People Places Planet

Welcome to People Places Planet, ELI's leading environmental podcast. We talk to leading experts across sectors who share their solutions to the world's most pressing environmental problems. Tune in for the latest environmental law, policy, and governance developments.

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The fashion and textiles industry accounts for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, consumes 93 billion cubic meters of water annually, and generates 92 million tons of waste each year — yet only 1% of textiles are recycled back into new products. In this episode, we sit down with three leading experts to unpack one of the most resource-intensive industries on the planet and explore what a genuinely circular textiles sector could look like.

We're joined by Mark Sumner, Head of Textiles at WRAP; Sarah Morley, Strategic Engagement Manager at WRAP Americas; and Linda Breggin, Senior Attorney at the Environmental Law Institute. Together, we trace the full lifecycle of a garment from field to landfill, examine fast fashion as a consumer behavior rather than just a retail phenomenon, and explore how circular design, durability standards, voluntary industry agreements, and policy intervention are beginning to reshape the system.

Whether you're working in sustainability, environmental policy, waste reduction, or supply chain management, this episode offers both the big-picture framework and the on-the-ground insights you need to understand where the textiles industry is headed — and what it will take to get there. See WRAP's website for more information.

  • Introduction: The Environmental Footprint of the Fashion and Textiles Industry (02:37)
  • Lifecycle of a Garment: Hotspots, Impacts, and Intervention Points (03:47)
  • Circular Design in Practice: The Pillars of a More Sustainable Textiles Industry (11:05)
  • Changing Consumer Behavior (21:34)
  • The UK Textiles Pact and the Durability Accelerator: Industry Collaboration in Action (29:49)
  • WRAP's US Expansion: Landscape Review, Gaps, and the Road Ahead (45:14)
  • The Role of State and Local Governments (48:33)
  • Concluding Thoughts (54:43)

The Toxic Substances Control Act is the cornerstone of chemical regulation in the United States — but for most of its existence, it was widely considered unenforceable. In this episode of People, Places, Planet's Explained series, host Sebastian Duque Rios is joined by Lynn Bergeson, Managing Partner of Bergeson & Campbell, and Bob Sussman, former senior EPA official and Principal at Sussman & Associates, to break down TSCA from the ground up.
 
Together, they walk through the foundational building blocks of the law — what chemicals TSCA covers, how Sections 4, 5, and 6 govern testing, new chemical pre-market review, and existing chemical risk evaluation, and why the "unreasonable risk" standard at the heart of the statute proved so difficult to apply in practice. They also trace how the 1991 Corrosion Proof Fittings decision paralyzed EPA's regulatory authority for a generation, and what the 2016 Lautenberg Act fundamentally changed.
 
Lynn and Bob are co-chairs of the TSCA Reform 10 Years Later conference, taking place June 10th at George Washington University — a free, hybrid event covering risk evaluation, risk management, new chemicals, and the legislative road ahead. The annual conference is co-sponsored by ELI, Bergeson & Campbell, P.C., and the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. Register here to attend in-person or via livestream. For those who wish to attend in-person, please registration will close on June 9, 2026, or when capacity is reached.

After the Sackett v. EPA Supreme Court decision stripped back federal Clean Water Act protections, local governments found themselves on the frontlines of wetland conservation — and many have more tools available to them than they realize. In this special American Wetlands Month episode, host Sebastian Duque Rios talks with wetland policy experts and on-the-ground practitioners about what local action looks like in practice.

ELI Senior Attorney Amy Reed introduces the Environmental Law Institute's newly published Local Wetland Protection Playbook — a practical guide to regulatory and non-regulatory strategies for municipalities, landowners, and community advocates. Then we hear two case studies. First, we're joined by Karen Cappiella (Center for Watershed Protection) to discuss how Bluffton, South Carolina became the first municipality in the state to close the post-Sackett loophole through a phased wetland ordinance and updated GIS mapping. Finally, we're joined by Mahtaab Bagherzadeh (National Wildlife Federation) and Nina Struss (Prairie Rivers Network) to learn more about how a bi-state coalition in the Quad Cities region of Iowa and Illinois is using climate assessments, ecological corridor mapping, and collaboration to protect wetlands in the region.

  • 02:12 – Why Wetlands Matter
  • 05:57 – ELI's Local Wetland Protection Playbook & the Post-Sackett Landscape
  • 13:50 – Case Study: Bluffton, SC — Local Wetland Ordinances in Action
  • 26:41 – Case Study: Quad Cities, IA/IL — Climate Data, Ecological Corridors & Collaboration
  • 58:55 – Closing & How to Get Involved

See the resources mentioned during the episode for more information:

Fifty-six years ago, the first Earth Day helped spark a generation of landmark environmental legislation — and the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) was born from that same moment. On this Earth Day 2026, host Sebastian Duque Rios sits down with ELI President Jordan Diamond and Senior Attorney Jay Austin to trace the arc of environmental law from that founding era to the compounding crises of today.

Together, they reflect on how statutes like NEPA and the Clean Air Act were designed with more foresight than we often credit them for, why adaptive management is baked into the DNA of environmental law, and how ELI is responding to an era of rapid institutional change — from regulatory rollbacks and executive action to the governance challenges posed by emerging industries like deep sea mining, geothermal energy, and data centers. They also dig into ELI's new collaboration with the Federation of American Scientists' (FAS) Center for Regulatory Ingenuity and their joint white paper laying out a framework for rebuilding and reimagining environmental governance fit for the 21st century.

This episode is a candid, long-view conversation about what it takes to protect people, places, and the planet. For more information on other emerging topics in environmental law, see our recent episode, "What's Next for Environmental Law in 2026."

Environmental and land defenders in Brazil face some of the highest rates of violence in the world, yet most attacks are never investigated, and fewer still result in prosecution. In this episode of People, Places, Planet, host Sebastian Duque Rios speaks with Kristine Perry, staff attorney at ELI, and Amael Notini, ELI's in-country partner in Brazil and legislative consultant to the Brazilian Federal Senate, about the systemic forces driving violence against defenders and what accountability could look like.
 
Together, they explore how Brazil's legacy of land inequality, weak rural state capacity, and a deeply entrenched culture of impunity have put Indigenous and Quilombola communities, small-scale farmers, and civil society actors at risk. The conversation covers the structural roots of land conflict, the ongoing contested ratification of the Escazú Agreement, the temporal framework threatening indigenous land rights, and what — if anything — emerged from COP 30 in Belém for defender protection. The episode concludes with a first look at what the team is finding as they build a first-of-its-kind database tracking investigations and prosecutions of lethal attacks against defenders across Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, and why that data matters.
 
This episode is part of ELI's ongoing series on environmental defenders across Latin America. If you've missed our previous episodes, check out our introductory episode on environmental defenders and ELI's database ("Environmental Defenders: On the Frontlines of Conservation") and our Spanish-language episode on the Colombian context ("Defensores ambientales: hacia la rendición de cuentas en Colombia").
 
For more information on the project, consult ELI's Platform to Protect Environmental Defenders. 

Can states hold pesticide companies accountable — or does federal law preempt? In this episode of People, Places, Planet, host Sebastian Duque Rios sits down with Patti Goldman, Senior Attorney at Earthjustice, and Cecilia Diedrich, Staff Attorney at ELI, to unpack one of the most consequential environmental law cases of the Supreme Court's current session: Monsanto v. Darnell.
 
At its core, this case asks whether federal pesticide law — the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) — preempts state-based failure-to-warn claims, potentially shielding pesticide manufacturers like Monsanto from liability for harms caused by products like Roundup (glyphosate). With oral arguments scheduled for April 27, 2026, the stakes couldn't be higher — not just for pesticide litigation, but for the future of toxics accountability across the board.
 
We break down the science behind pesticide risks, the role of tort litigation in driving corporate accountability and regulatory reform, and why the Court's ruling could have far-reaching implications for PFAS litigation, microplastics liability, and chemical safety regulation more broadly. We also explore how recent Supreme Court decisions, including Loper Bright, are reshaping the landscape of federal agency deference and what that means for environmental and public health protections.
 
If you're interested in learning about toxics litigation more broadly, ELI’s Toxics Litigation Project recently published a landscape analysis of toxics litigation and how scientific advancement and uncertainty, state and federal law, and judicial doctrine intersect in the ongoing effort to address the risks and consequences of toxic exposures in the United States and abroad titled, "Current Trends in Toxics Litigation." Additionally, for more information on FIFRA, check out our FIFRA, Explained episode. 
  • Introduction: Pesticides & FIFRA (3:17)
  • Role of Tort Litigation in Accountability (13:44)
  • The Roundup Litigation: Failure to Warn, Glyphosate, and the Road to the Supreme Court (19:07)
  • Monsanto v. Durnell: Preemption and the Circuit Split (25:13)
  • Beyond Roundup: Implications for the Future of Toxics Litigation (40:15)
  • Concluding Thoughts: Science, Oral Arguments, and How to Protect Communities Going Forward (48:55)

What does a truly just energy transition look like — and who gets to define it? In this episode of People, Places, Planet, host Sebastian Duque Rios sits down with Nadia Ahmad (Barry University School of Law) and Danielle Stokes (University of Richmond School of Law), collaborators on the Just Energy Transitions and Place (JET Place) project, a multi-institutional research initiative examining how place, land use law, and community governance shape who bears the burdens and who captures the benefits of America's shift to clean energy. Drawing on fieldwork across Florida, Louisiana, Kansas, and Pennsylvania, they make the case that decarbonization without redistribution isn't a just transition at all.

From federalism and zoning conflicts to power purchase agreements, IRA rollbacks, and the structural barriers facing marginalized communities, this conversation surfaces the deeply human stakes behind every permitting decision and planning process — and explores what it looks like when communities successfully reclaim agency in the energy future being built around them.

The conversation also zeroes in on Florida as a potentially cautionary case: a state with extraordinary solar potential but a regulatory environment defined by vertically integrated utilities, restricted third-party PPAs, and legislation that threatens to ban net zero targets at every level of government.

  • What "Just Energy Transition" Really Means: Decarbonization and Distribution (4:50)
  • Navigating the Regulatory Landscape: Federal, State, and Local Authority (8:10)
  • Just Energy Transitions and Place (21:39)
  • Why Place-Centered Energy Planning Is Essential to Energy Justice (27:12)
  • Florida: A Placed-based Case Study of Energy Governance Challenges (41:38)
  • Concluding Thoughts: Policy Instability, IRA Rollbacks, and Reasons for Hope (50:07)

What does equity look like in ocean governance? In this episode of People, Places, Planet, host Sebastian Duque Rios speaks with Yoshitaka Ota of Ocean Nexus and Randall Abate, ELI Visiting Scholar, about the emerging concept of ocean equity—and why centering social justice is essential to the future of marine conservation and ocean law.

From marine protected areas and small-scale fisheries to deep sea mining, marine geoengineering, and the rights of nature movement, the conversation explores how traditional environmental governance frameworks have often failed to address systemic marginalization in coastal and Indigenous communities. Drawing on anti-subordination theory, environmental justice, and human rights law, the guests explain how ocean equity moves beyond consultation toward meaningful power-sharing—including rethinking free, prior, and informed consent, stewardship-based resource management, and the intersection of human rights and marine conservation. For environmental lawyers, policymakers, and ocean governance professionals, this episode offers a forward-looking framework for aligning conservation, climate action, and justice.

  • What is ocean equity? (04:08)
  • From EJ to anti-subordination (09:37)
  • Consent, power, and meaningful participation (16:05)
  • Stewardship and MPAs (21:56)
  • Rights of nature and the human right to a healthy environment (29:54)
  • Emerging governance challenges and the future of ocean law (33:37)

Is environmental law entering a new era—one defined not just by regulation and litigation, but also by implementation, incentives, and private-public partnerships?

In this episode of People, Places, Planet, host Sebastian Duque Rios is joined by Roger Martella (Chief Corporate Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer at GE Vernova), Mike Vandenbergh (Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University), and Linda Breggin (Senior Attorney at the Environmental Law Institute) to examine how climate and environmental governance is evolving amid political gridlock and regulatory uncertainty.

Building on Martella’s 2024 law review article, the panel traces three eras of environmental law and explores the growing role of private environmental governance—driven by corporate investment, supply chains, investor pressure, and accountability to employees and customers. They discuss the risks and realities of greenwashing, what this shift means for environmental professionals, and how large-scale capital deployment is shaping the energy transition and climate action today.

Join us for a forward-looking conversation for environmental professionals navigating the future of environmental law and policy.

  • A new era of environmental law? (05:04)
  • From government-led action to private environmental governance (11:24)
  • What this means for environmental practitioners and students (17:43)
  • Private action in energy and the global climate strategy (21:06)
  • Motivating private sector leadership (33:06)
  • Supply chains as governance tools (36:26)

As artificial intelligence drives unprecedented growth in electricity demand, data centers are rapidly becoming some of the largest—and most consequential—loads on the U.S. power grid. Utilities that haven’t seen meaningful load growth in decades now face mounting interconnection backlogs, rising costs, and growing concerns about reliability, emissions, and equity.
 
In this episode of People, Places, Planet, host Sebastian Duque Rios is joined by Dalia Patino-Echeverri of Duke University and Aroon Vijaykar of Emerald AI to explore whether load flexibility offers a way forward. They examine how data centers and AI stress today’s grid, how modest and carefully designed curtailment could unlock significant new capacity without overbuilding infrastructure, and what emerging technologies and policies—from flexible interconnection to software-driven demand response—could mean for electricity affordability, grid reliability, and the future of AI development in the United States.
  • The Driving Forces Behind a New Wave of Electricity Demand (2:12)
  • What's Constraining the Grid? (6:18)
  • Rethinking Grid Limits through Load Flexibility (17:20)
  • Inside a Flexible Data Center (40:13)
  • What This Means for Policy, Costs, and Emissions (54:13)