Anthem EnviroExperts

Reviewed by David Wirth, Boston College

The Law of Adaptation to Climate Change: U.S. and International Aspects, edited by Michael B. Gerrard and Katrina Fischer Kuh, American Bar Association Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources 2012, 928pp

This collection challenges traditional notions of the purpose of environmental law. From the early 1970s until recently, environmental law has been devoted to conservation, prevention, and restoration. Global warming changed all that, and policy responses now cleave into
one of two conceptual categories: mitigation (shorthand for emissions reductions) and adaptation. The latter has received almost no attention from a legal perspective until now.

The first substantive chapter, by Robert L. Fischman and Jillian R. Rountree, very usefully sets out the architecture for policy responses as “adaptive management.”  But despite the other authors’ valiant efforts, one is inevitably left with the impression that the law is poorly adapted to grappling with the need for adaptation described by Fischman and Rountree. In the U.S., addressed in the first half of the work, efforts worthy of a contortionist are required to press statutes containing regulatory tools designed to meet other policy goals into the service of adaptive management.

In the second half on international aspects, David Freestone sets out an international legal framework considerably more sophisticated than the overemphasized need for funding to developing countries. Kate Purcell addresses challenging questions related to the law of the sea under conditions of rising sea level without, unfortunately, speculating on the fate of a state whose territory is inundated altogether – does it continue even to exist?

Michelle Leighton accepts climate refugees as a practical reality, wisely avoiding the pitfall of attempting to craft a legal definition for those displaced by global warming. But as with domestic law, the overall impression is one of thin or non-existent remedies. Certainly this highly useful volume can serve as a template for the direction in which the law desperately needs to move.

Reviewed by Leah Stokes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Biermann and Pattberg examine how international institutions for the environment are changing with time due to new actors, new mechanisms and growing fragmentation.

Global Environmental Governance Reconsidered, by Frank Biermann and Philipp Pattberg, Eds., Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 320pp

Global Environmental Governance Reconsidered, edited by Frank Biermann and Philipp Pattberg, summarizes ten years of collaborative research on global environmental institutions. The book identifies three global governance trends: first, new actors are participating at the global scale; second, new private governance mechanisms are paralleling international treaties; third, new fragmentation in rules and institutions is occurring, both horizontally and vertically. These three concepts create the architecture for the book’s three sections and taken together they point to a decline in the state’s role in global environmental governance. The criticisms of private governance mechanisms, including poor implementation and a lack of capacity building, highlight problems in moving away from state-centered environmental institutions. However, as the chapter on market-based transnational governance experiments argues, increasing fragmentation in governance, while undermining multilateral negotiations, is a process likely to expand in the future.

The book is an interesting compilation of research projects, yet it has some weak points. While it examines international bureaucracies and transnational businesses, it does not focus enough on environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) or the role of the state. We know from earlier work that ENGOs are critical to raising awareness and transforming public opinion on environmental issues, catalyzing state action. In addition, the book’s focus on high-level institutional analysis eliminates some of the rich policy details that explain outcomes in specific cases, for example differences in genetically modified organisms (GMO) regulations, and causes for ambitious renewable energy policy. Nevertheless, the book provides an excellent summary of a collaborative, long-term study and should provide new material for debates on the use of science, the role of neoliberalism and the relevance of power in international environmental negotiations.

Review by Isabelle Anguelovski, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

In this book Park and Pellow explore environmental privilege in relation to the international flow of goods, services, and people and to the exacerbation of poverty and exclusion.

The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants Vs the Environment in America’s Eden, by Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David Pellow, New York University Press, 275pp

Much of the extensive literature on environmental justice has examined inequities in exposure to contamination. Historically, minorities and low-income populations have suffered from greater environmental harm from waste sites, incinerators, refineries, transportation, and small-area sources than white and well-off communities. However, inequalities exist not only in the distribution of environmental ills. They are also manifested in the territorial allocation of environmental goods and services, including parks, coasts, and open spaces, which scholars have recently started to pay more attention to.

In The Slums of Aspen, sociologists Lisa Park and David Pellow examine the flip side of environmental burden: environmental privilege. In Aspen, Colorado, the authors show how a municipal resolution from 1999—under the discourse of environmental protection and embodying nativist claims of population growth through immigration being responsible for environmental degradation—attempted to limit immigration and eliminate Latino immigrants from the seemingly serene and pristine landscape of Aspen. The power of Pellow and Park’s fine, in-depth and nuanced qualitative study is to show that wealthier and white groups are actually able to enjoy natural areas like Aspen thanks to the invisible work of immigrant and poor workers, whom they in turn accuse of damaging natural resources and attempt to exclude from spaces of environmental privilege.

In this book, Pellow and Park portray two different worlds: the world of Saudi princes and American millionaires living in their 6,000 square foot mansions with heated driveways and consuming an absurd amount of resources and energy, and the one of Latino immigrants hidden in small trailers 100 miles away from the exclusive resort, but working daily to maintain the lifestyle of Aspen’s residents and visitors. The Slums of Aspen thus raises two fundamental questions: who is actually responsible for environmental damage and resource depletion? And how does the international flow of goods, services, and people contribute to this environmental state and to the exacerbation of poverty and exclusion?

Review by David Wirth, Boston College

An accessible collection of essays from around the world, offering insights into legal and political issues surrounding environmental law and sustainability.

Environmental Law and Sustainability After Rio, by Jamie Benidickson, Ben Boer, Antoni Herman Benjamin and Karen Morrow, Eds., Edward Elgar, 413pp

At first glance, the copyright date of 2011—immediately before the Rio+20 conference—seems strange for a collection of 21 essays ostensibly devoted to developments in domestic and international law since the original Earth Summit in 2002. Upon closer examination, however, it appears that the volume memorializes a conference held in 2007, timed to coincide with the 15th anniversary of Rio and midway between the two subsequent international follow-up meetings held at ten-year intervals.

The work segments the larger question of the law of sustainability into five categories: principles and concepts; environmental rights and access to justice; natural resources; nature conservation; and energy and climate change. Even within those themes, the individual contributions are largely free-standing and independent from one another. The tone is largely academic, with the individual pieces thoroughly documented with references. Although the work examines these and other issues through a legal lens, the treatment ought to be accessible to generalists, and appropriately synthesizes both law and policy.  The subject matter ranges from the theoretical to the practical, such as Karen Morrow’s analysis of public participation in British court proceedings.

While some readers might be interested in reading the entire collection cover to cover, the appeal of the book is more likely to be the unusual and innovative insights offered by particular papers in the collection. Joseph Dellapenna and Flavia Loures, for example, trenchantly critique the International Law Commission’s draft articles on transboundary aquifers. Other unusual subject matter is addressed by Robert Kibugi’s examination of access to environmental justice in Kenya, Arlindo Daibert’s treatment of damages in civil environmental cases in Brazil, Willemien du Plessis’s assessment of cross-border natural gas pipelines in southern Africa, Emmanuel Kasimbazi’s evaluation of climate policy in Uganda, and Marcelo Nogueira Camargos and Solange Teles da Silva’s scrutiny of sustainable management of mangrove swamps in Brazil.

Review by Professor Lawrence Susskind, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Zeitoun’s work argues that attempts to monopolize control of the water supply in the Middle East is seriously undermining hopes for peace in the region.

Power and Water in the Middle East: The Hidden Politics of the Palestinian–Israeli Water Conflict, by Mark Zeitoun, IB Tauris, 224pp

Mark Zeitoun is an experienced water engineering affiliated with the Center of Environmental Policy and Governance at the London Science of Economics and Political Science. His focus is on the ‘hidden politics’ behind the Israeli–Palestinian water conflict. As Elon Tal says in his long review of this book, “Zeitoun argues that Israel has successfully made its domination of water resources part of the subconscious paradigm that drives the decisions and menu of policy options held by Palestinian water managers and politicians. In so doing, it has turned the pragmatic Palestinian professional community into accomplices in Israel’s post-colonial larceny of its neighbors’ hydrological resources.”

I take Zeitoun’s analysis very seriously, but I also find parts of Tal’s defense compelling. Having interacted with a number of Palestinian water professionals, I don’t think Zeitoun’s charge is fair. The water professionals in Palestine know exactly what is going on at every level. And, having talked with a number of senior Israeli water policy analysts, I don’t find Tal’s defense entirely convincing. Israel is preoccupied with its long-term security (what country wouldn’t be?). It won’t agree to sort out questions of fundamental rights to water on a permanent basis until all the details of a stable two-state solution are clarified. Palestinian water professionals don’t want to wait, and who would blame them, given that the small share of the region’s water that goes to the Palestinians is unacceptable.

What if Israel offers to sell the Palestinians (and Jordanians) all the water they could possibly want? The National Water Plan for 2040 calls for Israel to provide 70% of its water from desalination. If this happens, there should be more naturally occurring water available for the Palestinians. If Israel agrees to sell unlimited amounts of water (generated through multiple use of the same water supplies, more efficient agricultural production, reductions in the loss of ‘virtual water’ by cutting back shipments of fruits and vegetables out of the region, and massive investment in desalination), at modest prices, is it further evidence of hydro-hegemony? Or, is it a step toward economic interdependence? While future attacks on Israel might be met by turning off the water spigot, Palestinian investment in independent desalination facilities—and Israel’s willingness to share new low energy desalination technology—might be jointly planned moves toward peace.