Environmental law envisions ecological systems as existing in an equilibrium state, or a “balance of nature,” reinforcing a rigid legal framework unable to absorb rapid environmental changes and innovations in sustainability. For the past three decades, “resilience theory,” which embraces uncertainty and nonlinear dynamics in complex adaptive systems, has shown itself to be a robust and invaluable basis for sound environmental management. Reforming American law to account for this knowledge is key to transitioning to sustainability. This volume features top legal and resilience scholars speaking on resilience theory and its legal applications to climate change, biodiversity, national parks, and water law.

Theories of social-ecological resilience have developed over the past decades and rapidly become an important framework for governance of complex non-linear environmental problems. This book explores the resilience theories and their compatibility with law, it identifies corresponding legal features. The legal features identified, including legal measures, mechanisms, principles and approaches, form a legal design for social-ecological resilience. A legal design that can be applied to different governance situations. It can be a tool both for designing new laws, as well as for assessing the effectiveness of current laws and legal systems. In many ways environmental law has adjusted and developed new approaches to meet complex environmental problems, but law is still challenged by the complexity that characterize environmental problems and the environmental change connected with the Anthropocene. This book provides a comprehensive review of the most fundamental components of the governance framework for social-ecological resilience and the role of law.

Environmental law envisions ecological systems as existing in an equilibrium state, or a “balance of nature,” reinforcing a rigid legal framework unable to absorb rapid environmental changes and innovations in sustainability. For the past three decades, “resilience theory,” which embraces uncertainty and nonlinear dynamics in complex adaptive systems, has shown itself to be a robust and invaluable basis for sound environmental management. Reforming American law to account for this knowledge is key to transitioning to sustainability. This volume features top legal and resilience scholars speaking on resilience theory and its legal applications to climate change, biodiversity, national parks, and water law.

An exploration of the legal features compatibility with the theories of social-ecological resilience and their applicability for effective governance frameworks.

The main focus of this book is on water quantity management, specifically floods, scarcity and droughts. The relevant EU requirements for water quantity management in transboundary waters and the way these have been implemented in a specific river basin in the EU, the Scheldt, are scrutinized. Moreover, a case study of the river basin mechanism governing the Delaware River in the United States has been conducted with the aim of identifying lessons learned for the EU. The key theme running through the book is based on the social-ecological resilience theory and the water security paradigm.

Political boundaries are drawn without consideration of river basin boundaries, as illustrated by the fact that 263 surface water resources cross international boundaries. Over the next decade, several contributing factors could trigger rapid change and social and economic instability in these international watersheds, placing greater demands on competing water interests and a greater need to cooperate across jurisdictional boundaries. These contributing factors include: climate change; continued population growth; a threatened and deteriorating ecosystem; demand for non-fossil fuel energy; and aging infrastructure. Uncertainty in these factors challenges traditional approaches to governance of transboundary water resources. These approaches also rely on the certainty that historic data concerning water supply, demand, values, and ecosystem health can be used to predict the future. In addition, these traditional approaches protect sovereignty through clear rules for dividing resources rather than flexibility to adapt to change and foster system resilience. Resilience as applied to ecological systems addresses the ability of the system to continue to provide, or return to a state in which it will provide, a full range of ecosystem services in the face of change. When applied to the coupled human-ecological system (i.e. a social-ecological system), it provides an umbrella theory for integration of concepts of natural resource management with ecological response to achieve sustainability. Achieving the goal of sustainability in a river basin is complicated by uncertainty in the drivers of change and the fragmentation of jurisdictions. Research to translate resilience theory into specific administrative actions may provide a road map to improving our ability to foster sustainability in our response to change in transboundary river basins. This research is an outgrowth of the first University of Idaho College of Law Natural Resources and Environment Symposium (“the Symposium”) focused on the issue of transboundary water governance in the face of uncertainty. The Symposium used the natural laboratory of the Columbia Basin, shared by the United States and Canada, as a focal point for discussion. Joint operation of the river for the purposes of hydropower production and flood control is governed by a 1964 treaty (“the Treaty”). Certain flood control provisions of the Treaty expire in 2024, and either country must provide ten years' notice should it seek to terminate the Treaty. Thus efforts are underway in the basin to predict changes and to understand whether those changes warrant Treaty modification. The degree of uncertainty surrounding the drivers of change complicates efforts to predict and address changes. With the University of Idaho College of Law and Waters of the West Program as the lead organizer, the Symposium was developed in collaboration with researchers from Oregon State University, University of Montana, University of British Columbia, and Washington State University. Representatives of the first four of these universities and the University of Washington have joined to form the Universities Consortium on Columbia River Governance (“the Consortium”). This paper proceeds as follows: Part I introduces and reviews some of the relevant work on the concept of resilience in governance; Part II uses information from the symposium to describe the Columbia River and the 1964 Columbia River Treaty; Part III discusses changes since 1964 and the anticipated drivers of change; and Part IV concludes by applying the concept of resilience to the Columbia River Basin and laying the foundation for the next step in the research being pursued at the University of Idaho. This work includes developing models of administrative law that are integrated with the Consortium's research around the concept of resilience. These models could be applied in the Columbia Basin and other transboundary and multi-jurisdictional efforts at river governance.