Natural resources law is a dynamic field of practice, with a rich history that reaches back several centuries. The authors look at current challenges and offer ideas about the future while demonstrating that the federal government's role continues to be a complex one as markets and private actors become more visible participants in the current policy arena. Part I provides foundational analyses of the law, while the second part reviews thematic issues in the area.

The past twenty-five years have seen a significant evolution in environmental policy, with new environmental legislation and substantive amendments to earlier laws, significant advances in environmental science, and changes in the treatment of science (and scientific uncertainty) by the courts. This book offers a detailed discussion of the important issues in environmental law, policy, and economics, tracing their development over the past few decades through an examination of environmental law cases and commentaries by leading scholars. The authors focus on pollution, addressing both pollution control and prevention, but also emphasize the evaluation, design, and use of the law to stimulate technical change and industrial transformation, arguing that there is a need to address broader issues of sustainable development. Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics,which grew out of courses taught by the authors at MIT, treats the traditional topics covered in most classes in environmental law and policy, including common law and administrative law concepts and the primary federal legislation. But it goes beyond these to address topics not often found in a single volume: the information-based obligations of industry, enforcement of environmental law, market-based and voluntary alternatives to traditional regulation, risk assessment, environmental economics, and technological innovation and diffusion. Countering arguments found in other texts that government should play a reduced role in environmental protection, this book argues that clear, stringent legal requirements--coupled with flexible means for meeting them--and meaningful stakeholder participation are necessary for bringing about environmental improvements and technologicial transformations.

Hardbound - New, hardbound print book.

Renewable Resource Policy is a comprehensive volume covering the history, laws, and important national policies that affect renewable resource management. The author traces the history of renewable natural resource policy and management in the United States, describes the major federal agencies and their functions, and examines the evolution of the primary resource policy areas. The book provides valuable insight into the often neglected legal, administrative, and bureaucratic aspect of natural resource management. It is a definitive and essential source of information covering all facets of renewable resource policy that brings together a remarkable range of information in a coherent, integrated form.

This timely collection written by an interdisciplinary array of law professors, who specialize in legal and policy issues surrounding ecosystem management, and scholars and practitioners in areas such as environmental policy and planning, conservation, economics, and biology explore why ecosystems must be valued and managed in their own right. The importance of ecosystems has been underestimated. We cannot simply hope ecosystems will benefit from legislation focused on other environmental and natural resource protections, such as those for wildlife, trees, air and water. An ecosystem, a community of organisms together with their physical environment, viewed as a system of interacting and interdependent relationships, has its own intricate administrative issues. Edited by Kalyani Robbins, a law professor, The Laws of Nature investigates how ecosystems function, their value to humans and wildlife, and what factors affect ecosystems' survival. This analysis is coupled with cutting-edge theories and regulatory proposals from legal scholars who study ecosystem questions. In the end, a thorough and multi-disciplinary understanding of the importance of ecosystem is presented.

This book covers a broad spectrum of issues shaping the current paradigm of minerals sector governance. The ultimate aim of the book is to understand trends and developments in mineral law and policy occurring at international, regional, cross-border and in some selected cases at national level and also to identify some of the challenges lying ahead. With these objectives in view, the book brings together a representative selection of the most knowledgeable authors on the subject. The contributions deal with a diverse range of issues tackled from interdisciplinary perspectives. Topics are divided into five main chapters: international and comparative aspects of mineral law; actors and policies in the minerals industry; investment prospects, financial and fiscal issues; sustainable development and regional outlooks. The book aspires to serve as a useful reference for scholars, practitioners, students and all those with an interest in current developments in the areas reviewed. Elizabeth Bastida is the Rio Tinto Research Fellow and the Director of the Mineral Law and Policy Programme at the Centre for Energy, Petroleum, Mineral Law and Policy at the University of Dundee (CEPMLP/Dundee). Thomas W?lde is the Professor of International Economic, Natural Resources and Energy Law and was (until 2001) the Executive Director of CEPMLP/Dundee. He currently runs TWA, his private consultancy firm, which provides advisory services in natural resources and energy law, regulatory reform, investment promotion, state enterprise/agency appraisal and restructuring, privatisation, contract assessment, negotiation and dispute management. Janeth Warden-Fern?ndez is a Research and Teaching Fellow, an advisor of the Mineral Law and Policy Programme and the Manager of the Distance Learning Programme at CEPMLP/Dundee.

Fifty years after the adoption of the Declaration on Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 1962, this volume assesses the evolution of the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources into a principle of customary international law as well as related developments. International environmental and human rights law leave unresolved questions regarding the limitations of this principle, e.g. extraterritorial and international influences such as the applicable criminal and tort law, as well as the extraterritorial and international promotion of good governance, including transparency obligations.

The unprecedented expansion in environmental regulation over the past thirty years—at all levels of government—signifies a transformation of our nation's laws that is both palpable and encouraging. Environmental laws now affect almost everything we do, from the cars we drive and the places we live to the air we breathe and the water we drink. But while enormous strides have been made since the 1970s, gaps in the coverage, implementation, and enforcement of the existing laws still leave much work to be done. In The Making of Environmental Law, Richard J. Lazarus offers a new interpretation of the past three decades of this area of the law, examining the legal, political, cultural, and scientific factors that have shaped—and sometimes hindered—the creation of pollution controls and natural resource management laws. He argues that in the future, environmental law must forge a more nuanced understanding of the uncertainties and trade-offs, as well as the better-organized political opposition that currently dominates the federal government. Lazarus is especially well equipped to tell this story, given his active involvement in many of the most significant moments in the history of environmental law as a litigator for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, an assistant to the Solicitor General, and a member of advisory boards of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Environmental Defense Fund. Ranging widely in his analysis, Lazarus not only explains why modern environmental law emerged when it did and how it has evolved, but also points to the ambiguities in our current situation. As the field of environmental law "grays" with middle age, Lazarus's discussions of its history, the lessons learned from past legal reforms, and the challenges facing future lawmakers are both timely and invigorating.

Individuals' rights to use natural resources have long existed. This book traces the historical development of these rights and looks at how individuals' rights have evolved. Each chapter focuses on a single natural resource property right, noting the impact of technology, the role of the common law courts, and the increasing role of government.

This book examines policy-making in one of the most significant areasof activity in the Canadian economy -- natural resources and theenvironment. It discusses the evolution of resource policies from theearly era of exploitation to the present era of resource andenvironmental management. Using an integrated political economy andpolicy perspective, the book provides an analytic framework from whichthe foundation of ideological perspectives, administrative structures,and substantive issues are explored. The integration of social scienceperspectives and the combination of theoretical and empirical work makethis innovative book one of the most comprehensive analyses of Canadiannatural resource and environmental policy to date.