The article, Global Climate Governance to Enhance Biodiversity & Well-Being:  Integrating Non-State Networks and Public International Law in Tropical Forests, 41 Environmental Law __ (forthcoming 2011), may be of interest to readers of this blog.  The article is available for free download at:  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1694859 

Here is the abstract:

Environmental governance frequently represents a leading edge of global regulation. The climate regime even continues to create new modes of regulation despite a negotiation impasse. These new initiatives, like existing legal approaches to environmental challenges, too often embrace a fragmented view of issue areas that fails to reflect fundamental connections between the objects of regulation. The shortcomings of a state-driven international issue-by-issue approach to global environmental governance have long been obvious in some areas (such as tropical forests), and are becoming ever clearer in others (most notably climate change). Therefore, private networks play an increasingly important role in global environmental governance, as illustrated most directly by forest certification that was developed to fill a gap left by negotiation failures of the 1990s. These prior failures also laid the groundwork for tropical forests to become an object of climate regime regulation, giving rise to one of the most promising and innovative programs for generating a much-needed new approach to global environmental governance more broadly. The reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) program holds out the promise of not only reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the forest sector, but also promoting public goods associated with biodiversity and human well-being. Nonetheless, REDD remains incompletely formed and fragile. An over-emphasis on mitigation, which seems likely given REDD’s climate regime origins, may prove self-limiting or even self-defeating for the program. In response to this concern, and the need for greater recognition of issue-linkages in designing global environmental regulation generally, this article proposes a novel hybrid public-private governance approach to REDD that can encourage maximum emissions reductions while also effectively promoting a broad array of benefits for biodiversity and human well-being. In so doing, the article also offers an innovative and generalizable model for combining private market finance and public funding to increase the coherence and effectiveness of global environmental regulation.

The New York Times recently included two notable commentaries on the abandonment of efforts toward climate change legislation.  Andrew Revkin takes President Obama to task for abdicating leadership on the issue.  Tom Friedman takes a broader view, highlighting the public’s failure to demand action and the the role of climate change deniers. 

Both of these commentaries, especially Friedman’s, could be useful to include in readings for a class discussing the lack of climate change legislation in the U.S.  The obvious question, then, is where do we go from here?  From a legal perspective, we continue to look to state & local efforts, while pushing EPA to use the Clean Air Act as muscularly as possible.  Both of these, hopefully, could play a role in changing the political landscape as regulated entities will come to seek the predictability of comprehensive national legislation.

The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International and WWF have recently released Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD):  A Casebook of On-the-Ground Experience, which offers analysis of key REDD issues through investigation of specific cases.  The report endorses REDD, frequently using the cases to demonstrate how potential probelems with REDD can be overcome.  It thus comes across as a constructive assessment of REDD’s possiblities.  The examination of specific cases is particularly helpful because such studies are, unfortunately, often hard to find with the exception of a very few frequently discussed early REDD examples.

From today’s Washington Post:  “Conceding that they can’t find enough votes for the legislation, Senate Democrats on Thursday abandoned efforts to put together a comprehensive energy bill that would seek to curb greenhouse gas emissions . . .” 

Hardly surprising, but disappointing nonetheless.

Research by Arthur Webb (South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission) and Paul Kench (Auckland University) suggests that islands may be changing in reponse to sea level rise.  The study finds that 23 of 27 islands studied have either grown or remained constant despite significant sea level rise (nearly 5 inches on average).  AP reports the study here.  The abstract  of the study appears below (link to full text):

“Low-lying atoll islands are widely perceived to erode in response to measured and future sea level rise. Using historical aerial photography and satellite images this study presents the first quantitative analysis of physical changes in 27 atoll islands in the central Pacific over a 19 to 61 year period. This period of analysis corresponds with instrumental records that show a rate of sea level rise of 2.0 mm.y^-1 in the Pacific. Results show that 86% of islands remained stable (43%) or increased in area (43%) over the timeframe of analysis. Largest decadal rates of increase in island area range between 0.1 to 5.6 hectares. Only 14% of study islands exhibited a net reduction in island area. Despite small net changes in area, islands exhibited larger gross changes. This was expressed as changes in the planform configuration and position of islands on reef platforms. Modes of island change included: ocean shoreline displacement toward the lagoon; lagoon shoreline progradation; and, extension of the ends of elongate islands. Collectively these adjustments represent net lagoonward migration of islands in 65% of cases. Results contradict existing paradigms of island response and have significant implications for the consideration of island stability under ongoing sea level rise in the central Pacific. First, islands are geomorphologically persistent features on atoll reef platforms and can increase in island area despite sea level change. Second; islands are dynamic landforms that undergo a range of physical adjustments in responses to changing boundary conditions, of which sea level is just one factor. Third, erosion of island shorelines must be reconsidered in the context of physical adjustments of the entire island shoreline as erosion may be balanced by progradation on other sectors of shorelines. Results indicate that the style and magnitude of geomorphic change will vary between islands. Therefore, Island nations must place a high priority on resolving the precise styles and rates of change that will occur over the next century and reconsider the implications for adaption.”

Readers may find the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences recent publication, A Human Health Perspective on Climate Change, noteworthy. It provides an accessible discussion of existing knowledge and research needs pertaining the strikingly wide array of health impacts related to climate change, organized into 11 broad topics. Greater awareness of the probable direct impacts of climate change on human health in the U.S. could go a long way toward raising the public’s perception of climate change as an important policy issue.

Blog readers might be interested to see the Gallup poll results released today showing that fewer people felt the environment was an “extremely important” or “very important” issue than any of the six other issues raised.  Among Republicans, only 16% said “the environment, including global warming” was “extremely important,” while 34% of Democrats ranked the issue as “extremely important.”  Although that discrepancy may not be surprising, the poll showed that independents are much closer to Republicans than Democrats on this issue — only 18% stated it was “extremely important.”  These numbers probably don’t bode well for climate legislation, particularly in an election year.

The Second Annual Meeting of the Society for Law and Economics is ongoing.  This year’s conference is hosted by Emory Law School and includes several papers/presentations on climate change.  Details are available here.

A few days ago, the Obama administration announced plans to create a new Climate Service within NOAA.  The new Climate Service will initially concentrate on making climate science information more accessible and usable.  This strikes me as an eminently sensible plan that will both increase efficiency of governmental study of climate change and, hopefully, help to increase the public’s understanding and acceptance of climate change science.

NOAA’s webpage, containing a variety of links to further information, is here.  An Environment News Service article on the plans is here.

PBS Frontline & the Center for Investigative Reporting have launched a website linking to a variety of interviews, program segments and reports touching on some key issues emerging in carbon markets.  The materials are accessible and well-crafted, making them very suitable to provide students’ with an introduction to issues such as REDD’s potential impacts on indigenous peoples.