resilience: As The Climate Changes, Will Rural Areas Become The Urban Backyard?, Elizabeth Andrews, Jesse Reiblich

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Article discusses the impacts of climate change on rural communities, including how they can exacerbate current economic and environmental challenges there, such as increasing absentee landownership and nonexistent or failing septic systems. It focuses on the accompanying policy challenges in addressing these issues with an emphasis on efforts to address the needs of socially vulnerable communities. Additionally, it proposes key policy recommendations, including funding, planning for sea level rise, public education and communication, and addressing rural needs in the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (“TMDL”) process.

Outcome Report On The Climate Crisis, Global Land Use And Human Rights Conference, Mateusz Kasprowicz, Sam Szoke-Burke, Kaitlin Y. Cordes

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

On September 27^th, the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Landesa, the New York City Bar Association International Environmental Law Committee, and Wake Forest Law School hosted a day-long conference on the intersection between land use, the climate crisis and clean energy transition, and human rights.

Held at the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, the conference brought together individuals from civil society organizations, governments, and academia, as well as lawyers, climate scientists, land-rights experts, indigenous representatives and other stakeholder groups. The panelists analyzed the critical role that land plays in …

Transnational Perspectives On The Paris Climate Agreement Beyond Paris: Redressing American Defaults In Caring For Earth’S Biosphere, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Anxiety about the fate of human civilization is rising. International Law has an essential role to play in sustaining community of nations. Without enhancing International Environmental Law, the biosphere that sustains all nations is imperiled. Laws in the United States can either impede or advance global environmental stewardship. What is entailed in such a choice?

The biosphere is changing. At a time when extraordinary technological prowess allows governments the capacity to know how deeply they are altering Earth's biosphere, nations experience a perverse inability to cooperate together. The Arctic is melting rapidly, with knock on effects for sea level rise …

Avoiding Maladaptations To Flooding And Erosion: A Case Study Of Alaska Native Villages, Elizaveta Barrett Ristroph

Ocean and Coastal Law Journal

This article offers perspective on how Alaska Native Villages (ANVs), which are small and rural indigenous communities, are adapting to changes in flooding and erosion. It considers which adaptations might be maladaptations and what might be done to facilitate adaptation short of relocating entire communities. It outlines the United States' legal framework applicable to flooding and erosion and considers why this framework may do little to assist ANVs and similarly situated small and rural communities. Findings regarding adaptation strategies and obstacles are drawn from my Ph.D. research, which involved a review of plans for fifty nine ANVs and 153 interviews …

Juliana V. United States, Daniel Brister

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In 2015, a group of adolescents between the ages of eight and nineteen filed a lawsuit against the federal government for infringing upon their civil rights to a healthy, habitable future living environment. Those Plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States alleged that the industrial-scale burning of fossil fuels was causing catastrophic and destabilizing impacts to the global climate, threatening the survival and welfare of present and future generations. Seeking to reduce the United States’ contributions to atmospheric carbon dioxide, Plaintiffs demanded injunctive and declaratory relief to halt the federal government’s policies of promoting and subsidizing fossil fuels, due to the …

Clean Energy Equity, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

Solar, wind, and other clean, renewable sources of energy promise to mitigate climate change, enhance energy security, and foster economic growth. But many of the policies in place to promote clean energy today are marred by an uneven distribution of economic opportunities and associated financial burdens. Tax incentives for renewables cost American taxpayers billions of dollars every year, yet the tax code effectively precludes all but the largest banks and most profitable corporations from reaping the benefits of these tax breaks. Other policies, such as renewable portfolio standards that set minimum quota to create demand for renewable electricity require such …

The (Next) Big Short And The End Of The Anthropocene, M. Alexander Pearl

Utah Law Review

It is incredibly difficult to imagine an event the likes of which humans have never seen before. That, in and of itself, renders the challenge to prepare for such an event even more difficult because there is no frame of reference pushing us to act. How do you prepare to avoid something which has never occurred in the history of human occupation? That is the challenge of climate change.

I argue that the Subprime Mortgage Crisis and its aftermath parallel the Climate Crisis in critical ways that should inform our tactics. Of course, there are obvious critical differences as well. …

Law, Cultural Heritage, And Climate Change In The United States, Casey J. Snyder

Pace Environmental Law Review

Climate change is a reality. What happens climatically over the upcoming centuries is partially dependent on the comprehensiveness of a global response to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. However, within a century, forecasts predict a one-meter sea level rise that could have grave implications to our society: the loss of an incalculable extent of cultural heritage. This Article examines the threat climate change poses to physical cultural heritage, like archaeological sites and historic structures, and the current framework of law, regulation, and policy in the United States meant to protect these resources. This Article blends research and data from climate …

State Public Nuisance Claims And Climate Change Adaptation, Albert C. Lin, Michael Burger

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Article explores the potential for state public nuisance claims to facilitate adaptation, resource protection, and other climate change responses by coastal communities in California. The California public nuisance actions represent just the latest chapter in efforts to spur responses to climate change and attribute responsibility for climate change through the common law. Part II of this Article describes the California public nuisance lawsuits and situates them in the context of common law actions directed against climate change. Part III considers the preliminary defenses that defendants have raised and could raise in the California public nuisance lawsuits, including the existence …

Betting On Climate Policy: Using Prediction Markets To Address Global Warming, Gary M. Lucas Jr, Felix Mormann

Faculty Scholarship

Global warming, sea level rise, and extreme weather events have made climate change a top priority for policymakers across the globe. But which policies are best suited to tackle the enormous challenges presented by our changing climate? This Article proposes that policymakers turn to prediction markets to answer that crucial question. Prediction markets have a strong track record of outperforming other forecasting mechanisms across a wide range of contexts — from predicting election outcomes and economic trends to guessing Oscar winners. In the context of climate change, market participants could, for example, bet on important climate outcomes conditioned on the …

Warming Oceans, Coastal Diseases, And Climate Change Public Health Adaptation, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Climate change is changing the world’s ocean in three important ways. First, the ocean is warming. Second, sea levels are rising. Finally, ice is melting. All of these changes have important implications for human disease risk, ranging from a fairly prosaic increase in harmful algal blooms to the science-fictionish re-release of deadly microbes from long ago.

In the United States, coastal adaptation efforts to date have been sluggish. Many uncertainties attend climate change’s effects on the ocean, particularly with regard to sea-level rise and ice melting. In addition, the time scales involved are generally long, outside of the planning ken …

Is Meat The New Tobacco? Regulating Food Demand In The Age Of Climate Change, Lingxi Chenyang

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Switching from a meat-heavy to a plant-based diet is one of the highest-impact lifestyle changes for climate mitigation and adaptation. However, conventional demand-side energy policy has focused on increasing consumption of efficient machines and fuels. Regulating food demand has key advantages. First, food consumption is biologically constrained, thus switching to more efficient foods avoids unintended consequences of switching to more efficient machines, like higher overall energy consumption. Second, food consumption, like smoking, is primed for normshifting because it occurs in socially conspicuous environments. Indeed, while place-based bans and information regulation were essential in lowering the prevalence of smoking, the same …

Adaptive Management For Ecosystem Services At The Wildland-Urban Interface, Robin Kundis Craig, J.B. Ruhl

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Managing the wildland-urban interface (WUI) is a widely-recognized land use problem plagued by a fractured geography of land parcels, management jurisdictions, and governance mandates and objectives. People who work in this field have suggested a variety of approaches to managing this interface, from informal governance to contracting to insurance. To date, however, none of these scholars have fully embraced the dynamism, uncertainty, and complexity of the WUI — that is, its status as a complex adaptive system. In focusing almost exclusively on the management of this interface to control wildfire, this scholarship largely ignores the factor that rampant wildfire is …

Strictly Leakage: How Minnesota Export Subsidies Pay For Climate Pollution, Hudson B. Kingston

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.

Savior Of Rural Landscapes Or Solomon's Choice? Colorado's Experiment With Alternative Water Transfer Methods For Water (Atms), Lisa Dilling, John Berggren, Jennifer Henderson, Douglas Kenney

Publications

This article focuses on the emerging landscape for Alternative Transfer Methods (ATMs) in Colorado, USA. ATMs are developing within a legal landscape of water rights governed by prior appropriation law, growing demand for water in urban centers driven by population growth, and an aging rural farm population whose most valuable asset may include senior water rights. Rural-urban water transfers in the past have been linked to the collapse of rural economies if pursued to the extreme extent of “buy-and-dry,” where water rights were purchased outright and permanently removed from agricultural land (e.g. Crowley County). This article focuses on the emerging …

Tribal Tools & Legal Levers For Halting Fossil Fuel Transport & Exports Through The Pacific Northwest, Mary Christina Wood

American Indian Law Journal

As alarming scientific predictions crystallize into the realities of today’s climate crisis, tribal communities in the Pacific Northwest find themselves on the front lines of a global assault launched by the fossil fuel industry. Encouraged by President Trump’s declaration of intent to unleash $50 trillion of America’s domestic fossil fuels, corporations push for massive expansion of the nation’s fossil fuel infrastructure—even as the world races towards irrevocable climate thresholds. The unprecedented onslaught hinges on the Pacific Northwest as a key link in a global market scheme. The coastal region sits as a proposed industrial gateway for huge export facilities transporting …

The Carbon Tax Vacuum And The Debate About Climate Change Impacts: Emission Taxation Of Commodity Crop Production In Food System Regulation, Gabriela Steier

Pace Environmental Law Review

The scientific consensus on climate change is far ahead of U.S. policy on point. In fact, the U.S. has a legal vacuum of carbon taxation while climate change continues to impact the codependence of agriculture and the environment. As this Article shows, carbon taxes follow the polluter-pays model, levying taxes on the highest greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions—and contributions to climate change. But this is not only unsustainable; it would also undermine agricultural production and, thus, food security. This Article describes how the law can regulate climate change contributions and promote adaptation and mitigation supported through carbon taxes in the agricultural …

Highway Culverts, Salmon Runs, And The Stevens Treaties: A Century Of Litigating Pacific Northwest Tribal Fishing Rights, Ryan Hickey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Isaac Stevens, then Superintendent of Indian Affairs and Governor of Washington Territory, negotiated a series of treaties with Indian tribes in the Pacific Northwest during 1854 and 1855. A century and a half later in 2001, the United States joined 21 Indian tribes in filing a Request for Determination in the United States District Court for the District of Washington. Plaintiffs alleged the State of Washington had violated those 150-year-old treaties, which remained in effect, by building and maintaining culverts under roads that prevented salmon passage. This litigation eventually reached the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held in favor …

Collaboration Through Nepa: Achieving A Social License To Operate On Federal Public Lands, Temple Stoellinger, L. Steven Smutko, Jessica M. Western

Public Land & Resources Law Review

As demand and consumption of natural gas increases, so will drilling operations to extract the natural gas on federal public lands. Fueled by the shale gas revolution, natural gas drilling operations are now frequently taking place, not only in the highly documented urban settings, but also on federal public lands with high conservation value. The phenomenon of increased drilling in sensitive locations, both urban and remote, has sparked increased public opposition, requiring oil and gas producers to reconsider how they engage the public. Oil and gas producers have increasingly deployed the concept of a social license to operate to gain …

Public-Private Conservation Agreements And The Greater Sage-Grouse, Justin R. Pidot

Public Land & Resources Law Review

In 2015, the Obama Administration announced its conservation plans for the greater sage-grouse, an iconic bird of the intermountain west.Political leadership at the time described those plans as the “largest landscape-level conservation effort in U.S. history,”and they served as the foundation for a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) that a listing of the bird was not warranted under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”). The Trump Administration appears poised to substantially amend the plans, although an array of interested parties have urged that the plans be left intact. Regardless of the outcome of this debate, conservation of …

Streamlining The Production Of Clean Energy: Proposals To Reform The Hydroelectricity Licensing Process, Travis Kavulla, Laura Farkas

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Hydroelectric power is an efficient and clean source of power. In an era when air emissions dominate public concern about the environmental effects of the energy sector, it is a paradox that among the most highly regulated energy projects are hydroelectric dams, which do not combust fuel. This is partly due to a failure of successive statutory enactments,which have transformed hydroelectric licensing from a regulatory “one-stop shop” with a single regulator, to a process chained to a bewilderingnumber of often conflicting regulatory agencies, often riven with delay. Hydroelectric licensing has also failed because its capacious standard of review encourages special-interest …

Center For Biological Diversity V. Zinke, Ryan Hickey

Public Land & Resources Law Review

The oft-cited “arbitrary and capricious” standard revived the Center for Biological Diversity’s most recent legal challenge in its decades-long quest to see arctic grayling listed under the Endangered Species Act. While this Ninth Circuit decision did not grant grayling ESA protections, it did require the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its 2014 finding that listing grayling as threatened or endangered was unwarranted. In doing so, the court found “range,” as used in the ESA, vague while endorsing the FWS’s 2014 clarification of that term. Finally, this holding identified specific shortcomings of the challenged FWS finding, highlighting how …