Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources (CLEANR)
Fall 2018 Program Digest
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A Message from the Faculty Director
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Dear friends and colleagues,
Since its launch in 2011, CLEANR has consistently worked to promote innovative thinking on emerging environmental issues and catalyze concrete policy action aimed at intractable environmental problems. In addition to its interdisciplinary research, CLEANR strives to build advocacy networks among leading policymakers, practitioners, activists, scientists, scholars, and students, and to create educational and public engagement opportunities that facilitate truly meaningful and productive dialogue. As UCI Law enters its second decade, I am excited to further develop CLEANR’s programming and to expand upon the Center's contributions to the fields of environmental, land use, and natural resources law.
Thank you for your support over the years. We look forward to new and continuing opportunities to collaborate with you.
Sincerely,
Alejandro E. Camacho
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CLEANR Welcomes New Staff Director
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This August, CLEANR welcomed Melissa Kelly as its new Staff Director and Attorney, working to develop the Center’s research and public engagement programming in consultation with Faculty Director Alex Camacho and CLEANR’s faculty advisors. Before joining CLEANR in this role, Melissa worked as a staff attorney at Los Angeles Waterkeeper. There, she managed the organization’s industrial stormwater enforcement program, bringing Clean Water Act lawsuits to address industrial stormwater pollution throughout LA County, advocated for integrated water supply management, strengthened interagency coordination, and built community partnerships. Prior to her work at LA Waterkeeper, Melissa was CLEANR's first Environmental and Land Use Fellow. She received her Juris Doctor
cum laude from the University of California, Irvine School of Law and her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Economics and Policy from the University of California, Berkeley.
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CLEANR’s Workshop Roundtables have been the core initiative of the Center and the foundation of its efforts to identify and address gaps in existing research and knowledge and to facilitate meaningful dialogue on important environmental issues. Through the roundtables, CLEANR builds cooperative networks that bridge the disconnect between the research community, advocacy organizations, and policymakers, and advances their shared understanding of and engagement with environmental law and policy.
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Legal Strategies to Address Climate Change in the North American Arctic
October 27-28, 2017
Led by Professor Joseph DiMento and supported by the UCI Newkirk Center for Science and Society and the Toward and Sustainable 21st Century Series,
this roundtable brought together a select group of attorneys, academics, and experts to examine the emerging challenges of climate change in the Arctic and its effects on the communities that depend on the region’s terrestrial and marine resources.
The dialogue between participants centered on: adaptive management priorities; equity and accountability given the region’s multi-faceted relationship to the oil and gas industry and the disproportionate risk of climate change to rural communities
; indigenous sovereignty and government-to-government relations; human rights; and trust and trans-border partnerships
. Participants identified opportunities for legal and policy reforms to address the severe impacts of climate change as its pace accelerates in the region. This was the third in a series of Arctic roundtables, with previous sessions addressing Environmental Governance and Ecosystem-Based Management.
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Regulating Labor Abuses in the Food Supply Chain
March 9, 2018
Led by Professor Stephen Lee, this roundtable considered how sustainability might support efforts to eradicate labor abuses in our food system. Sustainability—the idea that food should be cultivated in a manner that preserves rather than depletes food sources for future generations—is a core principle driving modern food policy. Increasingly, government officials, advocates, and corporate actors have sought to expand the concept of sustainability to account for social costs such as exploitation in the production of food. Yet, the legal tools available for supporting this broadened view of sustainability remain limited. This roundtable focused on a strategy that has garnered some success, pressuring entities up the food chain to enter into legally binding contracts with ethical production provisions, and generated concrete recommendations for those interested in utilizing this model of norms enforcement. It was the second in a series of food sustainability roundtables, with the first exploring the relationship between food security and environmental sustainability.
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Mitigating Climate Change through Transportation and Land Use Policy: Opportunities and Challenges
October 19, 2018
Led by Professor Nicholas Marantz and CLEANR Environmental and Land Use Fellow Gabriel Weil, this roundtable explored mitigating climate change through transportation and land use policy reforms aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and vehicle miles traveled. Allowing for greater population density has the potential to shorten commute times, make housing more affordable, reduce GHG emissions, enable greater and more cost-effective investment in mass transit, and increase economic productivity. Nonetheless, local zoning boards and bodies that regulate land use give disproportionate influence to incumbent residents who oppose greater density. This dynamic offers state and local governments the opportunity to reap large economic, environmental, and social benefits if they could craft policies that ensure adequate housing and accessible transit in the places people want to live. Although there exists no legal barrier to state governments exerting greater control over land use policy, it is traditionally an area of local responsibility, and imposition of strong prescriptive policies has proven politically challenging. Participants discussed the experiences of California, Maryland, Oregon, Washington, and New York in addressing these challenges, and identified potential approaches and opportunities for improved policy.
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Law & Social Movements Colloquium: Environmental Justice Panel
February 22, 2018
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The Law & Social Movements Colloquium was a student-directed five-part series during the 2017–2018 academic year that featured lawyers and organizer-activists who have collaborated with each other in the context of active social movements. The Environmental Justice Panel, co-organized with CLEANR, featured Angela Johnson Meszaros, Staff Attorney with Earthjustice, and Angela Howe, Legal Director with the Surfrider Foundation. In addition to discussing their roles in specific litigation efforts, Johnson Meszaros and Howe addressed ways in which students might approach careers in environmental justice.
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Rivers That Depend on Aquifers: Drafting SGMA Groundwater Plans with Fisheries in Mind
November 1, 2018
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California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), enacted in 2015, requires that the pumping of groundwater avoid “undesirable results.” In addition to the problem of overdraft, the provision also accounts for adverse effects of groundwater pumping on interconnected surface waters and their beneficial uses, such as the maintenance of fisheries and habitat. Professor Paul Stanton Kibel, co-author of the Golden Gate University School of Law Center on Urban Environmental Law (CUEL) Guidebook,
Rivers That Depend on Aquifers, discussed SGMA and public trust requirements pertaining to these impacts on surface waters, and outlined the ways in which local groundwater plans might protect the resources and habitats that are supported by interconnected waters.
Co-Hosted with Water UCI
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Strengthening the Great Blue Wall:
The West Coast Response to
Offshore Drilling
October 8, 2018
This October 2018 conference was a collaboration among participants from across Washington, Oregon, and California, bringing together tribal, state and local voices to discuss potential responses to proposed oil and gas drilling off the U.S. West Coast. The conference included representatives from governmental agencies, the legal community, grassroots advocacy, coastal tribes, and the fishing industry, to foster dialogue and promote understanding of the role of law and stakeholder engagement in response to these renewed threats. The conference provided participants with the opportunity to explore alternative strategies and recommendations, and to examine options for effective legal action.
Co-Hosted with the UCI Newkirk Center for Science and Society as part of the Toward a Sustainable 21st Century Series
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Solutions to Plastics
November 5, 2018
This conference addressed the problem of global plastic pollution. Plastic products are very cheap to produce from petroleum, but extremely difficult to remove from waste streams. Nearly two-thirds of all marine plastic debris originating on land is discharged through ten rivers, two of them in Africa and the rest in Asia—where plastic from the West is often transported for recycling. The process of plastic recycling remains problematic, as not all types of plastic can be recycled together, and recyclable plastic frequently ends up as waste. Considering the great potential value that improvements to recycling and the reduction of waste hold for the global environment, this conference aimed to contribute to cooperative engagement with these issues between and across the scientific community, government, business, education, and an empowered civil society.
Co-Hosted with the UCI Newkirk Center for Science and Society as part of the Toward a Sustainable 21st Century Series
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Environmental Literature and Film Series
In collaboration with the Environmental Law Society, CLEANR convenes an annual series examining foundational literature and film on a range of environmental, land use, and natural resources topics. UCI faculty members, or the work’s author when possible, frame and lead the discussion about the work.
The Little Pink House
, Courtney Balaker (2017)
Spring 2019
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Spring 2019 Environmental Law Practicum
Instructed by CLEANR Faculty Director Alex Camacho, this novel, experiential course aims to embed students in developing conversations among experts on emerging environmental issues through direct engagement in CLEANR’s programming. Students will conduct in-depth research and writing, working with the Center’s leadership and affiliates as well as nonprofit and industry organizations, academic experts, and local, state, federal, and tribal officials. Students will develop research strategies, learn interview techniques, and assist in the organization of CLEANR’s Workshop Roundtables
on topics that include environmental justice, food security and sustainability, safeguarding the use of science in policymaking, biotechnology and the future of conservation law, endangered species protected, climate change regulation, and water quality and/or supply.
Following Roundtable dialogues, students’ research will contribute to reports, white papers, rule comments, policy recommendations, draft legislation, or other similar policy outcomes.
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Spring 2019 Roundtable
Defense of Science: Safeguards Against Distortions of Scientific Research and Findings
Led by Professor Michael Robinson-Dorn, this roundtable will explore potential legal safeguards to protect scientific research from the types of abuses that have been documented under the Trump Administration. In the process, it will discuss a positive vision for the role of science in policymaking and analysis. Bringing together policymakers, academics, and advocates, this roundtable will consider the outlines of a legislative and institutional framework which balances the imperative of preventing abuse with the need to preserve the executive discretion and flexibility required to translate scientific findings into policy.
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Spring 2019 Conferences
Fire and Ice: The Shifting Narrative of Climate Change
February 8-9, 2019
This conference will address the crisis of communication surrounding climate change, featuring panel discussions on doubt and denial; the imminence of the sixth extinction; law, justice, and the environment; and global industrial development.
Economic Transition in the Anthropocene: Ensuring a Just and Sustainable Future for Humanity
April 2019
This conference, featuring speakers from the U.S. and Europe, will explore our changing economic system and its nexus to the environment.
Co-hosted with the UCI Newkirk Center for Science and Society and Partners for a New Economy as part of the Toward a Sustainable 21
st
Century Series
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Recent Center Reports and Publications
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Hybrid and Mixed Dispute Resolution Processes: Integrities of Process Pluralism
,
in
Handbook of Comparative Dispute Resolution, M. Palmer, M. Roberts, eds. (2018).
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Recent Faculty Presentations
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Adapting Law to Climate Change,
Climate Adaptation Implementation Barriers Workshop, sponsored by USFWS, Florida FWC, TNC & NWF, Orlando, Florida, June 12-13, 2018.
Adaptive Water Governance Workshop,
National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, Annapolis, Maryland, Feb. 7-9, 2018.
Multiple Agency/Interest Collaboration and Funding of Wildlife Habitat Conservation in Anticipation of Development, Environmental Law Institute, Washington, DC, Jan. 18, 2018.
Yale Workshop on Trade and Climate Change,
Yale University, Nov. 30-Dec. 1, 2017.
Assisted Migration and Other Emerging Conservation Strategies,
Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, Nov. 14, 2017.
Re-organizing Government: The Functions and Dimensions of Regulatory Authority,
Yale Law School Faculty Workshop, Nov. 6, 2017.
Assessing State Laws and Resources for Endangered Species Protection,
United States Senate Briefing (hosted by Senator Tammy Duckworth), Washington, DC, Sept. 28, 2017.
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Environmental Governance of an Ocean Commons: the Arctic,
IASC World Commons Week Webinar, Oct, 12, 2018.
60 Years of Environmental Law,
Catholic University of Milan, Italy, May 15, 2018.
Strategies for Addressing Climate Change in the Arctic: Focus Litigation,
Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, Finland, May 8, 2018.
Legal Strategies for Environmental Governance of the Arctic: Proven, Proposed—Provocative?
The Arctic University of Norway, Tromso, Apr. 23, 2018.
The Environmental Governance of the Arctic,
Oceans of Plastic and Ice, University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy, Mar. 29, 2018.
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The Academy of Food Law & Policy, First Annual Conference, Cambridge, MA, Oct. 5, 2018.
Giving Content to Food Citizenship
, Law and Society Association Annual Conference, Mexico City, Mexico, June 22, 2017.
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Issues in the Blending of Mediation and Arbitration – Public and Private,
Western Justice Center’s 12th Annual Robert I. Weil Lecture, Los Angeles, CA, Sept. 27, 2018.
Ethics, Technology, and Dispute Resolution Systems Design,
2018 ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Spring Conference, Washington, DC, Apr. 6, 2018.
Women and Negotiations
, Women’s Leadership Symposium: Los Angeles, Poynter Foundation for Journalism, Los Angeles, CA, Mar. 30, 2018.
The Problems of Hybridity and Blending of Processes in International Dispute Resolution: Public and Private in Arbitration and Mediation
, USC-JAMS Arbitration Institute Third Annual Symposium: Current Issues in International Arbitration, USC Gould School of Law, Los Angeles, CA, Mar. 15, 2018.
What We Think We Know and What We Don’t Want to Know about Legal Education,
International Conference on Research on Legal Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, Dec. 3-5, 2017.
Hybridity in Dispute Resolution: The Integrities of Process?
Faculty Colloquium, University of Florida, Nov. 3, 2017.
The Dangers of Adversarial Thinking in Law and Elsewhere
, American Forensic Psychiatry Association Annual Meeting, Denver, CO, Oct. 27, 2017.
Mediation: The Personal in the Past, the Technological in the Future
, Annual Lecture on Mediation, Singapore Mediation Centre and Singapore Management University, Oct. 10-11, 2017.
Have Law Books, Computer, Simulations – Will Travel
:
The Transnationalization of (Some of) the Law Professoriate
, Globalization of Legal Education Conference, University of California, Irvine, co-sponsored by Australian National University and American Bar Foundation, Sept. 8-9, 2017.
When the Rule of Law is Not Enough
, KU Leuven, Belgium, Faculty of Law Commencement Address, July 9, 2017.
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