Environmental peacebuilders convene in The Hague

In June, the Environmental Peacebuilding Association—EnPAx—convened the Third International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding in The Hague. Co-hosted by the Grotius Center for International Legal Studies at Leiden University, the conference brought together over 400 leaders, practitioners, and researchers from 55 countries to expand the intersectional dialogue of this emerging field.

ELI supports the conference as part of its vision to shape the development of environmental governance across the world. ELI believes current governance systems must continually adapt to meet major environmental challenges, including climate change, environmental justice, and peacebuilding.

For over a quarter century, ELI has been at the forefront of research on the environmental consequences of war and the role of natural resource management in conflict resolution. As a “champion sponsor” of both the conference and the secretariat for EnPAx, ELI recognizes the value of peacebuilding to making law work for people, places, and the planet.

Founded in 2018, EnPAx is a multidisciplinary forum with three aims: foster knowledge development and exchange; build capacity and awareness; and strengthen relationships among scholars, practitioners, and decisionmakers working on issues related to environment, conflict, and peace, Membership bridges generations, locations, and disciplines; EnPAx now has over 450 individual members and 31 institutional members from 74 countries.

The conference boasted 75 sessions—panels, roundtables, workshops, and presentations—in addition to a full day of training sessions, workshops, and site visits.

Attendees helped shape the growing environmental peacebuilding field by developing an “Environmental Peacebuilding Glossary.” Participants provided insight to enhance the coherence and clarity of evolving terminology.

Through formal sessions and informal exchanges, the conference aspired to create space for connection, inspiration, restoration, and learning.

In the session on “Composing Peace: Music as a Tool for Environmental Peacebuilding,” participants drew from diverse experiences to collectively write and perform a song on shared hopes and insights about their work. Their song can be found on YouTube.

Annual workshop focuses on restoration and water quality

ELI hosted its 16th annual workshop on Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act—which identifies waterbodies that do not meet water quality standards and supports their restoration and protection—at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

Held in June, this year’s workshop, titled Maximizing CWA Programs to Achieve Water Quality Goals, brought together nearly 200 program staff from 49 states, 5 territories, 13 tribes, all 10 EPA regions, and EPA headquarters, with more than 200 others participating virtually. The workshop, made possible through a cooperative agreement between ELI and the Environmental Protection Agency, provided an opportunity for participants to learn about and share approaches to various aspects of water quality assessment and plan development and implementation. Participants learned to use water quality data management tools; received updates on research, materials, tools, and legal developments; and expanded and improved their connections with other state, tribal, territorial, and EPA staff.

The workshop blended formal and informal learning. Formal learning occurred through presentations and facilitated discussion in breakout and plenary sessions, while informal learning took place at roundtable discussions, regional coffee chats, office hours, meals, and the campfire. The workshop covered a wide range of topics, including developing Total Maximum Daily Loads in ways that lead to more seamless collaboration and implementation, tools and approaches for using continuous monitoring data, environmental justice in monitoring and assessment, tribal water quality assessment, participatory science, emerging contaminants and toxics, how to answer common questions with available data tools, and program resilience and continuity despite staff changes.

The workshop was well-received, earning high marks in evaluations and, more importantly, yielding participants returning to their offices with new ideas and skills, a better understanding of available tools and resources, a national network of peers and mentors across the country, and rejuvenated inspiration.

Sustainability resource for local governments addresses food

State and local governments, as well as local NGOs, businesses, and communities, play key roles in implementing environmental laws and advancing climate change mitigation and adaptation. ELI’s Center for State and Local Governance is dedicated to supporting these programs by developing model governance tools and resources based on extensive best practices research. The center’s toolkits, ordinances, and guides are designed to be tailored to meet the needs and interests of a wide range of local and state contexts.

The center, in partnership with Natural Resources Defense Council, recently published a new ordinance as part of the Food Waste Initiative. The Model Municipal Zoning Ordinance on Community Composting is designed to advance community composting by establishing it as a permissible land use under a municipality’s zoning code—thus helping localities meet their climate and waste reduction goals while achieving various other co-benefits. By diverting organic waste from landfills and incinerators, composting reduces emissions of GHGs—particularly methane. Community composting is also designed to meet local needs and engage the community in various ways, including education on sustainability and local jobs.

Unfortunately, zoning can be an unintended barrier for community composters, sometimes unnecessarily preventing or restricting the siting of community composting facilities. This model ordinance aims to help municipalities remove this barrier by providing clean, off-the-shelf legal language to establish and govern community composting as a permissible land use across five basic zoning district categories. Where applicable, the model also requires that community composting be included in a municipality’s comprehensive or master plan to help secure its place in official visions for the municipality’s future.

In addition to adding community composting centers, cities can also reduce their carbon footprint by accounting for food-related greenhouse gas emissions and including food-related actions in their climate action plans, or CAPs.

The center’s Toolkit for Incorporating Plant-Based Protein Measures in Municipal Climate Action Plans offers one way for municipalities to do so. Given their low carbon footprint, plant-based proteins can play a significant role in reducing food-related emissions.

By including CAP actions that can increase the availability of plant-based proteins and engage the public on their benefits, municipalities can reduce food-related emissions while also realizing numerous co-benefits in the areas of public health, expanded consumer choice, environment, resilience and food security, equity, animal welfare, and cost savings.

More than 150 women forge North American branch of global water diplomacy and governance collaboration

Recognizing the urgent need for inclusive water governance on the continent, leading female diplomats have established the North American Women in Water Diplomacy Network. With support from a variety of stakeholders, including Indigenous community leaders, WWDN will establish a regional structure anchored in the Colorado River basin. It will include Indigenous leadership in alignment with the network’s “Path Forward for Women, Water, Peace, and Security” global strategy.

ELI’s partnership with WWDN is a critical part of the Institute’s work to create good governance of water resources. For its part, the network represents a collaborative effort among female decisionmakers and other experts in transboundary water management. Originating in the Nile Basin in 2017, the coalition has partnerships in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas to help amplify women’s voices in water governance, especially addressing the significant underrepresentation of women in decisionmaking roles.

At the December launch event for the North American section, speakers included water commissioners, government officials, and tribal leaders. They underscored the value of collaborative efforts across the Colorado basin to elevate women’s knowledge and experiences in water governance. It marked a pivotal moment, bringing together approximately 150 water policy experts and decisionmakers to emphasize the importance of gender-inclusive approaches in water diplomacy.

The event facilitated networking opportunities, providing a platform for participants to exchange ideas and insights. Additionally, it showcased statements of support from contributing partners and sponsors, affirming the widespread commitment to advancing gender equality in water governance.

Looking ahead, the network is promoting advocacy and partnership through a series of activities, such as informational sessions, consultation workshops, and publication launches—all aimed at global collaboration among women water leaders.

Through these emerging initiatives, WWDN seeks to empower women, enhance their participation in decisionmaking processes, and promote sustainable water management practices worldwide.

ELI will continue to support the network with high-quality research, specifically looking to connect the dots between the Institute’s work on water tenure and gender-equitable water governance.

Wetlands Program’s multi-pronged approach to conservation

February 2 marked World Wetlands Day, always an opportunity to highlight the importance of these critical ecosystems across the globe, as well as the work being done to preserve and restore them. To celebrate, ELI released a new podcast episode with the director of the Institute’s Wetlands Program, Rebecca Kihslinger, along with Staff Attorney Therese Wilkerson and Research Associate Jesse Ferraioli.

The podcast discussed the program, which takes a three-pronged approach: research, stakeholder engagement, and educational outreach. The program analyzes laws and policies and provides tools for wetlands programs at various levels and locations.

The program emphasizes the importance of wetlands as critical ecosystems that provide many important benefits for people and wildlife and are integral to local communities’ cultures and economies. Wetlands benefits include flood protection, resilient infrastructure, carbon storage, and increased water quality.

To help spread the message, ELI hosts the annual National Wetlands Awards, a program that honors individuals who have done extraordinary work in wetland science, conservation, and community engagement.

The Supreme Court’s 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision has made wetland protection more critical than ever before. Accordingly, recent ELI projects include a review of state wetland programs and evaluation of compensatory mitigation under the Clean Water Act. The emphasis on state and local work also includes stakeholder engagement, like a recent workshop that brought together professionals from resource agencies and federal, state, and local emergency managers to discuss methodologies for prioritizing wetlands restoration.

Building more effective local peacebuilding interventions

Climate change exacerbates global tensions and creates new challenges for policymakers, making it a significant factor in shaping domestic and international relations. An evolving field known as environmental peacebuilding provides pathways to address the intersection of environmental issues, conflict, and efforts toward peace. It is a challenging endeavor, combining different objectives and metrics to address possible interventions.

To assist progress in conflict zones, ELI has published the Toolkit on Monitoring and Evaluation of Environmental Peacebuilding. The toolkit offers guidance to practitioners on establishing and executing monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems for interventions that intersect with environment, conflict, and peace.

M&E fosters accountability to intervention participants and beneficiaries, within organizations and to peers. Moreover, it supports learning, which is essential for improving future intervention designs and implementations, as well as providing early warning in the often dynamic and volatile contexts where environmental peacebuilding occurs.

Structured around the intervention cycle, the toolkit comprises chapters on design, monitoring, evaluation, and learning, offering guidance on framing outcomes, developing theories of change, designing M&E approaches, selecting indicators, and managing data collection and analysis.

The toolkit also addresses emerging issues such as big data and geospatial analysis, making it accessible to practitioners from diverse backgrounds.

Artificial Intelligence: Will algorithms benefit the environment? Report points the path to beneficial uses of computerization

Artificial Intelligence is changing how our society operates. AI now helps make judicial decisions, medical diagnoses, and drives cars. AI also has the potential to revolutionize how we interact with our environment. It can help improve resource use and energy efficiency and predict extreme weather.

AI can also exacerbate existing environmental issues. For example, software manipulation of over a half million VW diesel automobiles created one of the largest environmental scandals of the past decade.

ELI’s Technology, Innovation, and the Environment Program was developed to better understand the environmental impacts and opportunities created through emerging technologies and their underlying innovation systems

When Software Rules: Rule of Law in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, a new report from program director David Rejeski, explores the interaction between AI and the environment and the need for some form of governance to ensure that it is deployed in a manner that is beneficial.

“As environmental decisionmaking becomes internalized into AI algorithms, and these algorithms increasingly learn without human input, issues of transparency and accountability must be addressed,” said Rejeski. “This is a moment of opportunity for the legal, ethical, and public policy communities to ensure positive environmental outcomes.”

“When Software Rules” offers the government, businesses, and the public a number of recommendations they can use as they begin to consider the environmental impacts of AI.

The report discusses concerns with AI systems. These include unintended consequences, such as race bias in algorithms, and the common difficulty of understanding the logic of deep-learning systems and how they come to decisions. Other sources of concern include issues like algorithms functioning on the basis of correlation without proving causality; legal liability issues; lack of privacy from data mining; and the risk of hacking.

Some form of governance over AI systems is necessary to address some of these issues, and ensure responsibility, including taking environmental considerations into account. Semi-formal governance systems may include voluntary codes outlining engagement with AI research or self-governance by institutions looking to create “ethical” AI systems. A more formal governance system may include legislation protecting consumers from faulty algorithms.

ELI provides a number of recommendations as to how AI governance can include consideration of environmental impacts. Suggestions are provided for all stakeholders: the private AI sector, programmers, governments, and the public.

For example, the private AI sector can develop research teams that include evaluation of the socio-environmental impacts of their algorithms and assemble stakeholder groups to develop guidelines for sustainable development of AI.

Programmers can increase the transparency of their algorithms so users can understand why decisions are being made, and they can increase their commitment to prioritizing environmental benefits.

Governments can ensure AI systems are powered by renewable energy to meet the energy demand of these new systems and create incentives for the development of AI that tackles environmental issues.

Members of the public can advocate for systems that promote their cultural norms and values, including environmental protection, and they can make responsible consumer choices by supporting AI companies that are transparent and environmentally conscious.

As AI governance becomes a societal expectation and is later bound by semiformal or formal contracts, the environment must be a central focus in AI discourse and subsequent laws and policy, the report concludes. ELI will continue to provide guidance on how these goals can best be achieved.

“When Software Rules: Rule of Law in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” is available for free download at eli.org/research-report/when-software-rules-rule-law-age-artificial-intelligence.

Al Moumin awardees highlight promise of peacebuilding efforts

ELI co-hosted the annual Al-Moumin Distinguished Lecture on Environmental Peacebuilding, a hallmark of the Institute’s Environmental Peacebuilding Program. Co-sponsored by the Environmental Law Institute, American University, and the United Nations Environment Programme, the lecture recognizes leading thinkers who are shaping the field of environmental peacebuilding and presents the prestigious Al-Moumin Award. The series is named for Mishkat Al-Moumin, Iraq’s first Minister of Environment, a human rights and environment lawyer, and a Visiting Scholar at ELI.

This event, now in its fifth year, honored Ken Conca and Geoff Dabelko for their outstanding contributions to the field.

Conca is a professor of international relations in the School of International Service at American University. Dabelko is a professor and director of environmental studies at the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University; he is also a senior advisor to the Environmental Change and Security Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Fifteen years ago, Conca and Dabelko published Environmental Peacemaking, a rejoinder to grim scenarios foreseeing environmental change as a driver of conflict. Conca, Dabelko, and collaborators argued that, despite conflict risks, shared environmental interests and cooperative action could also be a basis for building trust, establishing shared identities, and transforming conflict into cooperation.

In their lectures, Conca and Dabelko reflected on the evolution of environmental peacebuilding research since their work began in the early days of the post-Cold War era, their seminal publication, and their long-term engagement with policymakers and practitioners applying these insights around the world.

Their work transformed, and continues to have a profound impact on, the way scholars and practitioners approach and understand the intersection of environmental protection, national security, and human rights.

Conca and Dabelko’s work is also the heart of ELI’s Environmental Peacebuilding Program: As the world experiences increasing pressures on its natural resources and climate, countries must learn to peacefully resolve resource disputes and make the environment a reason for cooperation rather than conflict.

Team travels to Indonesia to prep for judicial education course

Legal authorities are now available in Indonesia to enable civil society and the government to file claims to hold responsible parties liable for damages and the restoration of natural resources.

Through an ELI workshop and curriculum developed in conjunction with the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law and others, judges will learn best practices and methods for implementing new legal processes, including environmental damage valuation and restoration and compensation, tailored to the specific needs of the host country.

The goal is to promote environmental accountability through judicial enforcement. Ultimately, the benefits will include reduced deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as improved biodiversity and quality of life for vulnerable communities.

ELI recently traveled to Indonesia to help prepare for the week-long workshop to be held this summer. Staff met with various local stakeholders to gain background on topics like injury quantification, restoration and compensation, and settlement. ELI was also able to hear from judges which topics are most important to cover.

ELI staff held focus groups with ICEL as well as the Ministry of Environment and Forestry and Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, using an oil spill case to discuss valuation, settlement, and transboundary issues.

ELI and ICEL also held focus group discussions with the Supreme Court of Indonesia’s Environmental Working Group and Center for Training and Legal Research. The discussion included a presentation on the needs assessment by ICEL and a presentation on the comparative study of valuation, compensation, and restoration practice in several countries.

ELI’s judicial education program is a hallmark of the Institute’s work. With in-depth consultations, custom design of programs to meet the specific needs of the particular jurisdiction, and success in creating institutional capacity, the lessons learned continue to be applied after the education is completed. Since 1991, ELI has developed, presented, and participated in more than 40 workshops on critical topics in environmental law for more than 2,000 judges from 27 countries.

ELI met with a local NGO and members of the government to prepare for workshop on judicial enforcement of environmental laws.

Field Notes: Water summit showcases ELI legal expertise

ELI President Scott Fulton and Director of ELI’s Judicial Education Program Alejandra Rabasa traveled to Brazil to participate in the World Water Forum. The forum is the world’s biggest water-related event and is organized by the World Water Council, an international organization that brings together all those interested in the theme of water. Supreme Court justices from over 50 counties were in attendance to shine a light on the importance of rule of law in advancing water quality goals.

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ELI hosted a day-long conference on Environmental Law In Practice in Detroit. The conference presented a spectrum of emerging legal issues with a focus on environmental justice. It introduced a wide-ranging exploration of career opportunities in the EJ field. This event featured environmental law experts on panels including Careers in Environmental Justice, Energy & Climate Justice, Water Access and Affordability, and Urban Air Quality.

Agustin V. Arbulu, executive director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights, delivered opening remarks. Keynote addresses were given by Mustafa Santiago Ali, senior vice president of climate, environmental justice and community revitalization, Hip Hop Caucus, and Charles Lee, senior policy advisor, EPA Office of Environmental Justice.

Members of the public came together with lawyers, students, academics, civil rights and social justice advocates and activists, and community groups to discuss pressing issues.

The Conference was co-sponsored by Wayne State University Law School’s Transnational Environmental Law Clinic and Environmental Law Society, University of Chicago Law School’s Abrams Environmental Law Clinic, the American Bar Association’s Environmental Justice Committee of the Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, and the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center.

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Director of the Ocean Program Xiao Recio-Blanco moderated a webinar on Current Developments on U.S. Fisheries Policy. The Trump administration’s approach to fisheries management seems to constitute a significant policymaking shift. Recent decisions such as extending the Gulf of Mexico season for red snapper or overturning a decision by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission that would have cut New Jersey’s recreational quota for summer flounder seem to go against NOAA’s traditional approach of situating scientific information at the center of fisheries decisionmaking.

The webinar discussed these and other recent developments and assessed the direction U.S. fisheries policymaking may take in the future.

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ELI and the China Environmental Protection Foundation held the first training session to build the capacity of public interest groups and prosecutors in China since receiving its temporary registration for an environmental protection-related project from China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and the Beijing Bureau of Public Security.

The session was held at Tianjin University Law School. A total of 53 participants — comprising representatives from public interest groups, environmental courts, prosecutors, and environmental protection bureaus — attended from 16 provinces, autonomous regions, and cities.