Environmental

New Study Documents Disproportionate Impact of Climate Change on Indian Tribes

Singel

From the National Wildlife Federation (link here).

Here’s an excerpt:

In collaboration with the Tribal Lands Program, Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, National Congress of American Indians, Native American Fish & Wildlife Society, National Tribal Environmental Council, Native American Rights Fund, and University of Colorado Law School, the National Wildlife Federation released Indian Tribes, Climate-Induced Weather Extremes, and the Future for Indian Country. The report details how climate change is adversely and disproportionately affecting Indian Tribes in North America, people who rely on a healthy environment to sustain their economic, cultural and spiritual lives.

“The Indian Nations face profound challenges to their cultures, economies and livelihoods, because of climate change,” said Jose Aguto, policy advisor on Climate Change for the National Congress of American Indians. “Yet tribal peoples possess valuable knowledge and practices of their ecosystems that are resilient and cost-effective methods to address climate change impacts, for the benefit of all peoples. This study is a clear call for the Administration, Congress, state and local governments, and all peoples, to support and join tribal efforts to stem climate change.”

Here’s the report:

NWF_TribalLandsExtremeWeather_FINAL

Environmental Justice Memorandum of Understanding Announced

Singel

From the EPA’s press release, issued August 4 (link here):

Building on its commitment to ensuring strong protection from environmental and health hazards for all Americans, the Obama Administration today announced Federal agencies have agreed to develop environmental justice strategies to protect the health of people living in communities overburdened by pollution and provide the public with annual progress reports on their efforts. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder were joined by agency heads across the Administration in signing the “Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Justice and Executive Order 12898” (EJ MOU).

“All too often, low-income, minority and Native Americans live in the shadows of our society’s worst pollution, facing disproportionate health impacts and greater obstacles to economic growth in communities that can’t attract businesses and new jobs. Expanding the conversation on environmentalism and working for environmental justice are some of my top priorities for the work of the EPA, and we’re glad to have President Obama’s leadership and the help of our federal partners in this important effort,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “Every agency has a unique and important role to play in ensuring that all communities receive the health and environmental protections they deserve. Our broad collaboration will mean real progress for overburdened communities.”

Here’s the summary description of the MOU provided by the Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice website (link here):

The EJ MOU broadens the EJ IWG, to include:

  • Agencies not named in Executive Order 12898 as participants
  • An EJ IWG Charter (PDF) (4 pp, 33K) to add more structure and efficiency to the Workgroup
  • Formal environmental justice commitments that agencies have made over the past year
  • A roadmap for agencies to better coordinate their efforts
  • Processes and procedures to help communities more efficiently
  • Effective engagement of agencies as they make decisions

Also, under the EJ MOU, each agency will be responsible for meeting various commitments, including:

  • Finalizing and publicizing an environmental justice strategy;
  • Providing the pubic with annual implementation reports that discuss progress in carrying out the Agency’s EJ commitments and responsibilities; and
  • Focusing on, when appropriate, the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act, implementation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, impacts from climate change, and impacts from commercial transportation and supporting infrastructure, or goods movement.

MOU on Environmental Justice and EO 12898

IWG Charter 2011

Executive Order 12898

Could American Indian Nations “End Nature?” in Order to Save Themselves from Global Warming?

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

This paragraph appears in an article published the Summer 2011 edition of Radcliffe Magazine:

Assuming (and you know what they say about assumptions) Mr. Keith is right, this raises an interesting question relating to tribal sovereignty. If an Indian nation could do this, should they? And some Indian nations, say the Native Village of Kivalina for one example, have every motivation for doing this.

Navajo Group Petition to Human Rights Commission

Singel

Here’s a copy of the Petition filed by ENDAUM (Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining) with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to challenge the NRC’s issuance of a uranium mining license to HRI.

ENDAUM_Final_Petition_to_IACHR

Navajo Group Petitions Human Rights Commission in Effort to Halt Uranium Mining

Singel

This story was filed in May in the NYTimes (here’s the link), with televised news coverage on KRQE News (link here).

An excerpt from the NYTimes coverage:

In a last attempt to deep-six a controversial project to mine uranium near two Navajo communities in northwestern New Mexico, a Navajo environmental group is taking its fight to the global stage.

Tomorrow, Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining, with the help of the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, will submit a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights arguing that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to grant Hydro Resources Inc., a license to mine uranium ore near Churchrock and Crown Point, N.M., is a violation of international laws.

The groups contend the mines, first permitted by NRC in 1999, could contaminate drinking water for 15,000 Navajo residents in and around the two communities, which lie just outside the Navajo Nation. In 2005, the Navajo’s tribal government passed a law prohibiting uranium mining within its borders.

“By its acts and omissions that have contaminated and will continue to contaminate natural resources in the Dine communities of Crownpoint and Church Rock, the State has violated Petitioners’ human rights and breached its obligations under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man,” the petition reads.

“We’re very hopeful,” said Eric Jantz, an attorney with the New Mexico Environmental Law Center who is filing the petition on behalf of ENDAUM. “I think we have very solid claims. It’s always been our client’s position that clean water is a human right.”

Nisqually Tribe Addresses Climate Change Impacts on Nisqually River

Singel

From the NYTimes (link to article here).

Here’s an excerpt:

For 10,000 years the Nisqually Indians have relied on chinook salmon for their very existence, but soon those roles are expected to reverse.

Based on current warming trends, climate scientists anticipate that in the next 100 years the Nisqually River will become shallower and much warmer. Annual snowpack will decline on average by half. The glacier that feeds the river, already shrunken considerably, will continue to recede.

Play the scene forward and picture a natural system run amok as retreating ice loosens rock that will clog the river, worsening flooding in winter, and a decline in snow and ice drastically diminishes the summer runoff that helps keep the river under a salmon-friendly 60 degrees.

To prepare for these and other potentially devastating changes, an unusual coalition of tribal government leaders, private partners and federal and local agencies is working to help the watershed and its inhabitants adapt. The coalition is reserving land farther in from wetlands so that when the sea rises, the marsh will have room to move as well; it is promoting hundreds of rain gardens to absorb artificially warmed runoff from paved spaces and keep it away from the river; and it is installing logjams intended to cause the river to hollow out its own bottom and create cooler pools for fish.

Article on Lower Elwha Dam Removal

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here.

Elwha-dam-graffiti

Photo: Mikal Jakubal

Eco-Prank at Glines Canyon In 1987 removing the Elwha dams was a radical idea.

Michael Blumm on the Columbia River Gorge and the History of Natural Resources Law

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Michael Blumm posted his paper, “The Columbia River Gorge and the Development of American Natural Resources Law: A Century of Significance” at SSRN (H/t to Legal History Blog). Here is the abstract:

The Columbia River Gorge, site of the nation’s first national scenic area and the only near sea level passage through the Cascade Mountains, possesses the longest continuously occupied site of human habitation in North America. The Gorge has served as a major transportation corridor between the Pacific and the Great Basin for hundreds of years, is home to spectacular scenery, dozens of waterfalls, many sacred sites, and abundant recreational activities, including world-class kite boarding and wind surfing. The Gorge has also been the location of over a century of legal battles that have made major contributions to American natural resources law. From judicial interpretations of 19th Indian treaties, to the development of the largest interconnected hydroelectric system in the world, to ensuing declines in what were once the world’s largest salmon runs – ultimately resulting in endangered species listings – to innovative federal statutes concerning electric power planning and conservation and land use federalism, to compensation schemes for landowners burdened with regulation, to dam removal and conflicts between sea lions and salmon, the Gorge has spawned a legal history as rich as its geography. This article surveys these developments and suggests that no area of the country has produced more varied and significant contributions to natural resources law.

Wampanoag Tribe Files Suit Over the Cape Wind Project

Kate Fort1 Comment

From the Boston Globe:

The Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) has filed a lawsuit against the federal government for allowing the proposed 130-turbine wind project to move forward in Nantucket Sound.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington last week says the wind farm will destroy historical, cultural and spiritual tribal resources located on Horseshoe Shoal which was once exposed land. It also says the wind farm will obstruct views across Nantucket Sound that are used by tribal members for spiritual rituals and contemplation.

The complaint, filed in the D.C. federal District Court, is here.

Tom Schlosser’s New Paper on Klamath River Hydroelectric Restoration Agreements

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Tom Schlosse’rs new article was published by the Washington Journal of Environmental Law & Policy: “Dewatering Trust Responsibility: The New Klamath River Hydroelectric and Restoration Agreements.” You can download it here.

Here is the abstract:

In order to protect Indian property rights to water and fish that Indians rely on for subsistence and moderate income, the Interior Department Solicitor has construed federal statutes and case law to conclude that the Department must restrict irrigation in the Klamath River Basin of Oregon and Northern California. Draft legislation, prescribed by the February 18, 2010 Klamath River Hydroelectric Agreement and the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement, would release the United States from its trust duty to protect the rights of Indian tribes in the Klamath River Basin. The agreements will also prolong the Clean Water Act Section 401 application process to prevent the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from issuing a properly-conditioned license for dams in the Klamath River that will protect the passage of vital fish populations. This article argues that the agreements prioritize the water rights of non-Indian irrigation districts and utility customers over first-in-time Indian water and fishing rights.