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Climate change, commonly understood through greenhouse gas emissions, is a multi-faceted environmental threat. However, the production, use, and improper disposal of plastics is quickly becoming another concerning form of pollution, as its impacts destroy ecosystems and pose a major health hazard. With plastics engrained in society, however, the question arises of how to minimize these effects and turn the world away from dependency. The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) responded to this issue by adopting Resolution 5/14, which called for a 'multilateral environmental agreement' (MEA) regulating plastics pollution. Due to the importance of passing a binding agreement of this magnitude, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) must ratify an obligatory agreement that will incentivize many countries to join. This Note seeks to assist the INC in fulfilling this task by drawing upon lessons from previous MEAs. This Note examines three international environmental agreements, pinpoints issues during and after the ratification process, and makes recommendations based on these 'lessons.' With the severity of the issues stemming from plastics pollution, it is imperative for the UNEA to draft an agreement that will achieve long-term substantive success., TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION 1132 II. BACKGROUND 1134 A. Global 'Plastics Pollution' - A Brief History and Overview 1134 B. The UNEAs Role in Addressing Plastics Pollution 1140 1. [...]

Professor Daniel Mandelker has made his mark on so many areas of environmental and land-use law scholarship that it is hard to know where to begin in assessing the impact [...]

Knowledge is core to the key tasks of environmental protection and regulation: analysing, diagnosing, predicting and intervening to manage or prevent adverse effects of human activities on the environment and human health. Aptly, the central mechanism of the recent Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic)--the general environmental duty--embeds the concept of the 'state of knowledge'. This drives the new Environment Protection Act 2017 (Vic)'s shift to a comprehensive, flexible, risk-based approach to environmental protection. Though inspired by a similar approach under occupational health and safety law, conceptualising and implementing the state of knowledge in the environmental context will be more difficult. Importantly, environmental risks can be numerous, diverse, ambiguous, and prone to accumulation in complex ways. This article uses the scenario of stormwater management to draw out the dimensions of the state of knowledge and challenges in applying it. These challenges point to important roles for government and non-government stakeholders alike in building and disseminating knowledge about the environment and the environmental risks of relevant activities., CONTENTS I Introduction II From Command and Control to Duties-Based Law and the Origins of the State of Knowledge A Overview: Victoria's Duties-Based Approach and the Transformation of Environmental Regulation [...]

The precautionary principle is one of the central principles to have emerged from the 1992 international Earth Summit and subsequently to have been integrated into Australian law. It is a principle that responds to the uncertainty attending serious environmental threats by justifying measures to prevent threat materialisation. This article explores the contemporary relevance of the precautionary principle three decades on, at a time when Australia's ecology and biological diversity is subject to multiple compounding and cumulative threats, including the serious and irreversible consequences of climate change. Following the decisions in three recent cases -Leadbeater's, Masked Owl and Tree Geebung--I make three contentions in relation to the principle. First, if particular 'conditions precedent' to the application of the principle are met, then the principle must be applied; the need to apply and act on the principle cannot be trumped by other considerations. Second, application is capable of demonstration. Third, precautionary approaches can and should take into account the state of the environment. These contentions underscore the precautionary principle's importance in the context of activity that threatens to exacerbate the baseline threat of climate change to the species and places that form part of Australia's complex ecological systems., I Introduction The precautionary principle is a legal and policy principle that guides managers and decision-makers in responding to uncertainty. Articulated in various ways depending on the statute or instrument [...]

This article treats four Supreme Court opinions that have had a lasting impact, largely negative, on public lands and resources. They rest on highly selective statements of fact, and dubious use of precedent and statutory law. As a quartet they make the protection of natural resources extremely difficult, resources that by statute belong to us all. The first case, Southern Utah Wilderness Association, opened up a designated Wilderness Area to off-road vehicle use, where these uses are explicitly prohibited by law. The second case, Ohio Forestry, made management plans of the United States Forest Service, covering over 180 million acres of spectacular beauty, effectively immune from judicial review... no matter how much these plans violated the mandates of the National Forest Management Act. The third case, Rapanos, effectively removed federal protections from large swaths of American wetlands, opening them up for development and pollution, no matter how willful or detrimental the action, and in this case no matter how criminal the actor. The last case, New Mexico v. United States, held that federal forests have no right to water even for their own survival, when forest reservation of water was essential to supply downstream users. None of these cases made sense in law or in fact. Yet, emerging from reading them one is struck by how uncomprehending they are of the science of resource management, and often how biased these opinions were. In the final analysis, however, this is for the reader to say., SOUTHERN UTAH WILDERNESS ALLIANCE: GOOD BYE WILDERNESS 'And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.' --John Muir (1) (1.) Beauty and the Beast The [...]