De- and Re-constructing Public Governance for Biodiversity Conservation


Book Description

This Article deconstructs the substantive, procedural, and structural components of biodiversity governance in the United States. Though proposals for untangling wicked problems largely focus on procedural governance, managing complex problems like biodiversity loss also requires consideration of substantive and structural elements. Particularly in the context of global anthropogenic climate change, the substantive goals and tools of public action, the processes used by governmental institutions to advance such goals and implement such tools, and the structure of allocated authority among public institutions have been devised in ways that make biodiversity loss virtually impossible to tackle meaningfully. In other words, the existing legal infrastructure lacks the adaptive capacity to manage complexity and uncertainty.A preliminary reconstruction of public biodiversity governance explains how the United States might reframe public institutions to better cope with the wickedness of biodiversity loss. Express integration of ecological health and reliance on more active and flexible interventions in conservation laws may be necessary for managing ecological change. Significant opportunities also remain for adapting biodiversity governance to promote learning, reduce uncertainty, and adjust strategies as ecological conditions shift and managers gain information. Finally, tailored alterations to the allocation of authority over natural resources can leverage key advantages of centralized and/or coordinated institutions while maintaining the largely decentralized, independent, and overlapping character of public biodiversity governance.




The Governance of Nature and the Nature of Governance


Book Description

Biodiversity and ecosystem services are being degraded faster than at any other time in human history.




Forest and Nature Governance


Book Description

Today, problems such as deforestation, biodiversity loss and illegal logging have provoked various policy responses that are often referred to as forest and nature governance. In its broadest interpretation, governance is about the many ways in which public and private actors from the state, market and/or civil society govern public issues at multiple scales. This book takes a fresh perspective on the study of forest and nature governance. Departing from ‘practice theory’, and building upon scholars like Giddens, Bourdieu, Reckwitz, Schatzki and Callon, it seeks to move beyond established understandings of institutions, actors, and knowledge. In so doing, it not only presents an innovative conceptual and methodological framework for a practice based approach, but also rich case studies and ethnographies. Finally, this book is about how actors involved in governance talk about and work with trees, forests, biodiversity, wildlife, and so on, while acting upon forest policies, environmental discourses, codes of conduct, or scientific insights.




Transboundary Governance of Biodiversity


Book Description

Transboundary Governance of Biodiversity compiles critical analysis of the regulatory frameworks applicable to the transboundary governance of biodiversity by specialists from Europe and Africa. Drawing on their vast experience as lawyers, political scientists and natural resource management experts, they provide a critique and contemporary perspectives on what has become one of the most challenging aspects of global environmental governance in the Anthropocene: effective biodiversity conservation in times of unprecedented environmetal crises. With a unique North-South focus and a legal focus infused by multi-disciplinary regulatory dimensions, this peer-reviewed publication offers a comprehensive analysis of international and regional environmental law frameworks applicable to the transboundary governance of biodiversity.




Environmental Protection


Book Description

The purchase of this ebook edition does not entitle you to receive access to the Connected eBook with Study Center on CasebookConnect. You will need to purchase a new print book to get access to the full experience, including: lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities; practice questions from your favorite study aids; an outline tool and other helpful resources. Environmental Protection: Law and Policy, respected for its intellectual breadth and depth, is an interdisciplinary overview of Environmental Law, incorporating history, theory, litigation, regulation, policy, science, economics, and ethics. It covers the history of environmental protection; policy objectives; regulatory design strategies; and constitutional federalism and related statutory interpretation issues concerning the design and implementation of the environmental laws. Coverage also includes the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, CERCLA, and other pollution control statutes; a chapter on climate change that discusses scientific, policy, program design, and statutory authority questions; and natural resource management issues (including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and limited coverage of national forest management). New to the 9th Edition: New co-author Alejandro Camacho, a leading scholar on natural resources and public land law Ch.1: New materials on the Flint, Michigan battles over lead contamination of the municipal water system Ch.2: Discussion of regulatory and judicial skirmishes resulting from policy differences among the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations Ch.3: Changes, driven by the Supreme Court, to areas such as standard of judicial review (including the Court’s endorsement of the major questions doctrine) and potential changes to entrenched law in areas such as the nondelegation doctrine Ch.4: Council on Environmental Quality’s overhaul of its 1978 NEPA regulations under the Trump administration and the Biden CEQ’s phased revision of those regulations; Food and Water Watch v. FERC; Sierra Club v. EPA Ch.5: Discussion of recent research and scholarship on biodiversity loss, the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict the scope of the Endangered Species Act, and the Biden administration’s attempts to reverse or revise these changes; recent developments on listing, critical habitat, federal agency consultation, taking prohibitions, and incidental takings Ch.6: Updated references to air pollution science Ch.7: Updates on ongoing litigation involving the “waters of the United States” definition in the Clean Water Act Ch.8: EPA’s efforts to implement 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act; League of United Latin American Citizens v. Regan Ch.9: New case law under CERCLA; discussion of the treatment in the Restatement (Third) Torts of joint and several liability Ch.10: Streamlined coverage of environmental enforcement process Ch.11: Updated coverage of climate change law, policy, and science to reflect opposed regulatory responses to climate change by the Trump and Biden administrations; West Virginia v. EPA Online environmental justice supplement Streamlined note material Benefits for instructors and students: Thorough, nuanced treatment of existing laws, regulations, and cases, regulatory design strategies, and current and developing policy objectives Interdisciplinary approach incorporating science, economics, and ethics Coverage of major federal pollution control, environmental assessment, and species protection laws Charts and graphics Exercises and problems Distinguished author team with extensive practical, scholarly, and teaching experience







The Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law


Book Description

The Asian Yearbook of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law aims to publish peer-reviewed scholarly articles and reviews as well as significant developments in human rights and humanitarian law. It examines international human rights and humanitarian law with a global reach, though its particular focus is on the Asian region. Volume 7 of the Yearbook covers a wide range of topics, which have been organized along four central themes: Human Rights Protection and Erosion during the (Post-) COVID-19 Pandemic; Economic, Social and Environmental Rights Contestation and Evolution; Human Rights Protection of Vulnerable Persons; and Human Rights and Democratic Values under Threat.




Conservation Biogeography


Book Description

CONSERVATION BIOGEOGRAPHY The Earth’s ecosystems are in the midst of an unprecedented period of change as a result of human action. Many habitats have been completely destroyed or divided into tiny fragments, others have been transformed through the introduction of new species, or the extinction of native plants and animals, while anthropogenic climate change now threatens to completely redraw the geographic map of life on this planet. The urgent need to understand and prescribe solutions to this complicated and interlinked set of pressing conservation issues has lead to the transformation of the venerable academic discipline of biogeography – the study of the geographic distribution of animals and plants. The newly emerged sub-discipline of conservation biogeography uses the conceptual tools and methods of biogeography to address real world conservation problems and to provide predictions about the fate of key species and ecosystems over the next century. This book provides the first comprehensive review of the field in a series of closely interlinked chapters addressing the central issues within this exciting and important subject.




Transforming Parks and Protected Areas


Book Description

** This title was originally published in 2007. The version published in 2012 is a PB reprint of the original HB** The protection of natural resources and biodiversity through protected areas is increasingly based on ecological principles. Simultaneously the concept of ecosystem-based management has become broadly accepted and implemented over the last two decades. However, this period has also seen unprecedented rapid global social and ecological change, which has weakened many protection efforts. These changes have created an awareness of opportunities for innovative approaches to managing protected areas and of the need to integrate social and economic concerns with ecological elements in protected areas and parks management. A rare collection of articles that fuses academic theory, critique of practice and practical knowledge, Transforming Parks and Protected Areas analyzes and critiques these theories, practices, and philosophies, looking in-detail at the emerging issues in the design and operation of parks and protected areas. Addressing critical dynamics and current practices in parks and protected areas management, the excellent volume goes well beyond simple managerial solutions and descriptions of standard practice. With contributions from leading academics and practitioners, this book will be of value to all those working within ecology, natural resources, conservation and parks management as well as students and academics across the environmental sciences and land use management.




Keeping Faith with Nature


Book Description

As the twenty-first century dawns, public land policy is entering a new era. This timely book examines the historical, scientific, political, legal, and institutional developments that are changing management priorities and policies—developments that compel us to view the public lands as an integrated ecological entity and a key biodiversity stronghold. Once the background is set, each chapter opens with a specific natural resource controversy, ranging from the Pacific Northwest’s spotted owl imbroglio to the struggle over southern Utah’s Colorado Plateau country. Robert Keiter uses these case histories to analyze the ideas, forces, and institutions that are both fomenting and retarding change. Although Congress has the final say in how the public domain is managed, the public land agencies, federal courts, and western communities are each playing important roles in the transformation to an ecological management regime. At the same time, a newly emergent and homegrown collaborative process movement has given the public land constituencies a greater role in administering these lands. Arguing that we must integrate the new imperatives of ecosystem science with our devolutionary political tendencies, Keiter outlines a coherent new approach to natural resources policy.