The United States is the world leader in wind energy, passing China, Germany, Spain, and others usually regarded as world leaders. There is a realistic possibility that the United States can generate more than 20 percent of its electricity from wind within the next two decades. But meeting or exceeding this goal will require attention to numerous factors — including the transmission grid, energy pricing, renewable energy portfolio standards, and tax and investment incentives.

It will also require a thorough re-examination of the state laws and local ordinances that govern the siting of wind facilities, argues ELI Senior Attorney James McElfish. “State and local siting regulations and land use issues will play a major role in determining whether wind power will rapidly become a larger part of our energy mix. Many state laws are in flux, and local governments are applying inconsistent approaches.”

Last month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, ELI’s Jessica Troell played a key role at the Third Africa Water Week. With support from the State Department and the Agency for International Development, ELI staff have been providing assistance to the African Ministers’ Council on Water. AMCOW provides political leadership, policy direction, and advocacy in the management of water resources.

The Director of ELI’s International Water Program, Jessica has completed an analysis that elaborates the key challenges facing AMCOW and provides recommendations for improving the council’s structure and operations. Once these recommendations are approved, ELI will assist in their implementation and focus on strengthening the capacity of the council to implement its plan.

Since the 1980s, ELI has been studying and publishing reports on environmental compliance and enforcement — and teaching it at the federal, local, and state levels in the U.S. and other countries. Now, our Ocean Program has turned to the unique set of issues related to fisheries.

Fisheries compliance is essential if we are to maintain or restore the health of marine fish stocks such as bluefin tuna and Atlantic cod. As fish stocks decline and regulations increasingly restrict allowable catch, fishers and fishing communities face extraordinary economic pressures that can lead to illegal activity. With fishers struggling and NOAA and the Coast Guard enforcing ever-tightening regulations, conflict between the agencies and the regulated community has exploded. Clearly, we need to reexamine fisheries enforcement and compliance — both dockside and at sea — to assure sustainable fish stocks while also protecting livelihoods and communities.

We all know that indoor air quality is affected by many factors — the ventilation within a building and a wide variety of contaminants, including radon gas, mold, dust, and lead paint. But most of us don’t realize that indoor levels of pollutants may be 2-5 times higher than outdoors.

At a workshop for environmental health officials in D.C., directors of municipal programs from around the country grappled with community health problems. The workshop participants — public-health professionals from communities ranging from Hartford and Chicago to the Seminole Tribe in Florida — turned to ELI Senior Attorney Tobie Bernstein for help. She responded by outlining how local agencies can use existing laws to protect community residents now and how they can work to develop stronger policies in the future.

In early 2008, Virginia recognized that emerging energy opportunities in its coastal environment would create a new management challenge. They saw that Virginia could become a major source of off-shore wind energy. And they knew that drilling for natural gas could occur in federal waters off its coast. Virginia waters support recreational and commercial uses, as well as shipping and port activities critical to the state’s economy and vitality. How can these conflicting uses live side by side?

Virginia’s Coastal Program, a networked effort of Virginia agency heads, turned to ELI for help. The ELI team examined the environmental impacts of expected offshore energy development and the approaches that other states have tried as well as all of Virginia’s laws and policies applicable to the coast and energy issues. ELI then issued a comprehensive 90-page report that analyzed the comparative information and offered a set of specific legislative, administrative, and policy recommendations. As a result, ELI established a partnership with Virginia that became crucial when, shortly afterwards, the federal Minerals Management Service issued a scoping notice and call for nominations of oil and gas parcels off Virginia’s coast.

Senior Attorney Suzi Ruhl has recently been recruited by EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice, where she will serve as Senior Attorney and Policy Advisor and build upon the community justice, health, and sustainable development programs she pioneered at ELI. Beginning five years ago, in partnership with the Office of Environmental Justice and the Southwest Network for Economic and Environmental Justice, Suzi developed a wildly successful regionally tailored series of training programs (and even a wonderful video) for local activists and state and federal officials on how to use federal environmental laws and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms to effect and enhance environmental justice. She then went on to create an innovative brownfields and public health program.

In partnership with the Ocean Foundation, ELI has created a gold standard for the design of sustainable aquaculture ecolabels that is already being used to test the credibility of new claims…. Ecolabeling, if designed and deployed in a credible, effective manner, can help all of us exert pressure as consumers to stem the serious impacts to the ocean — pollution, destruction of habitat, damage to ecosystems — as well as the harm to human health associated with this exploding industry.

However, our aquaculture initiative is only a small part of a larger program at ELI created in 2006, under the direction of Dr. Kathryn Mengerink, to foster sustainable fisheries and effective management of industrial oceans. A lawyer and marine biologist, Kathryn led us in creating the Ocean Program to informa nd encourage economically viable and sustainable management of the oceans.

Only a few years ago, local government planners trying to do right by the environ­ment had nowhere to turn to find clear, useful guidance informed by biological science. Those who couldn’t afford expensive consultants just guessed, or looked at the regulations of the next town over. Scientific journals might be used by the more ambitious or well-funded, but those sources were often not accessible to even the most sophisticated planner.

Jessica Wilkinson, the Director of ELI’s Biodiversity and Wetlands Programs stepped into the breach. A trained facilitator, as well as a visionary and talented senior science and policy staffer, Jessica launched our Conservation Thresholds Project in 2002 to convene scientists and planners and develop resource materials that would address the need for biologically defensible land use, open space, and infrastructure plans.

The small West African nation of Liberia is home to one of the continent’s great natural treasures, the Upper Guinean Forest Ecosystem. The region is a biodiversity hotspot, boasting a wealth of animal and plant species and high levels of endemism. Liberia’s rainforests, for example, are famed for the rare Pygmy Hippopotamus. And the forests are not only a source of subsistence for countless local Liberian communities; they are also a base of economic activity and cultural identity for the entire republic. Unfortunately, in Liberia’s recent, troubled past, its forests have yielded another, undesirable harvest: so-called blood timber.

Since 2004, led by ELI Senior Attorney Bruce Myers, ELI staff have created — virtually from scratch — a new legal framework in Liberia’s battered for­est sector. The country’s National Forestry Reform Law of 2006 has become a model for natural resources management in Africa — requiring transparency and accountability, empowering traditional communities, and safeguarding the biodiversity of the country.

Throughout this issue you can see the name John Pendergrass. An ELI senior attorney for almost two decades, Jay sometimes seems to head, or at least be involved in, all the Institute’s key programs and projects. Jay is director of ELI’s State Center, director of our judicial education program, co-director of the Institute’s international work — and for 17 years the Forum’s AROUND THE STATES columnist.

There is another success story that has played out over the years: Jay’s work on the use of “institutional controls” to manage closed and completed contaminated sites. Introduced at national conferences as the “godfather of long-term stewardship and institutional controls,” Jay, through diligent scholarship and dogged advocacy, has had a major impact on environmental law and policy.

The loss of tropical biodiversity is one of the great environmental challenges of our era. To help address this problem in Latin America, where 80 percent of land is privately owned, ELI’s Inter-American Program launched an initiative in 2001 to conserve ecosystems on private lands. Partnering with environmental nonprofits in seven countries, we worked on strengthening the legal framework to supplement the more well-known efforts to protect public parks and reserves and to catalyze private land conservation.

Invasive species are a major threat to global biodiversity, second only to habitat destruction. “Invasive species find their way into new habitats via every vector imaginable — from hitching rides on ships and planes to the purposeful importation of an apparently desirable food source or garden species,” says Science and Policy Analyst Roxanne Thomas, who leads ELI’s Invasive Species Program. “As the onset of climate change begins to warm water and air temperatures, pests like the mountain pine beetle will find it easier to move from one habitat to the next. Invasive species problems are not only ubiquitous, affecting every type of ecosystem and all levels of human society, but also present challenges at every level of governance.” The Invasive Species Program is taking on the epidemic through an array of projects that attack and defend against these pests.

When we environmental experts think of the environment, we usually think of hazardous waste, ambient air and water pollution, or destruction of trees, biodiversity, wildlife, and natural areas. We usually think of the subjects covered by the seven landmark environmental laws that Congress passed and EPA has enforced since the 1970s, when ELI and EPA began. Yet, one of our longest running and most respected Research and Policy Division programs addresses an area largely unregulated by these laws. Indoor air pollution is one of the most significant environmental threats to our health.

Always collaborating with local partners, ELI’s staff travels around the country and the world helping people tackle complex environmental problems. They help communities air their concerns and facilitate cooperation between citizens and policymakers, with the goal of equitable governance, implementation, and enforcement solutions. Assisting players on all sides, ELI staff designs training courses for government officials to familiarize them with their legal responsibilities. ELI also offers training that improves citizens’ ability to exercise their rights and place demands on laws and institutions that govern their health and natural resources.