Natural Resources Law Commons^™

Introduction: What You Don't Know Does Protect You, Rebecca Roose

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Property In Ecology, Jonathan H. Adler

Natural Resources Journal

No abstract provided.

"I Had A Lakehouse In Tahoe": The Legal Ramifications Of California Tapping Lake Tahoe And How It Affects Homeowners, Gregory Stratz

Marquette Law Review

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Trickster Law: Promoting Resilience And Adaptive Governance By Allowing Other Perspectives On Natural Resource Management, Robin Kundis Craig

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

The Anthropocene requires a new approach to natural resources law and policy, an approach that this short article terms "trickster law." Trickster law incorporates insights from resilience theory, adaptive governance scholarship, and cultural/anthropological studies of trickster tales to create a legal approach to natural resource management that is precautionary, engaged in proactive planning, based in principled flexibility, and pluralistic. This article focuses on the "pluralism" component, presenting three examples of how law modified to be more inclusive and respect different value systems has generated new approaches to natural resources management that better promote social-ecological resilience to climate change and other …

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 …

Atomizing The Clean Water Act: Ignoring The Whole Statute And Asking The Wrong Questions, Robert W. Adler, Brian House

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

When attempting to resolve difficult issues of statutory construction involving complex statutes, courts sometimes focus on individual words and phrases without evaluating how they fit within the text and structure of the whole statute. We call this “atomization” of the statutory text. Judges have fallen into this trap in construing the Clean Water Act (CWA) and other lengthy, complex federal environmental statutes. That tendency contributes to ongoing confusion about the scope and coverage of the CWA. During the 2019-2020 Term, the U.S. Supreme Court will resolve a circuit split in the most recent line of cases exhibiting this tendency. Courts …

Beeware Of The Consequences: The Importance Of Urban Apiaries And Environmental Adr, Chelsea Gallay

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Part I of this note will discuss urban agriculture and the rise of urban beekeeping; Part II will outline the role urban apiaries are playing in today's society; Part III will explore the disputes that arise between urban community members and beekeepers; and lastly, Part IV will discuss how to use environmental dispute resolution techniques, such. as mediation and negotiation, to solve environmental conflicts between urban apiarists and local community members.

Book Review: Jonathan P. Thompson, River Of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, And Green Behind The Gold King Mine Disaster (2018), Clifford J. Villa

Faculty Scholarship

On August 5, 2015, contractors for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) investigating the Gold King Mine in southwestern Colorado accidently released some three million gallons of contaminated water into the Animas River, triggering weeks of front-page headlines, months of congressional hearings, and now years of litigation. River of Lost Souls: The Science, Politics, and Greed Behind the Gold King Mine Disaster, a new book by Jonathan P. Thompson, suggests by its title a human folly behind this “disaster” much broader and deeper than one tragic accident wrought by EPA contractors. On this thesis, Thompson certainly delivers. However, what …

Rethinking Public Land Use Planning, Mark Squillace

Publications

The public land use planning process is broken. The land use plans of the principal multiple-use agencies—the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”)—are unnecessarily complex, take too long to complete, monopolize the time and resources of public land management agency staffs, and fail to engage the general public in any meaningful way. Moreover, the end result is too often a plan that is not sufficiently nimble to respond to changing conditions on the ground, a problem that appears to be accelerating due to climate change.

It might seem easy to chalk up these problems to …

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 …

Mining At The Crossroads Of Law And Development: A Comparative Review Of Labor-Related Local Content Provisions In Africa's Mining Laws Through The Prism Of Automation, Nneoma Veronica Nwogu

Washington International Law Journal

Africa boasts one-third of the world’s mineral resources. Mineral development, if governed by appropriate legal frameworks, is key to facilitating development in Africa. With this realization, the African Union (AU) adopted the Africa Mining Vision (AMV) in 2009, which aims to prioritize African industrialization, safeguard the environment, build and utilize local labor force capacity, facilitate transparency, and improve revenue-sharing mechanisms in Africa. However, at the same time, the dawn of artificial intelligence (AI) and complex levels of automation is making quick inroads into the mineral development sector. This article argues that, in response to the AMV, over half of Africa’s …

The International Law Commission And The Progressive Development And Codification Of Principles Of International Environmental Law, Nilüfer Oral

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Genie Is Out Of The De-Extinction Bottle: A Problem In Risk Regulation And Regulatory Gaps, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Once the province of horror films and fantasy, the idea of recreating extinct life forms is poised to move from science fiction to laboratories and from there to the world at large. While “de-extinction is not something that will take place tomorrow . . . scientists are making major advancements, and eventual success appears inevitable.” Spurred on by the burgeoning field of genetic engineering, it was only a matter of time before scientists turned their attention to recreating extinct life forms, either for the thrill of it or in atonement for the human role in the extinction process.

But science …

Applying New International Principles Of Transboundary Water Allocation To Florida V. Georgia's Doctrine Of Equitable Apportionment, Elizabeth Holden

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Human conflicts over access to water often focalize around transboundary waterbodies. For example, in the United States, the "tri-state water wars" between Georgia, Alabama, and Florida are fights over the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basin. These tri-state water wars demonstrate water's economic and ecological value. Moreover, these conflicts are likely to escalate as the impacts of climate change decrease freshwater supplies globally.

Both in the United States and internationally, states traditionally address these conflicts through common law principles, such as the doctrine of equitable apportionment. The Supreme Court applied the doctrine most recently in Florida v. Georgia, reiterating the doctrine's flexibility without …

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 …

Waiving Federal Sovereign Immunity In Original Actions Between States, Sandra B. Zellmer

Faculty Law Review Articles

There are tremendous disparities between high stakes original actions between states before the US. Supreme Court, where there is no waiver of federal sovereign immunity, and other types of cases in the lower courts, where a plethora of immunity waivers allow states and other parties to seek relief from the federal government for Fifth Amendment takings, unlawful agency action, and tort claims. Federal actions or omissions are often at the heart of the dispute, and federal involvement may be crucial for purposes of providing an equitable remedy to the state parties, but there is no reliable mechanism for bringing the …

Waters Of The State, Joseph Regalia, Noah D. Hall

Scholarly Works

This article explores the "waters of the state" in three parts. First, we look to what the states say for themselves about water in their constitutions and statutes. This is not intended as a comprehensive survey, but rather a thorough sampling of the diversity in how states assert themselves over territorial water. There is a tremendous range in the scope of state assertions, in terms of both hydrologic (what waters are included) and legal scope (what states can and should do with water). The diversity and distinctions turn out to be of limited importance, though, at least on the ground. …

The Public Trust Doctrine, Outer Space, And The Global Commons: Time To Call Home Et, Hope M. Babcock

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Space exploration is heating up. Governments and private interests are on a fast track to develop technologies to send people and equipment to celestial bodies, like the moon and asteroids, to extract their untapped resources. Near-space is rapidly filling up with public and private satellites, causing electromagnetic interference problems and dangerous space debris from collisions and earlier launches. The absence of a global management system for the private commercial development of outer space resources will allow these near space problems to be exported further into the galaxy. Moreover, without a governing authority or rules controlling entry or limiting despoliation, outer …

Aba Rpte Conservation Easement Task Force Report: Recommendations Regarding Conservation Easements And Federal Tax Law, W. William Weeks

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Authors' Synopsis: In October 2015, the American Bar Association's Real Property, Trust and Estate Law (RPTE) section convened a Conservation Easement Task Force. The objective of the Task Force was to provide recommendations regarding federal tax law as it relates to conservation easements. This Report is the culmination of the Task Force's work. Part I of the Report is an Executive Summary of the Task Force's recommendations. Part II provides the background necessary to understand the Task Force's recommendations. Part III briefly sets forth the Task Force's comments on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 as it relates …

The New Agriculture: From Food Farms To Solar Farms, Jessica Owley, Amy Wilson Morris

Articles

Across the United States, government agencies and energy developers are looking to agricultural land for development of renewable energy. One attraction of agricultural lands is that they are already relatively ecologically impaired compared with the previous solar development sites in the California and Arizona desert that have been a major source of concern for many environmental groups-and subject to expensive mitigation requirements under the Endangered Species Act. Renewable energy development pressures are accelerating the existing loss of agricultural land, heightening concerns about food security and the economic viability of agricultural communities. California farmland is at the center of this conflict. …