(Washington, D.C.): The Environmental Law Institute envisions a healthy environment, prosperous economies, and vibrant communities founded on the rule of law. Within this lens, it is clear that race and socioeconomic status should not dictate the environmental health risks we face. Yet, too often, this is not the case.
The burgeoning legal cannabis industry continues to be a hot button topic across the nation, especially as the environmental implications of cultivation emerge. David Rejeski, Kasantha Moodley, and Azi Akpan, the team behind ELI’s Innovation Lab, are building partnerships with stakeholders to advance the environmental performance of this new industry.
In 2017, the first industry estimate of energy use was made, 4.1 million megawatt-hours in one year, with demand set to increase by 162 percent in just 5 years. There are also several environmental and public health implications associated with the industry’s nutrient-rich water discharges, air emissions, pesticide use, plant waste, and packaging waste.
A total of 33 states have legalized marijuana for medical use. 10 of these states and Washington, D.C., have also legalized it for adult recreational use. With no federal oversight and a fragmented regulatory system, states and industry alike are challenged with addressing these concerns.
The Lab’s podcast series “Conversations with Environmental Disruptors” has brought together a diverse set of weed visionaries. ELI’s Akpan interviewed Kaitlin Urso on her role at Colorado’s state government Cannabis Environmental Assistance Program. Urso consults with cannabis cultivators on sustainability, and brings awareness about potential permitting requirements. Her job is to support cultivators in their compliance efforts, without imposing requirements or restrictions on these new and growing businesses.
She also promotes voluntary actions such as the installation of water collection and re-use systems and waste management systems. Air emissions are also a concern — terpenes emitted from cannabis plants are volatile organic compounds and can affect ozone levels when accumulated on a large scale. Urso strongly emphasizes the necessity to gather baseline data, quantify impacts, and determine benchmarks to inform environmental approaches to tackling these problems.
In a recent podcast titled “A Cannabis Cultivator — Breaking the Grass Ceiling,” Jesse Peters, founder of EcoFirma Farms, shows visitors to the ELI website his 23,000-square-foot, indoor, carbon-neutral farm operation in Portland, Oregon. The farm utilizes sensors and automation systems linked to a software platform that monitors and regulates the nutrient feed, light, and water needed for optimal plant growth.
Peters has made significant capital investments and explains how the added technology transformed the financial and environmental sustainability of EcoFirma Farms. He touts that automation and tracking has made EcoFirma much more successful and accountable, has saved costs on labor, and has successfully maintained the quality and quantity of products at a competitive price. Peters believes that technology development will play a crucial role in the sustainable growth of the industry.
Beyond these episodes and at the forefront of current efforts, the ELI Innovation Lab is developing and disseminating informative and accessible materials to promote understanding of industry-wide impacts and the actions (regulatory or voluntary) that could be taken to address them.
In April, ELI staff attended the National Cannabis Festival in D.C., where they distributed materials to raise awareness on lawful pesticide use for the cannabis industry. The materials were developed in collaboration with the American Bar Association’s Pesticides, Chemical Regulation, and Right-to-Know Committee.
The Lab will continue this work in the future through a series of educational materials focusing on the full spectrum of environmental challenges facing the industry.
In late March, ELI held the 12th Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review Conference in Washington D.C. Each year, Vanderbilt Law students work with an expert advisory committee and senior staff from ELI to identify the year’s best academic articles that present legal and policy solutions to pressing environmental problems, some of which are then presented at the conference.
In a panel on federal energy leasing, winning author Jayni Foley Hein of the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law argued that the Department of the Interior should update fossil fuel leasing and royalty rates on federal lands to maximize public benefit and social welfare. Panelists Tommy Beaudreau of Latham & Watkins and Rebecca Fischer and Daniel Timmons of Wild Earth Guardians delved into how Hein’s proposed reforms could result in less fossil fuel production, fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and more revenue than under existing rules.
In another panel discussion, author Richard Schragger of University of Virginia Law School proposed that in order for cities to fight against state preemption of environmental laws they should forge alliances with national interest groups, powerful corporations, and metropolitan regions to preserve their power to regulate and promote their interests. Gus Bauman of Beveridge & Diamond, Kim Haddow of Local Solutions Support Center, and Lewis Rosman from the City of Philadelphia Law Department provided their perspectives on the challenges cities face in passing environmental legislation.
In the final panel, on free trade and selective enforcement of environmental laws, author Timothy Meyer of Vanderbilt University Law School argued that the World Trade Organization investigations of trade remedies should be reformed by creating a centralized enforcement procedure. Jay Campbell of White & Case, Sharon Treat from the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Steve Wolfson of the Environmental Protection Agency discussed their analysis of the proposal based on their practitioner and policymaking experience.
The winning articles by Professor Hein, Professor Schragger, and Professor Meyer, as well as the comments from this year’s panelists, will be published in a special issue of ELR in August.
Special programming in ELI’s 50th anniversary year recently featured themes of compliance and re-imagining governance.
In February, ELI co-hosted with Greenberg Traurig, LLP, a discussion about the foundational objectives of the Superfund law. Panelists from the firm and Exponent and the Chesapeake Legal Alliance delved into how these objectives have evolved over time. They talked about issues surrounding the remediation and cleanup of Department of Defense sites, approaches to working with regulatory agencies, and cutting-edge and emerging technologies for damage assessments and remediation.
The same month, ELI held a webinar that explored the opportunities presented by increased state autonomy in environmental protection. Moderated by Donald Welsh, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States, it featured experts in interstate environmental coordination and attorneys with compliance experience.
In line with the theme “re-imaging environmental governance,” ELI hosted a conversation in March about UN General Assembly Resolution 72/277, known as “Toward a Global Pact for the Environment.” While many experts agree that the measure could help fill the gaps in international environmental law by providing guidance and transparency for adjudication in courts, bolstering the importance of human rights in environmental protection, and promoting a greater integration of environmental principles in non-environmental fields, questions still remain.
Moderated by ELI’s Xiao Recio-Blanco, panelists discussed principles needed to realize the potential impact of the pact on the developing world. Panelists included Justice Antonio Herman Benjamin, minister of the National High Court of Brazil, Roy S. Lee, professor at Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Nicholas Robinson, professor at Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University.
Programming in May will highlight wetlands protection and in June will feature gender and the environment. Join the Environmental Law Institute in discussing the forefront of policy issues as we celebrate 50 years of environmental progress.
This year marks the 30th edition of ELI’s annual National Wetlands Awards. Since 1989, over 200 champions of wetlands conservation have been honored.
The program recognizes individuals who have demonstrated exceptional effort, innovation, and excellence in wetlands conservation at the regional, state, and local levels.
Please join the Environmental Law Institute at this year’s National Wetlands Award Ceremony, taking place on Tuesday, May 7, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the U.S. Botanic Gardens in Washington, D.C.
This year’s awards include the 30th Anniversary Lifetime Achievement Award, to be presented to Richard Grant of Narrow River Preservation Association at the ceremony. Categorical awards will go to Greg Sutter of Westervelt Ecological Services for the Business Leadership award, Joel Gerwein at California State Coastal Conservancy for the Conservation & Restoration award, Robert Thomas for the Education & Outreach award, Tom and Mary Beth Magenau of Tri-State Marine for the Landowner Stewardship award, Robert Gearheart of Arcata Marsh Research Institute for the Science Research award, and hydrologist Angela Waupochick of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans for the State, Tribal, and Local Program Development award.
ELI congratulates these awardees on their achievements in advancing wetlands protection through their outstanding leadership.
❧
In January, expert panelists explored in an ELI public webinar how focused efforts in states of the upper Mississippi River that bring together farming, wastewater treatment, and state financing agencies can provide new funding for on-farm polluted runoff projects.
Panelists from Iowa, Illinois, and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies discussed how flexible funding structures that pair farmland with wastewater treatment providers can achieve targeted nutrient reduction in their respective states, and what they plan to achieve in the future.
Recent experience has shown that water and sewer financing programs can provide additional flexible funding for projects on farms while meeting the nutrient management goals of wastewater treatment authorities.
❧
In an effort to improve communication and environmental compliance globally, the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement, whose secretariat ELI hosts, has created Compliance Conversations, a network and capacity-building tool to support those working in the environment, development, or justice spaces. Through webinars launched in February, INECE convenes individuals from all over the world to discuss the cutting-edge environmental challenges their communities are facing.
The goal of the platform is to connect participants with experts from a variety of different backgrounds, experiences, and disciplines.
The first set of compliance conversations explored how stakeholders in off-grid communities can work to facilitate greywater treatment and reuse standards, led by Clive Lipchin, director of the Center for Transboundary Water Management at the Arava Institute.
❧
Since shortly after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Environmental Law Institute has received support from the Walton Family Foundation to work with communities throughout the Gulf Coast region on advancing sustainable and inclusive restoration.
A primary focus of ELI’s work is on supporting public participation in the processes that govern disbursement of restoration funds under the Natural Resource Damage Assessment process and the RESTORE Act, as well as through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
ELI’s Gulf Team regularly hosts training sessions and workshops for communities throughout the region. In February, ELI experts met with community leaders and local government officials in Gulfport, Biloxi, and Moss Point, Mississippi, to elucidate the process of developing and submitting proposals for restoration projects.
Legal weed means legal means to reduce pollution.
(Washington, D.C.): Our air, water, and lands are much cleaner and healthier than they were on April 20, 1970, the first nationwide celebration of Earth Day (organized with the help of original ELI Board Member Sydney Howe). But major environmental challenges, including climate change, continue to this day.
In September 1969, 50 lawyers, practitioners, and academics from across the country convened at Airlie House, just outside Warrenton, Virginia. This watershed event led directly to the establishment of the Environmental Law Institute and the Environmental Law Reporter to collect and analyze developments in the newly created field.
ELI was incorporated on December 22, 1969, as a §501(c)(3) organization, the same day that Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act. The fledgling Institute held its first educational program in late 1970 and released the first issue of ELR the following year.
Half a century later, ELI has grown into the leading environmental law think tank, offering an objective and nonpartisan perspective through its top-tier research, educational programs, and publications.
Throughout this anniversary year, ELI will look back at its history and the sharing of environmental progress with its valued community members and diverse array of supporters. The Institute is hosting special programming and events throughout the year. Each month will focus on a key issue within ELI’s work portfolio over the last five decades. This programming began in January with programs on pollution, a focal point of ELI’s work through the years, and will end in December with a focus on environmental assessment, which occurs the same month ELI and NEPA were formed in 1969.
In keeping with its January theme, programming that month featured pollution prevention and re-thinking waste. To reduce islands of plastic waste in oceans and polluted air in cities, ELI explored ways for stakeholders to consider alternatives to the traditional linear model of resource use.
The Institute hosted a panel discussion and webinar highlighting different ways to transform the traditional “take, make, and dispose” economic model into a circular economy, even when lower costs of production processes and materials have been an obstacle to such a transformation. Moderated by Michael Goo of AJW and the Circular Economy Industries Association, panelists discussed the many obstacles and benefits of fostering a production system that recoups its waste as feedstock, and whether emerging new technologies and business models can be viable in such a resource format.
In addition to moderator Goo, expert panelists included Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law; Paul Hagen, principal at Beveridge & Diamond PC; Stewart Leeth, vice president of regulatory affairs and chief sustainability officer of Smithfield Foods; and Meagan Weiland, an independent researcher at Economic & Human Dimensions Research Associates and program coordinator for Science magazine.
An additional webinar in January focused on the new and innovative methods of recycling undesired material. Moderated by ELI Senior Attorney James McElfish, director of the Sustainable Land Use Program, the panel discussed ways to encourage cities, wastewater treatment plants, corporations, and other important players to improve recycling processes, especially as the number of different types of recyclable materials increases. Interestingly, this issue also creates new business opportunities for the industrial and commercial sector to explore.
ELI’s anniversary celebration will continue throughout the year. Special programming in March will focus on re-imagining environmental governance, and April will feature the role of law in climate response and energy transformation.
In the latter half of the year, stay tuned as ELI looks forward to featuring topics including wetlands protection, technology as an emerging driver for environmental behaviors and conditions, and gender and the environment.
In January, ELI launched its new People Places Planet Podcast. The series will provide a platform for Institute staff and leadership to discuss their work covering a range of environmental topics, as well as emerging developments in environmental law both domestically and internationally.
The podcast enables ELI to remain a thought-leader of environmental law and governance in the 21st century. It is a means to communicate the Institute’s cutting-edge, and thought-provoking, insights in a new medium to our growing international audience.
The inaugural episode hosts a discussion between ELI President Scott Fulton and Director of the Technology, Innovation, and the Environment Project David Rejeski on their co-written ELR Comment, “A New Environmentalism: The Need for a Total Strategy for Environmental Protection,” which was featured in the September ELR.
Fulton and Rejeski guide listeners through their theoretical framework, discuss why they focused on this topic at this time, and consider how their framework could be applied to environmental policymaking.
Rejeski remarks that despite the cluster of progress in environmental protection during the late 20th century, moving the agenda forward now requires asking questions about the four emerging drivers of the environmental protection movement: law, risk management, technology, and community.
Fulton and Rejeski urge environmental policymakers to continue to think about how these drivers will interact with the development of new technology, big data, and private environmental governance.
Identifying these drivers is just the first step; Fulton and Rejeski reflect that there are many remaining issues to pursue in the future, which raise a host of questions.
To what extent can these new drivers compensate for government failure or inability to act? How does the fast pace of technology interact within the slower changing, legacy law and policy systems, and how might one design the interface between them?
These questions are certainly important for the future of environmental protection. People Places Planet will continue to move these types of conversations forward.
Podcasts are available for download on the ELI website or from your favorite podcast app.
ELI was involved in producing two landmark publications in early 2019. The First Global Report on Environmental Rule of Law and the full version of Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization (a summary version of which was released last year) address the pressing issues of worldwide environmental protection and avenues for progress in the coming decades.
Over the past two years, ELI engaged with UN Environment to develop the first report. Environmental rule of law is critical for worldwide sustainable economic and social development, protects public health, contributes to peace and security by avoiding and defusing conflict, and protects human and constitutional rights.
UN Environment released the report to offer frameworks to address the gap between environmental laws on the books — and what is actually in practice — for countries around the world. The report is available for free download on the ELI web page.
In addition, the full version of Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization will be released in March 2019. The book equips policymakers and practitioners with over 1,000 recommendations for legal pathways to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.
Edited by Michael Gerrard, professor at Columbia Law School, and John Dernbach, professor at Widener University Commonwealth Law School, the book is based on two reports by the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project. The project discusses the technical and policy pathways for dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon abatement goals are often referred to as deep decarbonization, a charted pathway that requires systemic changes to the energy economy.
Deep decarbonization is achievable in the United States using laws that exist or could be enacted. These legal tools can be employed with significant economic, social, environmental, and national security benefits. The book provides legal and policymaking leaders the means to begin implementing these tools to tackle emissions reductions in the coming years.
ELI has learned with great sadness of the passing of two giants in the implementation of environmental law. Both were integral to the Institute’s mission, offered great knowledge and wisdom, and were important members of the ELI community.
❧
Douglas Keare passed away on January 8 at 84 years old. He was an important member of the ELI family as part of the Leadership Council, and in shaping and supporting the ELI-Miriam Hamilton Keare Policy Forum each year.
The annual policy forum honors his mother, a noted environmentalist, and focuses on bringing key stakeholders together to discuss the most urgent environmental issues and advance solutions. Keare was an important thought leader for the forum due to his avid interest in the topics. He often pitched interesting ideas for discussions in the planning stage and asked the resulting panel engaging questions during the annual event.
Keare received his B.A. from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. His career and passions were shaped around his belief in the power of cities to spark progress and secure the future.
Keare was the first head of the World Bank unit responsible for urban research and policy and led it for 25 years. He also held important positions in Malaysia and East Pakistan (Bangladesh) with the bank.
Keare also was involved in work for the Harvard Institute for International Development and the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy. He retired in Boston, Massachusetts, at which point he became a generous donor and involved with ELI’s research and program activities.
❧
Judge Patricia Gowan Wald died in January at age 90. Wald received the ELI Environmental Achievement Award in 2000 for her central role in creating modern environmental jurisprudence during her long tenure on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, including five years as chief judge.
After retirement from that position, she served as an international jurist in The Hague on the tribunal adjudicating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.
Her legacy remains in her legal and environmental work and in her determination to pave the way for women in the legal profession.
In her award acceptance speech, Wald discussed the intersection of concerns she addressed over domestic environmental statutes and those in international criminal cases. She emphasized that ultimately, quality of life depends on peaceful and non-destructive relationships with one another, and harmony with the environment.
Wald graduated from Yale University Law School in 1951. She began her legal career as the only female law clerk in the Second Circuit. During the Carter administration, she served as the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Justice Department, and soon after was nominated as the fourth woman on the D.C. Court.
Although the 1970s was the primary period for passing landmark statutes, Wald’s position in the D.C. circuit court during the 1980s allowed her to make a lasting impact on how to interpret and apply the statutes passed by Congress. Her opinion in Sierra Club v. Costle in 1981, upholding EPA emission standards for coal-burning power plants, quickly grew to be a frequently cited opinion to support presidential rulemaking.
Her lifetime of achievement was honored by Barack Obama in 2013, when she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
❧
ELI continues its work in China through environmental training workshops at universities in Beijing. In January, over one hundred NGO workers, judges, prosecutors, and public interest lawyers attended ELI’s workshop at Renmin University, taught by ELI Vice President John Pendergrass and Visiting Scholar Leslie Carothers.
ELI teamed with Latham & Watkins and the Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy to hold the second Chinese International Business Dialogue on Environmental Governance roundtable on January 15 in Beijing. Launched last year, the dialogue is a working group designed to facilitate discussion between multinational businesses and Chinese authorities regarding best practices in government and industry in the area of environmental regulation, as well as the forward movement of environmental protection in China.
ELI launches 50th anniversary program series.
