Environmental Law Seminar: Strengthening Env Impact Assessment

Preparation of environmental impact statements is integral to practicing environmental law, under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at the federal level and under “Little NEPAs” at the state level (for example the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) in New York). Regulations for environmental impact assessment (EIA) now also exist in every nation, being mandated by international law. Although the Trump Administration has adopted revisions to weaken the NEPA Regulations in the USA, other countries are strengthening their EIA laws in order to cope with the impacts of climate change, COVID-19, and the world-wide degradation of ecosystems and biodiversity. This seminar will critique the Trump Administration’s revisions to the federal NEPA regulations, and evaluate what other jurisdictions consider to be “best practices” for EIA. The seminar will then examine how to strengthen NEPA’s EIA Regulations in order to avert or cope with the increased frequency of environmental disruptions, such as sea level rise, wildfires, species extinctions, or further zoonotic diseases like COVID-19. Each seminar participant will be assigned a specific topic to independently research, in consultation with Prof. Robinson and using the resources of the Haub Law Library. Each will write an annotated paper (25 pp), including a draft of a proposed regulation by which EIA procedures could identify prospective new environmental harms and mandate actions that are capable of restoring environmental quality, including post-project monitoring. Seminar participants will present their papers to class for peer review, and revision. Authors of final papers of publishable quality will be invited by Prof. Robinson to submit their paper for inclusion as a chapter in a book on “EIA in the Anthropocene.”