Abstract

Noted ecologist Daniel Botkin argues that "solving our environmental problems requires a new perspective" of environmental concerns that incorporates contemporary scientific understandings and embraces humanity's role in environmental management. Recognizing a new perspective is but the first step, however. There is also a need to identify how this perspective can inform environmental policy, not just on the ground but in the very institutional architecture of environmental law and management. Then comes the really hard part, for even if it is possible to conceive of how environmental management should proceed, it may be devilishly difficult to put such ideas into practice. Old habits die hard. Legal and institutional norms die even harder.

Accounting for dynamic nature may require revisiting conventional notions of environmental protection and the underpinnings of environmental law and management. This presents an enormous challenge. Conventional approaches to environmental management may be unable to heed dynamic environmentalism's call so long as they are confined by contemporary notions of fair administrative process, whether such constraints are the product of norms, statutes or even the Constitution. The challenge of recognizing dynamic nature as such implicates the very foundations of contemporary environmental law and policy.

Part I of this paper provides a brief overview of how contemporary ecological science has upset traditional notions of ecology, emphasizing the dynamic nature of natural systems. Part II explains how the dominant approach to environmental protection, as constrained as it is to begin with, is a particularly poor fit for the management and protection of dynamic ecological systems. Part III provides a brief overview of "adaptive management," the dominant management approach suggested to accommodate the dynamic nature of natural systems. Part IV then identifies some of the obstacles to (and opportunities for) adaptive management in environmental law. The aim here is to identify potential avenues for further study and analysis more than to define or delimit the prospects for adaptive management in environmental law.

This abstract has been adapted from the author's introduction.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 2015

Publication Information

11 Journal of Law, Economics & Policy 133-161 (2015)

Comments

Written for the roundtable Dynamic Environmentalism: Ecology, Economics, and Law (2014) at George Mason University School of Law.

Download

Share

COinS