A Challenge to Sustainable Governments?

Sustainability, an environmentally-friendly term that previously incited political unrest, economic uncertainty, and even emotional outrage, has become quite commonplace. In federal, state, and local agencies, sustainable practices have dominated dialogues relating to indoor air quality, water availability, energy use and production; but also growth planning and development controls, public spaces and aesthetics. Governmental entities are installing low-flow water fixtures and energy-efficient appliances, redesigning rooftops and skylines, and inviting industry and neighborhoods to the negotiation table to determine the character of future communities. Sustainability has become the vocabulary of politics and is changing those past practices that have become known as resource-wasteful, inefficient, and costly relative to human and environmental needs. Despite the explosion of interest and excitement, many have wondered whether sustainability would find its own limits, or if limitations would be dredged from strategic litigation aimed precisely at identifying both the meaning of sustainability and the nexus between traditional police power authority and a growing awareness of long-term public welfare needs in the natural environment. The point of sustainable practices is not to disrupt existing markets, not to interfere with property rights, and not to place non-human interests above economic ones. Instead, sustainability integrates a comprehensive, whole systems analysis of every product, an integration made necessary essentially because we failed to do so in the past. The idea of sustainable industry is persuasive because it is flexible and responsive to new technologies and circumstances. Sustainable practices are likewise persuasive because they are economically, environmentally, and socially superior to the alternatives in the long term. What will make sustainability pervasive, however, is that, in its inclusiveness, sustainable choices are valuable choices

The Gap Between Informational Goals and the Duty to Gather Information: Challenging Piecemealed Review under the Washington State Environmental Policy Act

In 1971, Washington enacted the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), which requires agencies to make a threshold determination of whether a project is likely to significantly affect the environment and, where such impacts are likely, to produce an environmental impact statement (EIS). One problem faced in implementing the goals of SEPA is the practice of piecemealing. Part I of this Article introduces the piecemeal problem by describing three common piecemeal situations. The first situation occurs when a project proposal is divided into such small parts that the environmental impacts from each individual part appear insignificant and the impact from the sum of the parts is ignored. The second situation arises when a project proposal is properly divided into phases of construction, but earlier phases avoid the speculative study of environmental impacts accumulating with later phases, and later phases are drawn narrowly to avoid study of the cumulative impacts from earlier phases. The final piecemeal situation arises when environmental review of land use legislation is deferred based on promises of site-specific review for projects subject to the proposed scheme, but project proponents subsequently disclaim responsibility for assessing the cumulative environmental impacts from that legislation. Part II will then demonstrate the legislative and regulatory intent that environmental impacts be examined in a thorough and comprehensive manner and confirm this requirement of comprehensive review with a brief examination of case law that establishes a prohibition against piecemealed review. After Parts I and II establish that the piecemeal problem should not exist, Part III will proceed to discuss the source of the continuing piecemeal problem, specifically addressing the continuing confusion in the application of two independent regulatory standards purporting to restrict piecemealed review—cumulative impact analysis and project connectivity. Part IV examines in detail the judicial confusion over the interpretation of these standards under both SEPA and its federal counterpart, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Having established that the interpretive confusion is unwarranted, Part V then considers whether practical concerns may justify the piecemeal loophole and concludes that such concerns are inimical to the purposes underlying SEPA. Finally, Part VI of this essay examines supplementary environmental studies as a potential, but questionable, solution to the piecemealing problem

The Gap Between Informational Goals and the Duty to Gather Information: Challenging Piecemealed Review under the Washington State Environmental Policy Act

In 1971, Washington enacted the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), which requires agencies to make a threshold determination of whether a project is likely to significantly affect the environment and, where such impacts are likely, to produce an environmental impact statement (EIS). One problem faced in implementing the goals of SEPA is the practice of piecemealing. Part I of this Article introduces the piecemeal problem by describing three common piecemeal situations. The first situation occurs when a project proposal is divided into such small parts that the environmental impacts from each individual part appear insignificant and the impact from the sum of the parts is ignored. The second situation arises when a project proposal is properly divided into phases of construction, but earlier phases avoid the speculative study of environmental impacts accumulating with later phases, and later phases are drawn narrowly to avoid study of the cumulative impacts from earlier phases. The final piecemeal situation arises when environmental review of land use legislation is deferred based on promises of site-specific review for projects subject to the proposed scheme, but project proponents subsequently disclaim responsibility for assessing the cumulative environmental impacts from that legislation. Part II will then demonstrate the legislative and regulatory intent that environmental impacts be examined in a thorough and comprehensive manner and confirm this requirement of comprehensive review with a brief examination of case law that establishes a prohibition against piecemealed review. After Parts I and II establish that the piecemeal problem should not exist, Part III will proceed to discuss the source of the continuing piecemeal problem, specifically addressing the continuing confusion in the application of two independent regulatory standards purporting to restrict piecemealed review—cumulative impact analysis and project connectivity. Part IV examines in detail the judicial confusion over the interpretation of these standards under both SEPA and its federal counterpart, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Having established that the interpretive confusion is unwarranted, Part V then considers whether practical concerns may justify the piecemeal loophole and concludes that such concerns are inimical to the purposes underlying SEPA. Finally, Part VI of this essay examines supplementary environmental studies as a potential, but questionable, solution to the piecemealing problem

Race, Space, and Place: Interrogating Whiteness Through a Critical Approach to Place

Drawing from George Lipsitz’s notion that whiteness is “not so much a color as a condition,” this Article embarks on the project of framing the manner and methods through which whiteness continues to dominate space and place. Wherever whiteness dominates space, space carries rules and expectations about the identity and characteristics of people who are present—visitors and jaunters, owners and occupiers—and the types of activities and cultural practices that might occur there. Occasionally, spaces are racialized because of intentional practices of discrimination and segregation. In others, less intentional methods produce racialized space. In both, American spaces tell their own histories of exclusion and violence and hate. This Article proposes understanding how the white space is maintained by looking to the intersection of race, space, and place. Race, a social construct often designed to create and maintain subordination, is an essential lens for understanding the ways that history and power disparities shape the values we attach to land and that come to define our communities. Space in this Article refers to geographical and temporal location, where racially defining moments may occur. Place, often appearing as a community’s sense of place, illustrates the ways that individuals attach to spaces and communities, as well as how spaces and community attach to individuals. This examination reveals that racism produces, and is produced by, the spaces that we inhabit, visit, or even hear about. This examination also reveals that such racialized spaces can become racialized places. Yet, just as place can serve as the consecration of bias, it can also assist in identifying and naming racial subordination. To understand how the framework of race, space, and place operates, this Article examines the idea of the community’s comprehensive land use plan, the publication of which signifies the moment when a grounded group of people raise their flags and announce to the world, “this is who we are.” The comprehensive plan is the grasp of the past, the path to the future, and the self-assessment of the character of a particular community. It is the statement that sets a community apart from others, and it entails the reasons that residents adore (or suffer) their communities. Although there is a lot of anti-racist work to do in the land use context, the comprehensive plan serves as a good launching point because it is intended as a tool of local strength and cohesion. The comprehensive plan is, in the land use context, the essential community-building moment of local governance. Part I of this Article introduces the purposes and challenges of the comprehensive plan, followed by an analysis of the racial biases evident in the planning undertaken in the seemingly picturesque Amherst, Massachusetts. Part II examines the framework of race, space, and place, identifying and illustrating the types of coded language and systemic practices that surface in a racial justice audit of local planning documents. Part III then introduces a variety of devices that will make racialized histories more visible and transform the white domination of space into something more just and inclusive. This abstract has been adapted from the author\u27s introduction

Pfizer Animal Health Gift

Wetlands perform certain functions, including water filtration and the provision of wildlife habitats, from which humans benefit in the form of drinkable water and biodiversity. Trees produce oxygen, capture air and water pollutants, and provide shade, which help humans breathe, manage storm waters, and find a comfortable place to relax on a hot day. These are services that are provided by functioning ecosystems and are measured through the ecological economics of ecosystem services. The study of ecosystem services has provided an important insight: for the most part, those very services are ignored or undervalued. Although humans derive enormous benefits from ecosystem services, these services are neither bought or sold in the marketplace, and, therefore, have no market value. This Article applies the idea of ecosystem services to the management of watersheds and, in particular, the manner in which decisions in floodplains often undermine ecosystem functionality in floodplains. For instance, road and home construction along water courses and riverbed dredging can disrupt (or trade-off) the ecosystem’s ability to provide flood control and habitat services. The dangers in making such trade-off decisions are illustrated by the flood damage suffered during Tropical Storm Irene and contextualized within the framework of ecosystems services

Curtailing Ecosystem Exportation: Ecosystem Services As a Basis to Reconsider the Merits of Export-Driven Agriculture in Economies Highly Dependent on Agricultural Exports

ABSTRACT Functioning ecosystems play a critical role in providing goods and services needed to sustain human life.\u27 Water provision and filtration, biodiversity, nutrient cycling, climate regulation, and carbon sequestration are all examples of services ecosystems provide that no society could survive without.2 Yet ecosystem services have historically been taken for granted, depleted by intention or ignorance, and replaced with inadequate substitutes.\u27 Recent research on ecosystem services has exposed the shockingly high local, regional, and global costs of losing these essential services.\u2

Aligning Regulation with the Informational Need: Ecosystem Services and the Next Generation of Environmental Law

This article explores the Clinch Coalition decision to understand why the court would perpetuate a process that systematically rejects the relevance and value of ecosystem processes in the information gathering exercise entailed in these environmental regulations. The discussion begins with an introduction to ecosystem services as a study of human dependency on the services provided by functioning ecosystems. In the second section, the article turns to the Clinch Coalition decision to outline the arguments relied upon by the court to legitimize the Forest Service’s decision to avoid an ecosystem services analysis. The article then presents the Clinch Coalition decision as an illustration of a fundamental misunderstanding of ecosystem services and their relevance and value in environmental regulation. This article suggests that, by characterizing ecosystem services valuation as merely an alternative economic analysis or accounting method, the court highlighted an important informational goal for the next generation of environmental law: if environmental regulation is intended to facilitate a more efficient management of resources by correcting for resource market inefficiencies resulting from incomplete information, regulatory intervention should employ investigatory methodologies that result in the production of a more informed resource management decision. This article first questions whether ecosystem services valuation is indeed an alternative methodology. This section describes ecosystem services analysis as a means of economic and environmental valuation that is more inclusive than a commodity-based analysis: an analysis of ecosystem services is a more relevant and complete understanding of economics and environmental decision-making, not alternative methodology. Therefore, by rejecting the call for an ecosystem services analysis, the court allowed the agency to ignore relevant information about ecosystem impacts: ecosystem services analysis demands a more inclusive estimation of the opportunity cost of using and losing the ecosystems that produce timber, fish, and other goods and services, as well as the benefits of maintaining the flow of the goods and services that ecosystems produce. Second, this article concerns how to construct the notion of “information” to improve the information gathering exercise that is found in “action-forcing” statutes such as NEPA. Ecosystem services research supplies information on both economic values and ecosystem processes. Excluding an accounting of “ecosystem services” can produce decisions that do not accurately or efficiently reflect the interdependency between ecological and economic wealth. Understanding natural resources in terms of the value of ecosystem services that they produce helps to contextualize the relationships between public needs, private wealth, and the cost of ecosystem loss. Such information falls squarely into the informational mandate of our resource management goals, but more importantly, such information is currently excluded from most environmental and economic valuations