Network of Australian Government Lawyers Discuss Shared Challenges
By Donna Campbell, Executive Director Legal Services, NSW Department of Environment and Conservation. Email: Donna.Campbell@environment.nsw.gov.au.

Australian Sunset

On 27 May 2005, the New South Wales Department of Environment and Conservation hosted a conference attended by more than 60 lawyers from other environment and conservation agencies across Australia. The conference also benefited from the experience of colleagues from New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Former Land and Environment Court judge, the Honorable Justice Paul Stein, headed the list of speakers on issues currently being debated by environmental lawyers.

The conference held six sessions that dealt with topics including: working effectively with clients and colleagues; civil versus criminal enforcement; international perspectives, including the work of INECE; innovative sentencing orders; holding corporations and their officers accountable; achieving legal change; and future directions.

This was the second network conference and it was proposed that the conference should be held on an annual basis and that future invitations will be extended to government lawyers from environment and conservation agencies within the Asia Pacific region.

Philippine Faculty and Students Form Environmental Law Group
By Gloria Estenzo Ramos, Ramos and Estenzo Ramos Law Offices. Email: gollyramos@yahoo.com.

KALIKUPAN Law Group Series

Inspired after attending the 7th International Conference on Environmental Compliance and Enforcement in Marrakech this past spring, members of the environmental law faculty and students at the University of Cebu, Philippines established the KALIKUPAN Law Group in order to raise public awareness of environmental problems and put pressure on government officials to enforce environmental laws.

The group, in cooperation with the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, NGOs, and other academia, established the Environmental Law Forum Series. The Forum, held every other Saturday, draws upon the experience of the INECE Conference by immersing participants in certain communities to highlight the issues discussed in the preceding forum.

Gloria Estenzo Ramos, University of Cebu Law Professor, addressed the first Forum held 18 June 2005. Her presentation on Solid Waste Management Law was followed by a panel discussion with representatives of the local government units, the Environmental Management Bureau of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, local business, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The follow-up field activity was held at Cebu City, where effective composting and recycling practices are done by the people in the community. Local government officials, law students, women from Hilutungan Island, and other NGOs also attended.

Future forum topics will include water and forest, fisheries and marine resources, air pollution, and wildlife and biodiversity.

AELERT Network Announces Upcoming Conference

AELERT Logo

AELERT was established in recognition that agencies from around Australia face similar challenges in dealing with the cross-jurisdictional nature of environmental crime, improving co-operation between agencies, and improving training standards.

Membership of AELERT is open to all government agencies with environmental regulatory responsibilities who wish to participate in interagency co-operation and information exchange. Membership carries no legally binding rights or responsibilities. One of the main aims of AELERT is improved interaction between agencies, including cross authorization, information and intelligence sharing, and training.

For more information, visit http://inece.org/region_asia.html.

Local Governments Found Protecting Polluters in China
Source: Reuters China

China handled more than 200 cases of local governments protecting polluters last year as it struggles to balance environmental concerns with development.

China's Yellow River

The environment had suffered over two decades of economic reform, a condensed form of the problem which developed countries faced over 100 years or so, the State Environmental Protection Administration official said.

"Local protectionism is a big headache for the environmental protection administration," the organization's vice minister, Wang Jirong, told a news conference in Beijing, which is struggling to clean up its air before it hosts the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

China, the world's top coal producer and consumer, is the world's second-largest producer of greenhouse gases.

Nearly three-quarters of the Yellow River , which supplies water to 12 percent of China's 1.3 billion people and 15 percent of its farmland, had been badly tainted by sewage, industrial waste, fertilizer, and other pollutants, Xinhua news agency said last week.

China is facing a severe water crisis -- 300 million people do not have access to drinkable water -- and the government has been spending heavily to clean major waterways like the Yellow, Huaihe and Yangtze rivers.

But those clean-up campaigns have made limited progress because of spotty enforcement and uncooperative industry.

Thousands of villagers rioted in eastern China , injuring dozens of police, after two of about 200 elderly women protesting over factory pollution died during efforts to disperse them, residents and officials said in April.

In recent years, the administration has seen a surge, of about 30 percent a year, in the number of complaints about the environment, said Wang Yuqing, another vice minister.

In January, the administration asked 30 major infrastructure projects around the country, including 23 power stations with total capacity of nearly 32 gigawatts, to halt construction because they flouted a law requiring environmental impact assessments before work began.