Environmental Law Prof Blog

Pacific Northwest Salmon -- The Administration Aims its Arrow at Harvest and Hatcheries

Jim Connaughton, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality today called for a comprehensive and collaborative approach to salmon recovery in the Pacific Northwest.  Beginning next week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fisheries service (NOAA Fisheries) will launch a collaborative review of how harvest and hatcheries - particularly federally funded hatcheries - are affecting the recovery of ESA-listed salmon and steelhead. CEQ Speech

2006 Environmental Performance Index: US 28th in the world

The NY Times and Washington Post have reported the US bottomline in the 2006 Environmental Performance Index, developed by Yale and Columbia.  But here's more.  2006 EPI Rankings

The Pilot 2006 Environmental Performance Index, developed  by the Center for Environmental Law & Policy at Yale University and               the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)   at Columbia University in collaboration with  the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, will be formally released in Davos, Switzerland, at the annual meeting of the World  Economic Forum on Thursday, 26 January 2006, but is currently available online.   Full 2006 EPI Report 

The index benchmarks national pollution control and natural resource management results. The index focuses on two goals shared by policymakers, including the internationally agreed upon UN Millennium Development Goals: 1) reducing environmental stresses on human health and 2) protecting ecosystem vitality.  Environmental health and               ecosystem vitality are gauged using sixteen indicators tracked in               six established policy categories: Environmental Health, Air Quality, Water Resources, Biodiversity and Habitat, Productive Natural Resources, and Sustainable Energy.

The EPI differs from the Environmental Sustainability Index because it stresses a comparison of current conditions with targets as opposed to long term sustainability.  Underdeveloped African countries may be relatively unpolluted (and therefore rank high on long-term sustainability), but may not be providing drinking water and sanitation services for their current population.  Other countries, such as the UK and Germany, may be handling current environmental challenges well, but face difficult long-term sustainability problems.  For a comparison of the ESI and EPI, see Appendix E.  Comparison of ESI and EPI

Global warming science: Don't buy that beachfront property: shoreline will move inland 300 meters by 2100

An empirical study of sea level data from tide gauges and satellites ( Church J. A. & White N. J,  Geophys. Res. Lett., 33. L01602  (2006)) confirms model predictions of a 31 centimeter increase in sea level by 2100, which would move the coastline in 300 meters on average.  Based sea level data since 1870, sea level has risen by an average of 1.7 millimetres each year, but the rate of rise has increased by an average of 0.01 millimetres per year.  Nature report