ozelaw: Australian environmental law

A summer break for ozelaw

2006-12-12T12:28:00.000+11:00

As you would have noticed if you read this blog, we haven't updated it for about 6 weeks.

Given my other priorities at the moment, I haven't been updating this blog regularly enough to make it useful to people interested in keeping abreast of environmental law issues in Australia.

I'll revisit it in the new year, but I'm struggling to write as much as I'd like on my main blog, Oikos. I'll continue to post occasional thoughts on environmental law there, though more from a policy than legal angle.

In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or comments or if you'd like to contribute anything to ozelaw, you can email me at ozelaw @ yahoo . com . au. I'll still be checking that fairly regularly.

Cheerio,

David Jeffery

Suing the government for climate change

2006-11-01T13:45:00.000+11:00

I've been meaning to write some detailed posts about the prospects of civil litigation claims related to climate change, in Australia and overseas. I've got quite a bit of stuff to trawl through (the statement of claim in the US case where the State of California is suing car manufacturers for their contribution to GHG emissions, for example).

But ABC news online today brings this story:

A researcher at the University of Adelaide believes a legal case could be made against the Australian Government and businesses for contributing to climate change.

Legal researcher Dr Joseph Smith has been analysing scientific evidence for the effects of global warming and the legal basis for court action... Dr Smith believes scientific evidence linking climate change to pollution is now sound enough to make a civil case against businesses and governments.

"I think there's an arguable case in so far as Australia is a per capita major polluting nation," he said. "It is not a signatory to the Kyoto protocol, so there's a prima facie case there that could addressed in the courts."

He points to a case in the US state of California where six car manufacturers face compensation claims for contributing to global warming.

Dr Smith says progress on legal action based on climate change mirrors actions against tobacco companies. "This field is one which is moving much faster than the 1950s where tobacco and the asbestos and mesothelioma cases first came," he said.

I'll try and find out more on this story - I'm very curious about what the cause of action might be - but I'm pretty dubious about it. Some initial thoughts:

How does being a high per capita emitter give rise to a legal cause of action?
Australia is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol, it hasn't ratified it. There's a difference. In any case, I can't see how either failing to sign or ratify would give rise to any legal action.
The fact that a case has been instituted against car comapnies in the US doesn't mean it has decent prospects of success, and certainly doesn't mean that some similar kind of action would have prospects of success in Australia.
Suing car manufacturers for creating cars which we use and which then emit greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change is very different to suing tobacco companies for concealing evidence that smoking increased the risk of illness and death. I'm not aware that tobacco companies have been sued for producing cigarettes - they've been sued for lying about their effects or for deliberately taking measures to try to get kids hooked on them.

I'm not against climate change litigation altogether. Countries like Australia and the US which are being irresponsible in their failure to take reasonable measures to address the risk of climate change are going to find that they will increasingly face people taking political and legal measures to force action.

But climate change litigation is an incredibly inefficient way to deal with the problem of global warming (although perhaps relatively efficient as a publicity-generating tool, which I think is its main aim - and a legitimate aim) and I think there are very great doubts as to whether any of this kind of litigation could ever be successful.

Update:

After a bit of googling, it seems this story was to promote Smith's book on climate change litigation, which looks pretty interesting I must say. You can download the table of contents and introduction here (pdf). The Sydney Morning Herald has a more restrained and informative article than the ABC one.

Changes to Federal environmental law: Proposed amendments to the EPBC Act

2006-10-24T13:57:00.000+10:00

You've probably heard by now about proposed changes to the Commonwealth's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. The Environment and Heritage Amendments Legislation Bill was tabled on 12 October and proposes the most significanct changes in the EPBC Act's history.

Blake Dawson Waldron has a decent summary of the changes. I'll try to post some analysis and more details when I get the chance!

Greenhouse update

2006-09-05T16:52:00.000+10:00

Law firm Blake Dawson Waldron produces a good regular update on climate change issues from a legal and regulatory perspective and the August edition (pdf) has just come out. It includes a good summary of the main features of the proposed Australian national emissions trading scheme.

Tags: climate+change emissions+trading

Changes to the Victorian Environment Protection Act

2006-08-22T11:01:00.000+10:00

Law firm Allens Arthur Robinson summarises changes proposed in the Environment Protection (Amendment) Bill recently introduced to Victorian Parliament.

Among the proposed changes are:

- a plastic bag phase-out;
- reform of the industrial waste landfill levy;
- changes to streamline the administration of licences, clean-up notices and prosecutions under the Environment Protection Act 1970;
- new obligations on Victoria's 250 biggest energy- and water-using companies via the introduction of environment and resource efficiency plans.
environmental+law australian+law victorian+law law+news

Green law firms

2006-08-17T17:31:00.000+10:00

If you're interested in environmental law, you might also be interested in going some way to being a 'green' law firm.

If you haven't seen it before, Lawyers for Forests' Forest-friendly Eco Kit for law firms (pdf) is worth checking out. It provides thorough advice on how you can make your firm's energy and resource use more sustainable. It might save you money too.

More on the Federal Court windfarm challenge

2006-08-07T13:20:00.000+10:00

The Australian over the weekend reported that Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell has settled a legal challenge to his decision under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to refuse consent for the Bald Hills windfarm, agreeing to orders setting aside his original decision:

Facing legal defeat, Senator Campbell agreed to an offer - foreshadowed last week in The Weekend Australian - from Wind Power Pty Ltd to resubmit the proposal in exchange for dropping its legal challenge. Costs awarded to the company will be footed by taxpayers.
The Federal Court issued consent orders setting aside Senator Campbell's decision to veto the project in Bald Hills, south Gippsland. Under the court order, Senator Campbell will reconsider his decision "according to law", opening the way for the project, which is strongly opposed by many local residents, to win approval.

The report speculates that the Minister may have been advised that he was likely to lose the challenge because of a failure to provide procedural fairness to the company before making the decision:

It is believed Wind Power had been told by government lawyers that it would win the legal challenge because the minister had denied the company natural justice by not showing it the Biosis report before stopping the wind farm.

It will be interesting to see how the decision is remade. I've suggested before that granting consent to the windfarm with conditions that could reduce negative impacts and fund recovery projects for the orange-bellied parrot could allow the windfarm to go ahead and still improve conservation outcomes for the endangered parrot.

technorati tags: federal+court environmental+law epbc+act australian+law windfarm wind+power bald+hills

Illegal fishing detention ships

2006-08-04T00:45:00.000+10:00

Yesterday the Federal Government has announced a plan to hold:

[i]llegal fishermen and asylum-seekers intercepted in Australian waters … at sea on an armed, purpose-built prison ship for up to a month at a time under tough new border-security provisions.

Concerned that its patrol vessels, particularly in northern waters, must make long voyages returning to port after intercepting each illegal boat, the Australian Customs Service has advertised for tenders to lease a civilian vessel to act as a floating detention centre for extended periods of time. The ship, which will be leased at a cost of $10million a year, will need to be converted at an additional cost to hold up to 30 detainees.

… The [tender] documents state that the ship must be able to cater for a full crew, 30 government officials and 30 detainees "for a minimum of 30 days".

However, Don Rothwell, Professor of International Law at the ANU has indicated:

“Australia's [planned] actions would not be in conformity with the provisions of the [UN Law of the Sea] convention,” he said.

“Certainly any intention to create a prison ship system as has been proposed, I think would … raise even more concerns.

“The law of the sea does envisage that Australia could cooperate with a country like Indonesia, whose fishermen would presumably be the main target of these arrests.”

While the reporting is not very clear, I presume Professor Rothwell has in mind Article 73(2) of the UN Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS), which provides:

Arrested vessels and their crews shall be promptly released upon the posting of reasonable bond or other security.

Indonesia could certainly raise claims that detention for 30 days at sea is not compatible with “prompt release”, and litigate those claims before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.

Australia has had prompt release proceedings initiated against it in ITLOS in the past over the arrest of vessels suspected of illegal fishing in Australian waters (see the Volga Case).

However, in some ways this policy could represent a human rights improvement in Australian practice. The past policy of detaining Indonesian fisherman in their boats in Darwin harbour resulted in deaths in custody in February 2003 and again in April 2005.

It appears that the Australian Fisheries Management Authority has had difficulty in ensuring persons detained in the these highly exposed conditions have access to prompt medical assistance in case of emergencies.

At least the proposed “prison ship” would have a two-bed sick bay and a surgical theatre and detainees will be able to be properly supervised, as opposed to being visited occasionally by a supply boat dropping off food and water.

Further, Senator Ellison the Customs Minister has said

"We anticipate people will be detained for a very short period of time, we anticipate a matter of days."

If the detainees are rapidly moved to shore, processed and released on bond or bail, then the new system could actually bring Australia closer into line with UNCLOS.

Environmental law update

2006-08-01T11:19:00.000+10:00

Clayton Utz's Planning and Environment Insights for July is out and has some worthwhile articles about:

changes to native vegetation laws in Victoria
proposed biodiversity trading scheme in NSW
application of the precautionary principle in Australian law
streamlining of approvals under NSW threatened species law
bilateral agreements under the Commonwealth EPBC Act.

Wind farms and parrots

2006-07-26T12:14:00.000+10:00

Bald Hills Wind Farm Pty Ltd v Minister For the Environment And Heritage VID447/2006

I've written before about the federal Environment Minister's decision to refuse approval for the Bald Hills windfarm because of impacts on the threatened orange-bellied parrot.

The windfarm has taken action in the Federal Court to challenge the decision and for those interested, today's Age has a report on yesterday's interlocutory hearing, where the company failed in its bid to call the Minister himself to give evidence. It's an interesting read.

Is federal environmental law effective?

2006-07-25T17:09:00.000+10:00

The Australia Institute has released a report on the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) which claims that the environmental assessment and approval regime under the Act is a waste of money.

The report is on the Australia Institute's website (see 'What's New'). I'll post some of my thoughts on the report tomorrow.

Japanese whaling in Australian Antarctic waters

2006-07-17T16:43:00.000+10:00

Humane Society International Inc v Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd [2006] FCAFC 116

The Federal Court on Friday granted leave to the Humane Society International (HSI) to proceed with a case to stop Japanese whaling in Australian Antarctic waters:

THE Federal Court has cleared the way for the Japanese company Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha to be challenged over its whaling.The court yesterday allowed Humane Society International to seek an injunction ordering the company to halt whaling in waters off the Australian Antarctic Territory, where it has harpooned hundreds of the animals.

The background to the case is this. In late 2004, HSI commenced proceedings in the Federal Court, seeking an injunction to restrain Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha – a major Japanese whaling company – from carrying out whaling in Australia’s "whale sanctuary", which comprises all Australian waters.

Japan is allowed to conduct "scientific whaling" under the International Whaling Commission rules and carries out part of this whaling in Antarctic waters over which Australia claims sovereignty. Under Australian domestic law (the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 or EPBC Act), whaling is prohibited in any Australian waters. So as a matter of Australian law, Japan’s whaling in Australian Antarctic waters is illegal.
However, a number of countries – including Japan – do not recognise Australia’s claim to Antarctica and Antarctic waters and so the position at international law is unclear. This does not mean Australia can’t attempt to enforce it’s own laws against nationals of other countries, however the federal government has declined to enforce the EPBC Act against Japanese whalers. It prefers, it says, to use diplomatic pressure and international forums and does not want to spark an international disagreement over its Antarctic claims by enforcing its domestic laws against other countries who carry out activities in Antarctica. Doing so would be provocative when those countries believe that Australia has no right to enact those laws in the first place.

However, under the EPBC Act, any person who has a relevant interest can apply to the Federal Court to enforce the Act. HSI has an interest in enforcing provisions related to whales because it is a representative organisation whose objects include conservation and animals welfare. And so HSI applied to the Court to enforce the Act itself, ie, to obtain an injunction to prevent Kyodo from carrying out whaling in Australian waters.

As a first step, HI had to get the Court’s permission to serve the proceedings on Kyodo, because the company has no physical presence in Australia and must be served at its offices in Japan. The Court sought the federal government’s view and the Attorney-General, Phillip Ruddock, argued that the Court should not grant leave. The reasons were pretty much those I’ve given above: seeking to enforce Australia’s laws against countries who dispute the validity of those laws could spark international disagreement and that could ultimately undermine Australia’s claim.

The judge agreed with the Attorney-General and refused to grant HSI leave to serve documents on Kyodo. (The Courting Disaster blog gives a good summary of that decision and the international law aspects of the case – you need to scroll down to the November 20 entry). HSI appealed that decision to the full Federal Court and the appeal was heard last November. The Court has now allowed HSI’s appeal, which means that HSI can serve the relevant documents on Kyodo and proceed with the case.

This is good news for anti-whaling campaigners as the case will attract more attention to Japanese whaling in Antarctic waters. Ultimately it will be difficult to enforce any injunction that may be granted, but the case is probably more important as part of the PR war over international whaling.

The Federal Court judgment is here. Later in the week we’ll try to bring you some more detailed analysis of the decision itself.

Do US greenhouse emissions breach international trade law?

2006-07-12T14:09:00.000+10:00

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has an article out today which suggests that the US is in breach of its World Trade Organisation (WTO) obligations by unfairly subsidising energy:

Fortunately, we have an international trade framework that can be used to force states that inflict harm on others to behave in a better fashion. Except in certain limited situations (like agriculture), the WTO does not allow subsidies—obviously, if some country subsidizes its firms, the playing field is not level. A subsidy means that a firm does not pay the full costs of production. Not paying the cost of damage to the environment is a subsidy, just as not paying the full costs of workers would be. In most of the developed countries of the world today, firms are paying the cost of pollution to the global environment, in the form of taxes imposed on coal, oil, and gas. But American firms are being subsidized—and massively so.
There is a simple remedy: other countries should prohibit the importation of American goods produced using energy intensive technologies, or, at the very least, impose a high tax on them, to offset the subsidy that those goods currently are receiving… Japan, Europe, and the other signatories of Kyoto should immediately bring a WTO case charging unfair subsidization.

While it is clear that the US’s greenhouse emissions impose unfair environmental costs on other countries, it’s much harder to say what level of energy taxes would or would not represent a subsidy. As Stiglitz says "A subsidy means that a firm does not pay the full costs of production. Not paying the cost of damage to the environment is a subsidy." But the problem is, how do you work out what the cost of damage to the global environment is – now and in the future – from each unit of energy? And how do you tell that Europe or Japan's taxes are not themselves a subsidy?

I’d welcome thoughts from any international lawyers but it seems to me that a WTO case against the US – while I’d love to see it! – would have more political than legal merit.

An Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act primer: Part 2

2006-07-10T17:16:00.000+10:00

Las post, I looked at the limited scope of the Act and why it is inappropriate for dealing with cumulative impacts, in the context of the Australian Environment Minister's decision to refuse consent to a windfarm which could harm the endangered orange-bellied parrot. Today I look at how imposing conditions under the EPBC Act allows for win-win outcomes and some lessons for us from this situation.

Win-wins are commonplace under the Act

The media reports on this issue seem to have assumed or implied that the Minister had only two choices: to approve the windfarm or to reject it. Harry Clarke has pointed out that there was a straightforward win-win solution here: the parrots can be successfully bred and returned to the wild, so the windfarm could be allowed with the condition that it pay for a breeding and release program that returned a few parrots each year to the wild population.

Similarly, Chris Tzaros, who co-ordinates the Orange-bellied Parrot Project said he was surprised by the Government's decision, saying he thought Bald Hills could have been safely approved with a conservation management plan.

As I understand it, either solution was well within the Minister’s power, which makes you wonder whether the decision was more political than environmental. The Minister can approve project with all sorts of conditions.

The Age reported that the Minister's decision was only the fourth time an environment minister has invoked the EPBC Act to veto a proposed development, out of 2745 developments referred to the Government since it came into force six years ago. I spoke to one of the main EPBC Act decision-makers in the federal Department of Environment and Heritage last year about the success of the Act and this statistic. He made the point that many hundreds of projects had been modified substantially by conditions imposed by the Minister which made a huge difference to their environmental impacts. In his view, this was the real power and success of the Act.

He also commented that projects were never refused outright unless they were so inherently destructive that no conditions could be applied that would moderate their impact. In most of those cases, the projects were illegal under State law anyway and had been submitted only to make some kind of political point. This sounds very different to the situation with the Bald Hills windfarm project.

It's unclear why sensible conditions were not considered by the Minister in this case.

Some conclusions

Whether the Minister’s decision was politically-driven or not, it was certainly a bad one for the environment and in terms of social costs and benefits: it will likely save one bird every 109 years while sacrificing an otherwise viable development. And, in my opinion it represents appalling administration of the Act:

It uses the Act inappropriately to address a cumulative impacts problem by prohibiting a development which will have a truly trivial affect on the problem;
It does not consider imposing conditions which could actually have done something positive for the orange-bellied parrot while allowing an important renewable energy development to proceed.

There are reports that a legal challenge to the Minister’s decision is being considered. I would have thought such a challenge would have some legs. I think there’s questions about whether a windfarm that could kill on average one parrot every 109 years is a ‘significant impact’, as is required under the Act. I think there’s also an argument that the Minister’s consideration of the ‘cumulative impact’ of other sites, rather than just looking at the marginal impact of this development means that he has taken irrelevant factors into consideration, which would invalidate his decision. (I should point out that that’s not an argument that would be very popular with green groups, who have been pushing consideration of ‘cumulative impacts’ under the EPBC Act).

(Originally posted at the Oikos blog).

An Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act primer: Part 1

2006-06-23T16:32:00.000+10:00

(Originally posted at the Oikos blog)

The recent debate over the decision by the Australian Environment Minister to refuse consent to a wind farm because of its possible impacts on the endangered orange-bellied parrot has prompted me to say a few things about Australia’s primary piece of environmental legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act).

In case you missed the story, orange-bellied parrots are highly endangered, with less than 200 left in the wild. They migrate between Tasmania and Victoria each year. The proposed wind turbines, on the Victorian coast, are in the vicinity of the parrot’s migration zone. Though no birds have ever been sighted near the site there is, according to reports provided to the Environment Minister, a possibility that windfarm turbines in coastal Victoria might kill one bird every year. With the population so endangered, the Minister made the decision not to allow an additional windfarm to go ahead.

The best summary of the political context for the decision – which is important if you want to understand the decision – is this article in the Age. I recommend reading it.

I want to make some comments about the EPBC Act, because an understanding of the Act is also important if you want to understand what has happened here.

Scope

First, the scope of the Act is quite limited. Under the Australian Constitution, the States have general power over things such as the environment. The federal government has power over certain specified national issues, such as defence, trade and foreign affairs. Most of the federal government’s powers to affect the environment derive indirectly from the foreign affairs power: the federal government has entered into environmental treaties – such as the Convention on the Protection of Biological Diversity and the World Heritage Convention – and therefore must have the power to meet its obligations under those treaties. So its power over the environment is mostly limited to certain areas relating to its treaty obligations.

Under the EPBC Act, you need the Environment Minister’s approval for a project if it significantly affects a matter of "national environmental significance". These are:

World Heritage values of World Heritage properties;
wetlands of international importance;
Commonwealth listed threatened species and ecological communities;
listed migratory species;
Commonwealth marine areas;
nuclear actions; and
listed National and Commonwealth Heritage places.

It is worth pointing out that the federal government would normally have no power to prohibit a windfarm. It has that power in this instance because the windfarm may have a significant impact on a threatened species.

This is relevant because if the federal government wanted, politically, to gain some control over windfarm policy in Australia, it would have to do so in a roundabout way, such as prohibiting any windfarms that happen to get caught in its jurisdiction and then putting pressure on the States to negotiate with it on a national policy. That is what some people have suggested this decision is really about and it is interesting that the Environment Minister has recently called for a national code on wind energy.

Inappropriate for cumulative impacts

An interesting aspect of this decision is that the Environment Minister has refused the proposed 52-turbine windfarm at Bald Hills but has approved substantially larger projects nearby – including one that, according to the Age article (and presumably under the curious licensing scheme of the Act), he has expressly authorised to kill three of the parrots each year.

The Minister has claimed that it is precisely because he has approved these other projects that he can’t approve this one:

The orange-bellied parrot was at such dangerously low levels in terms of population that any additional wind farm in this particular area would have an impact on the survival of the species. The fact is we have had a massive increase in investment in wind farms: 400 turbines have been built in the past four years and there are 145 more in the pipeline. That has cumulatively a new impact on the environment which we have for the first time sought to assess.

Interestingly, and contrary to every media report that I’ve seen, the report on impacts did not say that the Bald Hills windfarm could kill up to one parrot per year, it said that, in total, all existing and proposed windfarms in Victoria and Tasmania could kill up to one parrot per year. The contribution of the Bald Hill windfarm itself to this number is trivial. (The Minister never claimed that the Bald Hills windfarm would kill one bird per year either – I know journalists don’t read reports but surely they could at least read the Minister’s one-page media release). Incidentally, if you look hard enough and do a simple calculation, the report cited by the Minister does contain the actual number of parrots estimated to be killed by the proposed Bald Hills windfarm: one every 109 years.*

This illustrates one of the major limitations of the Act: it is a project-by-project approval scheme. Project approval schemes are good at dealing with the particular local impacts of individual projects. What they are not good at is dealing with cumulative impacts: where each project has only a small additional impact but many projects will collectively have a major impact. And yet the EPBC Act is meant to deal not with local impacts but with matters of national significance. Green groups have been calling on the government to use the EPBC Act to prohibit or modify projects – such as coal-fired power stations – that have relatively large greenhouse gas emissions. In my opinion, the EPBC Act is ineffective for this: you need national policies that cover energy, transport, etc, not tinkering with projects one by one.

(Economic instruments are perfect for addressing cumulative impacts: this is one of their major advantages).

Tomorrow I'll talk about how imposing conditions under the EPBC Act allows for win-win outcomes and some lessons for us from this debacle. I'll also point out how the Minister selectively quoted from the Report he relied on to imply that the Report said almost the opposite of what it actually said.

* Page 30 of the orange-bellied parrot chapter of the report (PDF here) sets out the most likely survivorship rate of the population at Bald Hills: 0.9999392. I have used the calculations set out on pages 32 and 33 to arrive at a figure of 0.00912 parrot mortalities per year, which equals one every 109.6 years.

Wanted: contributors

2006-06-22T11:17:00.000+10:00

The aim of the ozelaw blog is to bring you news, commentary and analysis on environmental law in Australia from a range of experienced and passionate Australian environmental lawyers - or lawyers with an interest in the environment or environmentalists with an interest in the law.

If that's you and you'd like to become a contributor to the ozelaw blog, please email me at ozelaw - at - yahoo - dot - com - dot - au.

I don't intend to do much writing here (I'm busy enough with work, study and my other blog, the Oikos environmental economics blog), so if you're interested in contributing I'd love to hear from you!

Logo

2006-06-22T11:06:00.000+10:00

Disclaimer

2006-06-22T10:51:00.000+10:00

This is a blog: a personal web site reflecting only the opinions of its authors. It was built and is manitained in occasional spare moments. Statements on this site do not represent the views or policies of anyone other than the person offering up the views. They should certainly not be intepreted as representing the position of any organisation for which the author works or is affiliated, unless that is specifically stated.

The authors here are expressing personal views, not offering legal advice. You would be a crazy, crazy cat to rely on anything said here when making important decisions. Go and see a lawyer.

If you do need legal advice on an environmental law issue and you live in NSW, the Environmental Defender's Office (NSW) offers a very good free environmental legal help line. Call (02) 9262 6989.

Welcome to ozelaw!

2006-06-22T09:07:00.000+10:00

Welcome to ozelaw, the Australian environmental law blog.

The aim of the ozelaw blog is to bring you news, commentary and analysis on environmental law in Australia from a range of experienced and passionate Australian environmental lawyers. (If that's you and you'd like to become a contributor to the ozelaw blog, please email me at ozelaw - at - yahoo - dot - com - dot - au).

I've set up the ozelaw blog because there doesn't seem to be any online source of up-to-date information and, in particular, discussion, comment of trends in Australian environmental law. Hopefully this will become a forum for all those interested in environmental law and environmental policy in Australia to learn and share their thoughts and experience. Hopefully it will also be a resource for people looking for general information on Australian environmental law.

I don't intend to do much writing here (I'm busy enough with work, study and my other blog, the Oikos environmental economics blog), hopefully others will step up!

Please feel free to contribute and discuss. Enjoy!