By Bonnie Smith, Staff Editor, Vermont Journal of Environmental Law This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate.  Read the original here and leave a comment.   Introduction For the first time in the history of international climate negotiations, adaptation has its own article in a legal text. Even more striking is that loss and damage, historically treated as a component of adaptation, does too. For many years, negotiations concerning adaptation and loss and damage have been contentious between developed countries, which prioritize mitigation over adaptation and loss and damage, and developing countries uniquely vulnerable to the impacts…

This week’s post, It Is Time For Oregon To Define Its Public Trust Duties, was written by Olivier Jamin, a 2L at Lewis & Clark Law School.  Olivier is currently the Online Journal Editor for Environmental Law. Read the post here!

By Olivier Jamin, a 2L at Lewis & Clark Law School, where he is the Online Journal Editor for Environmental Law.  This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. Read the original here and leave a comment.   I. Introduction The public trust doctrine (PTD) is a concept under which states have the duty to preserve certain natural and cultural resources for the benefit of the public.[1] The PTD is a common law doctrine, and state courts around the country have spent the last three decades applying — and in some cases rejecting — it to a variety of natural…

This week’s post, Towards a Middle Path: Loss & Damage in the 2015 Paris Agreement, was written by our own Maryam Al-Dabbagh! Maryam is currently a Graduate Editor on the NYU Environmental Law Journal. Read the post here!

Maryam Al-Dabbagh* This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. Click the link above or scroll through to leave a comment.  Introduction In the lead-up to the Paris talks, the issue of loss and damage (L&D) was portrayed to be one of the biggest hurdles in the quest for an agreement. L&D had already suffered multiple drawbacks in previous talks, such as the mass walkout by G-77 countries at COP19 in Warsaw in protest of the response by developed countries to their demands for L&D.[1] Surprisingly, no similar issues occurred in Paris; instead, the agreement articulated a middle…

By Helen Marie Berg, General Member of the Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law. This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. The original post can be viewed here.   In January 2016, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appealed to the federal government for a $96 million emergency aid grant in response to the tremendous and growing public health crisis in Flint, Michigan.[1] City and state officials caused the crisis. They decided to switch the city’s drinking water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River, but failed to add the proper anti-corrosion treatment to the lead pipes…

This week’s post, Rising Seas in the Holy City: Preserving Historic Charleston in the Face of Global Climate Change, was written by Will Grossenbacher, former Editor-in-Chief of the Virginia Environmental Law Journal. Read it here!

Will Grossenbacher* This post is part of the Environmental Law Review Syndicate. Read the original here and leave a comment. From October 2–5, 2015, the State of South Carolina, and the City of Charleston in particular, experienced historic rains: sites in the Charleston area reported up to twenty-six inches of rain.[1] The downpour combined with high tides to create flooding that closed dozens of streets throughout the City. Then, at the end of October, Charleston experienced the fourth-highest tide ever recorded in the City.[2] Persistent winds combined with the bi-monthly spring tide to create a high tide that reached 8.7…

This week’s post, titled Implementing Supplemental Environmental Project Policies to Promote Restorative Justice, is by Eric Anthony DeBellis, Senior Executive Editor of the Ecology Law Quarterly. Read it here!