 Hello, everyone. Welcome to the 2021 Hot Topics and Environmental Law Summer Lecture Series. It's our last week. I'm Jenny Rushlow, Director of the Environmental Law Center and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs at Vermont Law School. I'm very pleased to have everybody here today. If you want a Vermont CLE credit, this talk is worth one credit, and please keep track for your records. We will have time for Q&A after the presentation today, and you can type questions into the chat anytime during the presentation. So please go ahead and do that so you don't forget. We don't miss anything. Today, we're very pleased to welcome Professor Jeffrey Garber. Professor Garber teaches environmental courses at McGill University and Concordia University in Montreal, and coordinates law and governance research for the leadership for the Ecozoic program, formerly the Economics for the Anthropocene Partnership. From 2000 to 2007, Professor Garber was Director of Submission on Enforcement Matters at the Commission for Environmental Cooperation following 13 years of public service with the United States Department of Justice, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and a federal district court judge in Maine. He coauthored Right Relationship, Building a Whole Earth Economy, as well as many articles and book chapters, and his book Ecological Law and the Planetary Crisis was released in October 2020. Today, he will present Ecological Law Case Studies, Bringing the Theory Down to Earth. Please join me in welcoming Professor Garber. Well, thank you so much, Jenny. It's great to be here. The Hot Topics Lectures this summer have covered some really interesting and timely issues, and it's a real honor and privilege to be part of the Hot Topics series. I am going to go ahead and share my screen, and here we go. So, as some of you may know, last year I gave a Hot Topics talk that was a broad overview of the emerging field of ecological law, and so it's exciting to be involved in the development of ecological law with the Leadership for the Ecozoic Project, the Ecological and Governance Association, of which I'm on the steering committee, and to be doing that in conjunction with some great colleagues, including many at Vermont Law School, which is a real leader in this emerging field. So, last year I mentioned that one of the ways we're developing and refining ecological law and its principles and features is what we're with what we're calling Ecological Law Case Studies, and at that point we were just getting started with the Case Studies Project. So, this year I want to give you an update on that project and on the case studies that are now underway. So, I'll start with a brief refresher on ecological law and its key concepts. I think it bears some repetition since it is a fairly new field, and also on the case studies approach, and then I'll turn to a closer look at the case studies. So, ecological law can be contrasted with contemporary law, including environmental law, and I'm very explicit about not just saying environmental law for reasons that I hope become clear as I go through this list, in a number of important feature areas. So, first of all, whereas contemporary law by and large considers humans as separate from nature, ecological law looks at humans as part of nature, and there are a lot of implications that flow from that. In terms of the kind of ecological limits and enforcement of those that's involved in a contemporary law and an environmental law, there's really a very reductionist and fragmented approach. It's an area of the law that really tries to do as little as possible, although there's been many gains from environmental law, but a little as possible without interfering with economic growth and other economic interests, whereas ecological law attempts to embed law more holistically and with a systems-based approach into law overall. It would give primacy to ecological limits over economic concerns, given long-term sustainability concerns. In terms of use of materials and energy, the contemporary legal system basically promotes efficiency in terms of the use of materials on energy with the interest of allowing those to be used continually over time. One aspect of this approach is that as we get more efficient in using things, by and large, we tend to use more of them. This is called the Jevons paradox or the rebound effect. Ecological law would put the concept of sufficiency front and center as opposed to efficiency, making do with enough and not taking more than we need. Whereas contemporary law really puts a core faith in the decoupling of the throughput of material and energy from the impacts of that throughput, ecological law would call for a drastic reduction in throughput, given what we now know is happening in terms of the ecological impacts of that throughput in order to keep the economy within ecological bounds. In terms of scale, there's a strong commitment in contemporary law or a strong recognition of state sovereignty with weak international global regimes. In ecological law, there would be a much stronger commitment to what's called the subsidiarity principle, which means you have strict global regimes for global issues, but only global issues and a respect for local regimes where that's sufficient to achieve the objective you're trying to achieve. In terms of fairness in contemporary law, we have a real core belief in the fairness of markets with recognition of some need for correction. This is really the arena in which a lot of environmental operates. We do have laws that recognize the polluter pay principles, recognize the need to regulate or do something to make sure that externalities of economic activity are accounted for and dealt with and made in some cases to be the cost of doing business. There's a strong tendency to monetize, which is kind of an imperfect way to sort out different values, especially when you're dealing with complex ecosystems and global issues. In ecological law, there will be stronger limits on market mechanisms, a bigger role for non-market decision making and value judgments, and a much stronger commitment to interhuman, interspecies, and intergenerational fairness. Finally, in terms of research monitoring and adaptation in contemporary law and environmental law, effects on human health are typically paramount. A good example of that is the U.S. Clean Air Act, which seems like an environmental law, but a lot of its main objectives are tied to human health, with environmental effects being secondary in that case. There is by and large nominal recognition of a precautionary approach, but often it's a very weak precautionary approach, and I'll give you some examples of how that's even turned on its head. There are few adaptive mechanisms to adjust rules based on monitoring. Ecological law would put planetary boundaries and other ecological limits as the key basis of research monitoring and adaptation. The idea is to make sure, first and foremost, that we're staying within planetary boundaries of safe operating space for humans using a strong precautionary approach. Ecological law case studies are a way to apply some of these theoretical ideas of ecological law in real world context and in concrete settings. These could be a particular project, they could be a policy approach, they could be a sectoral feature like urban infrastructure or transportation infrastructure. The idea is to take whatever the focus of the study is and to identify all the legal and policy features of the situation, they're both indirect and direct, at all governance levels from the local to the global scale. Then to analyze how those line up with ecological features and then reconstruct the situation and describe the legal and policy features that would apply in a regime of ecological law, again at all levels from local to global. Why do we do these, first of all, to help define ecological law? Like I said, it's largely theoretical to give it more meaning by contextualizing it and also to avoid dilution of its principles. One thing that people working on ecological law are concerned about is that it could be diluted in the same way that sustainable development over time has been diluted so that there's real questions now whether international understandings of sustainable development really will ensure sustainability. That's one reason. Another is to show concretely how ecological law transforms all law, not just environmental law. I said when I'm making the comparison with contemporary law and not environmental law, this is a key reason. If you put ecological primacy at the center of law, then it really has to go way beyond what environmental law does. It has to affect all areas of the law. It's also to make clear the deep inadequacy of the status quo and the nature of the obstacles to overcome if we are to achieve the vision and promise of ecological law, which I describe most often as being to achieve a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship, something that our current economic and legal systems are far from doing. Another reason to do these is to highlight transitional reforms in the direction of ecological law. The fully built vision of ecological law can seem extremely elusive and far off in the future if it's possible at all. It's important to provide that clear vision when we do these case studies, but also to show opportunities more in the short and near term of how we can move in that direction. Here's just a schematic of a summary schematic of how these work. Again, deconstruction of the current law, not just environmental law, but also development-oriented law, like property law, labor, trade and investment law, corporate law, and so on. Again, from the local to the global level. Then analysis using some tools that I will discuss in a minute, the lens of ecological law and lock and lock-out assessments are some examples, and then this reconstruction. Again, a transitional description which may seem more plausible or practical in the near term, and then a longer vision that may seem more elusive for now. Just a review again of some of the key features of ecological law, ecological law, that humans are part of Earth's life systems, that ecological boundaries like planetary boundaries need to be given primacy over socioeconomic spheres. There needs to be full integration of ecological limits and rules and policy, and this is a key distinction again with environmental law. A much greater focus given the current state of affairs on reducing material and energy throughput given what we know about how much that correlates to degradation of our supporting ecosystems right up to key issues like climate change. The use of biocapacity and extracted materials based on real need not on utilitarian desires. So much of our economy and the law that supports it uses market prices, which is really how much we want things and how we're willing to pay, but that's very much disconnected from these ecological limits that are central to ecological law. A plurality of diverse place-based approaches, but a global scope when necessary. This is one way to talk to describe this notion of subsidiarity. Binding and supernational rules were necessary, so typically rules about environmental protection are pretty weak at the at the supernational level, so in ecological law there would be a much stronger commitment to allowing those rules when they're necessary. Fair sharing among present and future generations of life, again greatly expanded in different kinds of research and monitoring, using precaution about costing boundaries and also an adaptive approach that allows us to learn from what we're to react from what we're learning from research and monitoring to work continually towards this goal of a mutually enhancing human-earth relationship. My friend and colleague Carlos Spairt has reduced these features into three notions, ecocentrism, ecological primacy and ecological justice. So she uses those ideas in her lens of ecological law, which is one of the analytical tools that can be used doing these case studies, and I'll explain that a little more in a bit. Lock-in lock-out assessments are really looking at obstacles that prevent progress towards ecological law in terms of how deeply wired into legal systems or systems that legal systems interact with, so economic systems, technological systems, and so on, how deeply wired they are and how long we can estimate it would take to overcome them, and also looking at opportunities for implementing ecological law principles, again looking at how hard-wired a system is to keep those opportunities from being undertaken and also how long it would take to pursue those opportunities. That's something I developed in my PhD work, and you can use those to develop strategies on what to prioritize at different points in time. Analytical methods using planetary boundaries, ecological footprint, material and energy flow analysis, so on, are also useful here. Those and other methods that are used in the degrowth world or in donut and ecological economics, I'll explain donut economics in a minute, are really important because they don't use monetary valuations as a primary metric. It's more difficult to look at these systems flows and so on from a non-monetary unit in some sense, but you get much better information and it's much more consistent because whenever you are reducing things to monetary valuation, you are creating problematic estimates, and sometimes those are very, very problematic. Community and stakeholder consultations can be a part of these case studies interviews with knowledge holders. It's a strong hope that these will be interdisciplinary case studies and not even, it's hard to do that when you're calling them ecological law case studies, but certainly I am committed to an interdisciplinary approach. And then flexibility is key. It's important for study teams to have the freedom to innovate and to tailor this overall methodology to the particular issue that they're looking at. The lens of ecological law is probably the most useful and relevant tool here, and so I just want to explain a little what Carla Spirit has means by these terms. So in ecocentrism, she's talking about recognizing and respecting the value of all beings and the interconnectedness among them with equitable promotion of the interests of human and non-human members of the earth community. Ecological privacy is about ensuring that social and economic behavior and systems are ecologically bound, respecting planetary boundaries or other relevant ecological limits, and ecological justice is about ensuring equitable access to the earth's sustaining capacity for present and future generations of humans and other life and avoiding the inequitable allocation of environmental harms. So these principles can be used for looking at the legal and policy array that underlies a particular case before you then rebuild it consistent with ecological law. Carla's book, The Lens of Ecological Law, applies her lens into some really interesting cases, lithium mining and Bolivia, a ban on metal mining in El Salvador and mining in northern Ontario. In my book, Ecological on the Planetary Crisis, describes in some detail the lock-in lock-out assessment approach that I mentioned. The other methodology that I think is really interesting is so-called the Donut Economics. This is work developed by Kate Rayworth. And so she starts with the planetary boundaries and says, okay, those are ceilings. Those are things that we should not surpass, but we also need to maintain social foundations. So this reflects to me the idea that I like, I've struggled with the terms anthropocentric and ecocentric and then sort of decided the one that works for me is human-inclusive ecocentric. We need to, I'm not indifferent to human survival. So her notion of providing a social foundation in regard to some key areas, food, water, income, education, resilience, voice, so that's participation and so on, jobs, energy, social equity, gender, equality, health, and so on. Her proposal to try to live within that green donut, the safe and just based humanity, provides a strong state of systems-based set of integrated ways to think about ecological law. So I just want to review some of the examples I gave you before, before I update you on the five case studies where we've jumped into. I thought of these examples when I was first proposing these ecological law case studies, as the kind of things you could apply this to. So one is this Cartier-Dies-Trent outside of Montreal, which is self-described as Canada's first lifestyle center. And what they mean by that is that this would be a commercial lifestyle center located in Brasar, Quebec, up to about maybe 10 or 20 kilometers outside of Montreal designed to emulate an urban or downtown shopping experience with boutiques and to meet the needs of suburban dwellers living on the south shore of Montreal. I suppose it might be appealing to some people. It certainly is not to me. I mean, it puts front and center in terms of things like worldview, human-earth relationship, or the vision of the future, a lifestyle built around shopping, consumerism, global brands, a certain form of labor relations, a certain notions of entertainment, certain notions of community, front and center. And this is also a lifestyle that is very car-dependent in that this development is at the intersection of two highways. It puts into stark relief this difference between true need and not taking more than we need to live sufficiently well versus utilitarian desires, which are really pushed in this particular development. You can contextualize this from the global to the local level. At the local level, the land use regimes here, which would be a pieced together aspects of Canadian, Quebec, and local regional law, the land use is such that farmland has been allowed to be converted, very good farmland for suburban development. And again, this is situated at the intersection of two autos. At the global level, down to the local level, you can see the connection here between some key planetary boundaries, climate change because of the car use and so on. And there are then local biodiversity issues. I don't know if there's been issues directly with the Western chorus frog, but this is an endangered species that a lot of suburban development around Montreal is imperiling. So the second illustration I gave at the beginning was the Kinsu Dam. This is a dam located in Western New York State that was built in the 1960s. And you can see the green area in this map is the Seneca reservation and the blue area. You can see the expanded blue area there around high banks is where the dam was created. So this dam was authorized by Congress in flood control acts in the 1930s to protect Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from floods. So the Seneca nation and its allies resisted this project for a long time. They got a commitment from President presidential candidate, John Kennedy, not to go ahead with it, but Pennsylvania was the state that put them over the top of the electoral college. And so he reneged on that promise and they went ahead with that domain. So condemnation of one third of the Seneca reservation, which was a court sanctioned breach of one of the oldest treaties in the area, the Treaty of Canada, in which the United States promised that they would never claim this land nor disturb the Seneca nation, nor any of the six nations or of their Indian friends residing thereon and united with them in the free use and enjoyment thereof. It was a clear breach. Part of the story here is the creation and the authority of the Army Corps of Engineers operating under federal law to undertake a project like this. And of course, there were numerous side effects, significant displacement of members of the Seneca nation. In addition to flood control protection, there was hydro hydroelectric power production and outdoor recreation, hydro power again, maybe reducing climate change, but also providing energy that allows other kinds of development that can increase environmental harms. The dam led to a highway being built through the remaining portion of the Seneca reservation, which required condemning more Seneca land. This was before the National Environmental Policy Act, where there was no EIS. So these side effects weren't fully examined as they would be in under current law in the United States. But this example, again, puts in question consideration of human as part of nature. The Seneca nation is a model of connection to place and this project disrupted it. In terms of ecological primacy, the dam project was designed to enhance an industrial city, very much linked to a capitalist growth-driven economy. And there is a connection to planetary boundaries, although the exact extent of that would require probably further study. This is a part of a project to expand use of material and energy in terms of true need alternatives that the Seneca proposed were rejected. Local control was superseded. Fairness and justice, those issues I think are pretty clear. And in terms of precaution and adaptability, this was a project that was virtually irreversible once done. And if you're interested in learning more about this, I commend this video to you. You can find that on PBS online or at the Seneca Museum store. It's a very good, fuller version of that story. So let me now update you on the five ecological law case studies that are now underway. So the first one, so we presented these in a webinar on June 15th. They're available on YouTube. If you want to get a longer look at this, it's about 10 to 15 minutes for each of these case studies. But let me give you some highlights here. The first, dealing with restoring the river Ethiope in the Delta state of Nigeria. This is a river that's in the heart of the region of Nigeria that's been dominated by oil development since the 1950s. So it illustrates what's often called the resource curse, which is where part of the world or country is basically treated by the global economic system as a warehouse of something that's desired within the economic system. In this case, it's oil. And what happens is that in this case, local communities and ecosystems have been transformed by oil development, but nearly all the gains go elsewhere or to elites within the country. Community cohesiveness and pre-oil connections to ecosystems like the river Ethiope watershed have been disrupted. Poverty is very high. There's a clear link to global trade and investment in fossil fuels. In this case, it's pretty clear that the power and wealth associated with the oil and gas sector overwhelms long-term sustainability in the region. In terms of ecological limits, this case study really illustrates well links to climate change and because of the dependency on oil and at places like the Niger Delta that support that. And it's also interesting in that it puts front and center the emerging rights of nature movement and that the river Ethiope is likely to be the first African river to be granted legal personhood. Probably in this case by legislation, I think that's being drafted now. It's a kind of an exciting development here. And there's been strong community engagement. There's been a strong effort with the river Ethiope Trust Foundation to engage with communities and re-establish their connections to the river. Very interesting to talk to the people involved there about the resistance to that kind of engagement, but gradually it's being established. There are some exciting things going on in this particular case. So, Ngozi Unwigwe are based in Nigeria and are helping with that. Dafe is the head of the River Ethiopian Trust Foundation. Ngozi teaches at the University of Benin. And we also have the Earth Law Center participating in that case study. And I want to just take a break here to let Dafe explain some of the highlights here in his own words. So, I'm going to stop sharing this and share something else for a second. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Where are you listening from? This is the case study with River Ethiopian Trust in Nigeria. I just want to thank you for this great opportunity. It is a timely, timely decision that we've been, you know, this business of trying to restore and protect River Ethiopian Trust in the last three meetings. And this concept of ecological law coming at this time, where we are the point of trying to give rights of nature to the right to, it is a welcome development. This is the major cities and town which the river passes through in five local government councils area in the state. But the economy of the state in the Niger data area, the government of the oil and gas development is the discovery of major oil depots in 1956, which they raised considerable weight for the country. Nonetheless, Nigeria and particularly the state in the Niger data region so far from the resource costs phenomenon in that despite the richness in oil and gas and other recoverable resources, poverty levels and environmental degradation continue rising on daily basis. To a large extent, the culture and the ways of the people has been converted from that of the river area to that of oil and gas culture. Applying a traditional lens is what I've just said. We look at it from an eco-centric viewpoint to start with, like the current legal and institutional framework that apply to revitalize and catchment in highly human centered. And there need to be a drastic change to this. Looking at it from a political primacy, the current legal and institutional framework that apply to revitalize and catchment that don't give primacy in the law to respecting and keeping human activity within the bounds of the political limit. And to a certain extent, such primacy is not well implemented and enforced. I call it justice. The current legal and institutional framework that apply to revitalize and catchment is very weak on a political justice. In that it does not ensure intergenerational, intra-generational and interspecies fairness and justice as a result. Great or poor practice, lack of well-being in human community and in catchment are high. And the wealth extracted from oil and development goes elsewhere. Times are quite species is ongoing and other species in the catchment face declining abundance and diversities. In 2020, in January 2021, the key stakeholder, which covers both the indigenous people, the governments, the business team together and declare the right of revitalization, which is now to be implemented through the state House of Assembly and the federal House of Assembly before the end of this year. We hope with this in mind and applying the ecological law concept, we will overcome all difficulties, obstacles to ensure that revitalization will stay for the present and future generations. Thank you. So I invite you to go to YouTube to see more about that and the other case studies. I'm not going to share a similar clip from the others, but let me give you some highlights. In terms of the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Ganyin Gahaga of Kanawaki near Montreal, this illustrates a clash of settler and indigenous worldviews and the legacy of the doctrine of discovery and colonialism more broadly. So the doctrine of discovery, as many of you probably know, is this idea of settler, mostly European societies coming in and to places like Turtle Island or North America and saying, well, this is basically uninhabited or at least not in the way that they were used to in it. And there were no laws, so will impose our laws. And in fact, we now know there were strong legal traditions and legal structures that were just not recognized as such. And so there's just been a huge legacy in this construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway is just a vivid example of that. So this is a Seaway built and started in the 1950s that facilitates long-distance travel and trade. It supports regional and global economic growth in a capitalist context where utilitarian desires and consumption are a key driver and it caused major displacement of people and disruption of ecosystems. In this case, in terms of community engagement and fairness, in the construction of the Seaway, there was very little engagement. And this was the same with other Ganyin Gahaga communities. Aquasazne is also on the St. Lawrence River upstream and it suffered similar harms. In this case study, however, the case study team will be strongly engaging with the community to discuss the Seaway and how we go forward into the future. And it puts into context a really tough problem, which is how does ecological law deal with this kind of situation where you have irretrievable loss and harm? What does healing and reparations and remediation look like in that context? The phosphate mining in Anitopolis, and let me just go back and recognize Professor Kirsten Anker and her two students, Gabriel Dastus and Larissa Parker, who are leading this study. The phosphate mining study in Anitopolis, Brazil is about a proposed phosphate mine that so far has been stopped, but could be restarted in a hilly agricultural region of the Atlantic Forest in Santa Catarina State in Brazil. This is being led by Professor Cristiana Derrani and her student Gabriela Piñera and other students. So this is a story of a local community pitted against a wealthy powerful interest. It's an ag dependent community and some of the best land around the community was expropriated for use for this phosphate mine and processing installation. The parent company of this phosphate mine is now based in Miami and the phosphate products would be designed for global trade for the global fertilizer trade. So there's a legacy of colonialism here and also a strong link to global trade and investment and there's also a strong and interesting link to planetary boundaries and that researchers say that the planetary boundary for additions of phosphorus ecosystems has been crossed already. Phosphate additions to ecosystems threatened by adversity and farming enhanced with phosphorus fertilizers is linked to climate change and so on. The case study on considering ecological law in the context of marine biodiversity on the high seas is being led by Professor Sarah Ryder of the Vermont Law School and this contextualizes ecological issues in the oceans and she's considering how ecological law principles relate or would change a consideration of two marine protected areas at least in her in her those are the focus of the work she's presented so far. One is in the US in the economic economic zone of the US and one is at the bottom of the ocean in an area beyond national jurisdiction ABNJ. So this case study involves a deep dive into the history evolution function and guiding principles of marine protected areas. We can see from what she's done so far that the focus of the high seas treaties and the parts that are being negotiated now is it's really to maintain equitable access to fisheries and marine sources for economic purposes primarily with between protected areas sort of being part of the bigger picture. So a key challenge here is that fishing and mining exploitation of marine genetic and mineral resources the pressure to do that is strong there's considerable resistance to stays of exploration claims and exploitation while the situation gets mapped out from a systemic point of view that takes into account climate change biodiversity and so on. So early conclusions that Professor Ryder is making is that ecological law is overall poorly reflected in both current practice and the treaty negotiations underway from marine diverse marine diversity on the high seas which of course is is a key global commons. And Professor Pamela Viseland and her student Heidi Gunther are working on a case study on wild animal law in Vermont illustrated by the strange but true saga of Pete the moose and those of you from Vermont who are listening and probably know this story a story about a moose who became domesticated more or less was orphaned or I think otherwise in need of some care and then well meaning Vermont got attached to him he was put into a private hunting reserve there were then conflicts that arose in terms of how he should be treated in terms of the state's program to control a tick infestation affecting moose and other wildlife and then he ended up dying of a foot disease due to be probably due to eating too much human food from the crowds of people who went to see him. So it's quite a sad story and it just puts into sharp relief some some really interesting questions about the human earth relationship and and how we relate to animals non-human animals and one of the things that Professor Viseland chose here is how property regimes dictate how the law considers human relationships to wild animals like moose or a special animal like Pete the moose whether it's as a wild animal whether it's as a pet whether it's as common property or so on. And I think this case study also has some broader lessons about the pervasiveness and implications of property regimes. Animals are but one example of what the law typically treats as public common or private property of humans and what are the broad implications of different approaches that would be more consistent with principles of ecological law. I want to quickly just note that Carlos Spear and I have just had an article looking at the Canada-US-Mexico agreement or US-Mexico-Canada agreement. It has two names in English because apparently they couldn't agree on one NAFTA 2.0 through the lens of ecological law. So we've just had this article accepted by the Vermont law review and we've concluded that not surprisingly this agreement is profoundly anthropocentric. It takes a market-oriented and utilitarian view of the human-earth relationship. It gives primacy to economic growth and competitivity not ecological limits like planetary boundaries. It pretty much completely ignores the climate crisis and maintains strong protection of sovereignty and private property. It kind of contains a kind of upside down precautionary principle and that it institutionalizes caution against environmental and other regulations from being too strong vis-à-vis trade and competitivity. So these are just you know the sort of boilerplate kind of least trade restrictive rules about various kinds of environmental and other regulations that are present in most trade agreements and then this agreement has a special chapter 28 is on good regulatory practice which is really about offering business interest opportunities to throw wrenches in the processes for adopting regulations and those are rules that will be their mandatory and they can be enforceable through state in other words country to country enforcement and this agreement maintains weak environmental measures. The one good thing about it perhaps is that it scales back investor-state dispute systems that were present in for example chapter 11 of NAFTA. In terms of ecological justice it focuses on satisfying growing utilitarian desires not real needs at the expense of non-human nature and future generations of our life and it ignores wealth and income disparities. So there are a number of emerging lessons here. There are some concrete examples in diverse contexts I hope that's become clear from a look at these examples I've given today about how legal regimes fail to include principles of ecological law and pose enormous challenges and barriers to a transition to ecological law. Economic growth, state sovereignty, private property interests, and wealth accumulation not ecological limits have primacy. Dominant legal systems are profoundly anthropocentric. International regimes for protecting parts of earth's ecosystems like in the protected areas may have overarching goals of maintaining access to any use of ecosystems generally to support growth and wealth accumulation. Legal regimes including trade and investment law often perpetuate colonial legacies of land and resource grabbing and remote provisioning. There are enduring harms from major disruptions of local ecosystems and communities that pose a very big justice challenge for ecological law. And finally rights of nature and strong limitation of the Paris Climate Accord may lead in the direction of ecological law in the transitional period. We're going to be publishing the results of these studies in a book that should be coming out in 2022. Basically describing the case studies doing some comparative analysis and then conclusions and recommendations for future research. As part of these case studies or along with them we have an upcoming workshop. We'll certainly make this available to people at Vermont Law School and elsewhere. This will be a three-part workshop hopefully with CLE credit. An introduction to ecological law case studies, presentation of these five case studies and then a working session with participants to develop ideas for additional case studies. So this really will be a hands-on workshop. And you know I would say you don't have to have a particular idea. You can come and listen to other ideas and maybe generate some as part of that workshop. And then we have various kinds of outreach including a new ecological law blog on the L4E website. And you know a lot kind of a focus effort on building the network. Along with the ecological long governance association and other alga research centers to build a global network advancing ecological law. So thank you very much. This last slide just gives you just a quick glimpse of some of the emerging work that's coming out in the area of ecological law. So I'm going to stop there and I'm very happy to take Excellent. Thank you so much professor. We do have a few minutes for our audience to ask questions and just to remind you how to do that. If you're watching on the website live stream click on the icon at the bottom of the video to bring up the chat box where you can log in and add your question or if you're watching on Facebook live stream add your question to the comment box below and we'll get through as many as we can with the time that we have. Our first question is do you anticipate a shift from traditional environmental law to ecological law principles in the next 10 years? What are the indicators? Well that that that is something I try to pay attention to and I alluded briefly to the rights of nature movement. And I'm particularly interested in seeing what happens with some of the success or initial success stories there. The one that I refer to most is the the the Fonga Nui River settlement and legislation that implements it in in in New Zealand. So that settlement resolved over 100 years of disputes treaty-based disputes you know in a colonial setting where the the Fonga Nui iwi the indigenous people had you know sort of been overridden their notion of kinship and relationship to the river had been overridden by a more human separated from nature approach that's typical in dominant legal systems and European law and settler-based societies like New Zealand Canada United States and so on. So what this settlement does is it gives personhood to the river it creates a guardian ship with representatives from both the government and from the Maori communities and it puts some key worldview concepts from the Maori front and center and future decision making about the river no matter who's making those decisions. So either whether it's not Maori or whether it's you know the more traditional water districts that are using the water for economic interest farming and so on. When they make decisions the first thing they have to pass through that the most important consideration has to be given to these Maori principles like we are the river the river is us and those are spelled out in the settlement and the agreement. So that's happening in other parts of the world in in Quebec and in Canada earlier this year the Magpai River was declared rights of the Magpai River was declared by an Inuit community and a local community in northern Quebec to try to protect that river from hydroelectric development that would be very disruptive of indigenous uses. Ecuador has installed this in their constitution. There are many examples around the world so this is some place that this is an area that resonates with the ecological law where you really have movement on the ground. Will that be diluted? You know diluted as as I mentioned is a fear that those of us working in this field are concerned about. That remains to be seen it certainly happened in some places that have recognized a human right to a healthy environment. I think of Pennsylvania which included that NRC constitution and the state the Supreme Court eventually said well this really is this you know there's it has to be balanced against other rights and it really doesn't change much. So rights of nature is one and then the second thing I point to is the Paris Accord. Now if you're reading up on this you know that the commitments that countries have made are not sufficient to stay to stay within a safe boundary but there is an opportunity to tighten those limits every five years. And so I think it's important to keep an eye on what's happening there and whether countries will get more serious over time as you know we're learning with wildfires extreme heat and so on extreme weather that this is real awareness hopefully it's growing and so the impetus to tighten those commitments may arise. But of course it's a huge challenge given our current economic system and the focus on growth and capital accumulation and wealth accumulation. Okay thank you. Our next question for you is ecological law appears to lend itself to indigenous leadership. Are you seeing an emphasis in ecological law on elevating indigenous peoples voices? I think it's a huge opportunity. So the Fonga Nui River example again illustrates that. And I'll just say a little more there are we we have seen an indigenous role with the recognition of rights for the Magpie River. There are other efforts underway potentially in Canada in the United States. The Urock tribes in the west on the Klamath River are asserting rights of nature for the Klamath. There are tribes in the Midwest Anishinaabe I think or Ojibwe are asserting rights for wild rice which is a traditional you know which is a big part of their culture requires you know has ecosystem needs there's a kinship relationship there. So it is you know for me it's a huge antidote in a way what we're hearing and learning from indigenous communities now sort of a re-empowerment that's showing that a lot of you know the hubris and arrogance of the doctrine of discovery the idea that there was no valid set of law was was just extremely wrong-headed and is now pushing us pushing us off a cliff. So I do think indigenous worldviews practices knowledge legal traditions are an important source for for ecological law going forward. Okay well I see that we are at five of one which is typically when we need to wrap up in order to let folks get to their one o'clock class. So thank you again Jeff for your presentation and thank you so much to our viewers for joining us today our final hot topics talk of the summer will be this Thursday August 5th at noon and we hope you can join us then thanks everyone