INTRODUCTION NATURAL RESOURCES LAW

CML 1105I

JANUARY 31, 2013

Stephen Hazell M.Sc. LL.B.Senior Counsel, Ecovision Law

Introductions

• Who am I? • Managing Partner, Ecovision Law, in practice

in Ontario since 1983 www.ecovision-law.ca• Executive Director of 3 national

environmental groups (Sierra Club, CPAWS, Canadian Arctic Resources Committee)

• Director Regulatory Affairs of Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency 1992-95

Introduction

• Outline of Course - expectations, course materials, evaluation

• Overview of requirements for papers and Presentations

• Input from students on expectations• Global ecosystem change and

consequences for human well-being• Ecological and ethical dimensions:

natural resources and law

Overview of Course

• Constitutional Law

• Aboriginal Rights

• Science of Ecology and Law (Findlay)

• Forestry Law

• Wildlife and Fisheries Law

• Species at Risk Law (Macdonald)

• Mining Law (Gogal)

• Oil and Gas and Pipeline Law

Overview of Course (cont’d)

• Renewable Energy Law

• Environmental Assessment Law

• Protected Areas Law

• Citizen Engagement Law

• Toward Sustainability Law

Evaluation

• Grading of Papers (80% of grade)

• Topic: Due Tuesday February 14

• Outline (20%): Due Tuesday March 5

• Final Paper (60%): Due Wednesday April 24

• Exam (80% of grade) as alternative

Class Participation

• Class Participation/Attendance (20%)

• Participation (15%) This course is interactive. Comprehensive preparation and active participation are expected

• Attendance (5%)

Class Participation • Class Participation includes

presentation in at least one of the following interactive exercises: • February 28 - “Cattle rancher meets

Greater Sage Grouse” 8 -12 students• March 28 – Mock Parliament “Should

Gatineau Park be a National Park?” 8 -13 students

• April 2 – “Bill Erasmus: interested party in Oil Sands hearings?” 5 - 7 students

Why Natural Resources Law?

• How natural resources are exploited will be defining issue of 21st century

• Opportunities to make Canada a more sustainable society

• Corporate community, governments, academe will need lawyers to navigate laws governing natural resources

Those Awful People

The Global Ecological Crisis

• Human actions are systematically reducing the life-supporting capacity of Earth’s ecosystems even as rising human populations and consumption are making heavier demands on those ecosystems

• Ecological footprint analysis (invented by Bill Rees UBC, conducted by WWF) shows that 1.5 “Earths” needed to support current human population at current consumption levels

• Earth’s natural capital is being drawn down

The Global Ecological Crisis

• Average ecological footprint per person:– Canadian 7.6 global ha– American 9.6 global ha– Frenchman 5.6 global ha– Afghan 0.1 global ha

• Several planet Earths will be needed to maintain current global population at developed country standards of living

Millenium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) World Resources Institute

• Ecosystem services essential to human well-being

• “Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively that in any comparable period of time in human history largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel” “substantial and largely irreversible loss in the diversity of life”

Millenium Ecosystem Assessment

• Ecosystem changes have “contributed to substantial net gains in human wellbeing and economic development” but “at growing costs in the form of degradation of many ecosystem services”

• “The degradation of ecosystem services could grow significantly worse during the first half of this century”

• The challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands for their services can be partially met . . . But this involve significant changes in policies, institutions and practices”

Tragedy of the Commons Garrett Hardin 1968

• Community pasture open to herdsmen• What is the tragedy?• Posits a “carrying capacity” for the

pasture (but cant this be increased through technologies e.g., fertilizers?)

• Is economic analysis of herdsman adding an animal to the herd sound?

• Does freedom in a commons “bring ruin to all”?

Tragedy of the Commons Garrett Hardin 1968

• Collapse of North Atlantic co fishery as a tragedy of the commons?

• Federal government’s reluctance to reduce GHG emissions unless China and India commit at same time: is this a tragedy of the commons?

• Policy responses: Privatize commons? Regulate access to commons by wealth, merit, auction, lottery, first-come, first-served?

• How to fence off the air and the sea?

The Environment: Ecological and Ethical Dimensions

Mickelson and Rees • “Much of contemporary environmental law

derives from erroneous perception and as such remains ecologically naïve”

• Are Canada’s natural resource laws “ecologically naïve”?

• Our Common Future 1987 (Brundtland) popularized sustainable development

• Prescribed “ a five to tenfold increase in world industrial production”

•

The Environment: Ecological and Ethical Dimensions

• Brundtland Commission failed to

analyze “whether prescribed scale of material growth is biophysically possible”

• Neoclassical economics: “environment as static backdrop to human affairs”

• Is humankind a product and part of nature? Haven’t we transcended it?

Whose your Daddy?Ecology or Economics?

• “Ecologically relevant flows through the material economy are not circular money flows but unidirectional energy and matter flows. This is because the ultimate regulator of the economy is not mechanics but thermodynamics.”

• “Thermodynamic principles govern the flow of energy and materials in nature and are therefore essential to understanding the connectedness of the economy to the rest of the biosphere”

The Challenge to Natural Resources and Environmental Law

• Law must rise to the challenge of “ensuring the restoration of essential natural capital and of protecting the common rights of all to the ecological services essential for civilized existence”

• Natural resources and environmental law: links to other fundamental justice issues of poverty, racism, sexism, economic inequality

Ecological Limits as a Political Dividing Line

"Eventually the world will no longer be divided by the ideologies of 'left' and 'right' but by those who accept ecological limits and those who don't."

- Wolfgang Sachs