Environmental Policy & Law

The necessity of a top-down National Ocean Policy is that it instructs managers to work in collaboration across managerial boundaries. The wonder of the National Ocean Policy was for leadership of the Interior (the National Park Service), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Coast Guard and the Navy to announce that they would work together across institutional boundaries, share resources, reduce redundancies, and develop more robust solutions for responsible ocean stewardship.

The Obama Administration’s preliminary decision to impose a 31 per cent tariff on solar panels imported from China is short sighted. The move could cause a trade war, hurt the US economy, jeopardize US security interests, and put the world further off course in terms of meeting its global climate change goals.

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At the Commerce Department, I have the privilege to serve as Secretary Bryson's senior policy adviser on energy and environment issues.

For millennia, Colorado's Yampa River Valley has followed the rhythms of wildlife mating and migration, the habits of elk and grouse and bear. The arrival of ranching in the 1880s altered the pattern a little, but radical change didn't occur until the last half of the 20th century. That's when the big ranches began to be broken up into small ranchettes and vacation-home lots, the kind of low-density exurban sprawl responsible for habitat fragmentation across the West.

"Investment decisions involving loss of land and access to critical resources like water can have a devastating impact on the poorest communities who are dependent on the land to feed their families and make a living. For such projects, there must be even greater transparency, due diligence, and attention to community rights to resources - not less," said Anne Perrault of the Centre of International Environmental Law, co-author of the briefing. Read the full story