A Message from
the President and
Chairman of the Board

Message to ELI Members and Friends,

We write this annual message about the Environmental Law Institute’s 2009 accomplishments at the end of May 2010, as the country enters the sixth week of the worst man-made environmental disaster in our nation’s history, inflicting grave harm on the natural resources, economy, and people of the Gulf Coast. The scale of impact from BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil drilling operation dwarfs the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969, which helped to usher in a new era of environmental law.

This catastrophe shows that first principles of environmental protection need to be restored and strengthened. The spill resulted from a failure to pay attention to fundamentals. Government did not ensure performance of a comprehensive assessment of the risks of deepwater ocean drilling and the adequacy of available responses should an accident occur. The companies responsible for the rig installation and operation were presumed to have the know-how to do the job safely but appear to have been sloppy and rushed in following their own procedures. Eleven workers lost their lives, and the livelihoods and way of life of many people in the Gulf Coast states will be severely damaged by continuing oil flows that no one knows how to stop any time soon.

To make matters worse, the disaster may well distract the U.S. Senate from mustering the foresight and fortitude to act on energy and climate legislation. Ironically, expanded offshore drilling has been part of the deal to win enough votes for a package of energy subsidies and a cap on key utility and industrial carbon dioxide emissions. Failure to take adequate precautions to address deepwater drilling risks may now be compounded by failure to step up to the need to take action to forestall harmful change in the climate and to accelerate the transition away from reliance on carbon-based fuels.

It isn’t easy to be upbeat in these circumstances. Still, we can attest that the Environmental Law Institute remains ready and able to help bring forth the best thinking on how to strengthen government foresight and oversight of new and high-risk technologies and to ensure that the private sector commits the resources to develop and adhere to precautionary practices sufficient to protect the public and the environment. ELI’s traditional advocacy of rigorous environmental assessments and accountability provisions in our laws and its work to examine law and policy tools to manage the risks of emerging technologies like nanotechnology are highly relevant to the challenge presented by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

The year 2009, ELI’s 40th anniversary, was marked by special events and notable accomplishments in ELI’s core programs. This annual report captures some of the highlights.

A Memorable Award Dinner

This year, we honored Senators Mark and Tom Udall for their environmental leadership in the U.S. Congress. In 1992, ELI’s annual achievement award was given to their fathers, Morris and Stewart Udall, two giants of the modern environmental movement. Their storied commitment to environmental progress is being carried on by their sons, now new members of the Senate. Robert Stanton, Director of the National Park Service in the Clinton Administration and a Special Advisor to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, assisted in the presentation of the award. Stanton joined the Park Service during Secretary Stewart Udall’s tenure.

Debating the Agenda for the New EPA

Another highlight of the anniversary year was a symposium on the agenda facing EPA. The program was keynoted by Judge David Tatel, a distinguished judge serving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Speaking to a standing room only audience, Judge Tatel stressed the importance of EPA’s attention to the terms of its statutory authorities as the Agency seeks to make significant changes in environmental policies when administrations and their priorities change. The conference also showcased leading experts from government, law firms, and advocacy organizations to discuss how to repair numerous air pollution rules set aside by the D.C. Circuit in recent years and how to address the risks of emerging nanotechnologies using a 24-year-old statute that many consider ineffective in dealing with conventional chemical substances, much less nanomaterials whose tiny size gives them very different properties.

Other panels focused on current scientific issues, including the challenge of assembling credible and unbiased scientific evidence and the potential use of new evidence on the molecularlevel effects of materials and new toxicity methods for risk assessment and regulation of chemicals. ELI has been a leader in evaluating the utility of existing laws to regulate nanotechnology in the United States and the European Union and is also examining the law and policy changes that would need to be developed to validate new methods for evaluating the toxicity of materials using less costly methods and fewer animals in testing programs. These are both cutting-edge issues in devising sound regulations to protect public health from harmful exposure to chemicals.

Building Professional Skills and Capacity to Advance Environmental Compliance in Developing Countries

In 2009, the Institute continued its initiative to train factory managers working in the rapidly growing economy of India. ELI’s India Partners are prominent U.S. companies doing business in India and two leading educational institutions—the National Law Center in Bangalore and the Indus Institute of Technology in Ahmedabad—collaborating to offer practical training on legal requirements for factory managers. In 2009, the Environmental Law Reporter introduced a new publication, the ELR India Update, a short and readable newsletter to help company environmental managers and executives keep abreast of developments in environmental rules and policies in India.

ELI’s long-standing program to educate judges in developing countries about environmental law and remedies began work in the Caribbean, where we are working with the judiciary in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica to offer education and to work toward establishing a permanent center for continuing programs. In all of our work with partners, both in the United States and overseas, ELI’s goal is to strengthen the capability of both individuals and institutions to use laws and remedies to solve their countries’ environmental problems.

Protecting the Global Commons

ELI’s research and policy work, both in the United States and worldwide, is increasingly focusing on problems of the global commons, and in particular, combating the threats to our climate and our oceans from global warming, industrialization in coastal areas, and pollution. Our climate research program produced a report comparing U.S. federal subsidies of fossil and renewable fuels, finding that fossil fuel subsidies in the period 2002-2008 were more than twice as large as those for renewable sources of energy. This report, revealing the scale of less visible programs promoting fossil fuel consumption, sparked more media coverage than any report ever published by ELI and has helped to inform the debate on the utility of subsidies in guiding energy investments.

ELI’s energy and climate program is also preparing studies of state regulation of wind power and developing models for ways to adapt laws in six developing countries to protect special biodiversity resources from the likely impacts of temperature and other climate changes. Many of 2009’s educational programs for the profession also dealt with aspects of the continuing effort to build a framework for effective control of greenhouse gas emissions through U.S. regulation or legislation.

Our work on oceans has focused on testing the utility of new planning and decisionmaking tools to examine the impacts of development in coastal regions on multiple natural resources and not just single issues and to bring the many different private and public decisionmakers together to make better choices. In 2009, ELI’s Oceans Program issued two research-based reports to promote adoption of new approaches: Ocean and Coastal Ecosystem–Based Management: Implementation Handbook and Spatial Planning in U.S. Waters. The Institute is continuing to work on demonstrating ways to integrate regional ocean governance with individual permitting and environmental review decisions.

Back to Basics

As ELI’s record shows, the Institute strives to equip environmental professionals and activists here and around the world with new ideas and up-to-date tools to advance their goals. It is discouraging to see our nation having to relearn old lessons. Today, as in the beginning, ELI will dedicate its expertise and credibility to promoting the best law and policy solutions, whether they are innovations or sound approaches that have stood the test of time. We thank ELI’s many members, donors, partners, and friends, as well as ELI’s superb staff for making it possible to embark with confidence upon the Institute’s fifth decade of making law work for people, places, and the planet.