2024 WAILU 2.0

Western Environmental Law Update

LAND AIR WATER

Cultivating Community

THANK YOU

The WELU has evolved into a collaborative and artistic effort with thanks to you, your support and your submissions!

We hope this year’s edition creates joy, solidarity, and purpose. If nothing else, we hope the WELU serves as a reminder of the future we are working towards. Together, our community can support the people and ecosystems most impacted by environmental injustices.

Your 2024 WELU editors, Chloe Harvell and Alicia Davis

WELU - 2024

cover art: “Fishtear” by Hara Garramone

photo by Alicia Davis

land the job, including myself, would still have opportunities to apply for other roles within the movement, further growing and strengthening our collective impact. As long as we continue to seek positions that enable us to drive change, our movement thrives.

Movement lawyering involves more than just the straightforward notion that we engage in certain actions to achieve specific results. It represents a shift in attitude that redefines our notions of competition and success within the legal profession.

Maybe losing out on a job is seeing the fruits of your labor. It indicates that the Work we see as important has a strong team dedicated to it. I would rather a public interest job be overwhelmed with applicants than have only a few because it tells me the movement is strong. We who care about the Work bear a lighter burden when we work collectively to bring about change.

Within the community of a movement, the pressures of competition shift, relieving the stress placed on individual value. Competitive efforts should not be directed at colleagues who are moving in the same direction. Instead, those efforts should serve as an internal challenge aimed at improving our advocacy skills for the causes we champion. Consequently, our competition may be directed towards those who strongly oppose the Work we are trying to accomplish.

Dedicating oneself to the Work within a movement also expands what can be

celebrated as success. Success isn’t primarily about personal gain, but rather our collective advancement. When we engage in the Work as a collective force, success can be celebrated whenever someone has dedicated themself to affecting the change they aspire to see in the world. Success lies in your involvement with these issues, even if you didn’t create them personally. Success is when the movement makes progress, achieves milestones, and breaks free from the constraints of the status quo. Success emerges when we collaborate for the common good, pooling our resources and skills to achieve greater collective strength than we could as individuals.

To become truly effective movement lawyers, it is essential to challenge and shed traditional individualistic values within the legal field. Recognizing that we are a part of a larger purpose beyond our individual ambitions is crucial for fostering collaboration, achieving meaningful change, and ultimately leading to our liberation!

I came across the poem “Lessons From Geese” in my childhood, and it has continued to inspire me throughout my journey in law school. This poem provides a valuable framework for cultivating a mindset that recognizes the potential strength of community activism. Being part of a collective effort, where the common good takes precedence over personal recognition, is truly liberating.

Lessons From Geese

Fact 1: As each goose flap its wings it creates an “uplift” for the birds that follow. By flying in a “V” formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater range than if each bird flew alone.

Lesson: People who share a common sense of direction and community can get where they are going quicker and easier because they are traveling on the thrust of one another.

Fact 2: When a goose falls out of formation, it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of flying alone. It quickly moves back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front of it.

Lesson: If we have as much sense as a goose we stay in formation with those headed where we want to go. We are willing to accept their help and give our help to others.

Fact 3: When the lead goose tires, it rotates back into the formation and another goose flies to the point position.

Lesson: It pays to take turns doing the hard tasks and sharing leadership, as with geese, people are interdependent on each other’s skill, capabilities and unique arrangement of gifts, talents or resources.

Fact 4: The geese flying in formation honk to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

Lesson: We need to make sure our honking is encouraging. In groups where there is encouragement, the productivity is much greater. The power of encouragement (to stand by one’s heart or core values and encourage the heart and core of others) is the quality of honking we seek.

Fact 5: When a goose gets sick, wounded or shot down, two geese drop out of formation and follow it down to help and protect it. They stay until it dies or can fly again. Then they launch out with another formation or catch up with the flock.

Lesson: If we have as much sense as geese, we will stand by each other in difficult times as well as when we are strong.

photo by Kevin Liu

“Lessons from Geese” was transcribed from a speech given by Angeles Arrien at the 1991 Organizational Development Network and is based on the work of Milton Olson.

Tree-Planter

Kelsi Hartley Campbell

Squirrels flourish in urban environments

With most natural predators excised from suburbia

They multiply and wreak havoc

They dig up your flowerbeds

And taunt your cats at the window.

I used to hate them too but last year, some squirrel left two hazelnuts in my chives, and the hazelnuts sprouted into saplings. For years, I wished for a hazelnut tree

And here were two: the squirrels’ gift.

When I watch my squirrel-friend now

I don't see a garden-menace Or urban rodent

I see Tree-Planter.

While humanity cuts down trees and drive out foxes Squirrels return the balance.

When we return our manicured lawns

They will plant trees, and slowly bring back a forest. I can't hate the ones who do good work.

“Husk and Seed” Isabella Pardales

in the mind of someone living

found poem by Buck Adams

In Furman, the Supreme Court held that the death penalty violated the 8th Amendment due to its arbitrary and capricious implemtnation. This resulted in a de facto federal moratorium on executions which lasted for five years.

A Toast!

Andi Chia

I propose a toast

To complacency

To obedience To apathy

Everyone!

Drink to your heart’s content

We are at our wit’s end

Unraveling knots Making amends

I propose a toast

To patience

To conflicts To growth

To our youth!

Drink for the ghosts

We think we need Drown yourself

Amid the thunderous waves

I propose a toast

To our bones

To our blood

To our hearts

We are here!

Drink to your weathered spirits

Sink your teeth into ambition

Laugh hysterically at depression

Smile madly at loss

I propose a toast

To friends

To family To Mother Earth

To the old and the new!

Drink for the ones who can’t

We are children still

Learning how to tie knots again

Canopy by Isabella Pardales

“The Things That Connect”

by Madeline Andrews

“How many must rise for justice’s plea Before change unfolds, our eyes to see?

How many thirst for water clean

Before we act, before we glean?

How many homes, by nature’s wrath Must be destroyed on their present path?

How many brands, in their fashion fast Will crowd the market, until the last?

How many cars, how many phones

Must we produce, ‘til our conscience groans?

How long till the non-renewables wane And we’re left to ponder, our heedless gain?

How long till we grasp, as a collective whole There’s no turning back from this relentless toll?

How many species, forever gone

Till we realize, what we’ve done wrong?

In the cycle of products, most have no grave Their journey ends in a landfill’s cave

How many voices, how many hearts Must rise as one, for the Earth to restart?”

poem and photo by Alicia Davis

I rinse the sea water from my hair and arrange the salt crystals in a circle at my feet Not to keep anything out, but to keep myself in Corinne Gibson

photo by Kirean McKee

The Rights of Nature

Dorie Sullivan

I. Introduction

We need to rebuild our relationship with nature. Some countries and cultures view nature like an elder that deserves the highest respect. In the United States, nature is seen as a set of resources to extract from or as a dumping ground. But nature is alive and deserves the right to stay alive. One way to protect nature from exploitation is with the rights of nature laws. Below I will discuss the origins of the rights of nature laws and methods used to implement the rights of nature internationally and nationally.

...

The concept of the rights of na-

ture was first introduced into law through Christopher D. Stone’s book “Should Trees Have Standing?” The idea that nature has rights has been known for centuries in indigenous cultures. Indigenous people respect nature and treat her like kin. In many indigenous languages, indigenous people address natural entities the same way they would address an elder.1 She is treated more than an object. Some indigenous languages have terms for things like “the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.”2 However, in the United States, if a child were to call a tree by “her,” we would correct them to call the tree “it”. The simple mind shift, from

thinking of nature as an object to thinking of nature as a subject, could help sustain the Earth for future generations. Humans tend to be kinder to other humans, and we should extend that kindness to nature.

One way to initiate the shift in perspective is to implement the rights of nature laws. The rights of nature laws give the same rights individuals and corporations have to nature. They allow nature to have legal standing to bring an injury to court. Nature can no longer be seen as a set of resources waiting to be exploited. The United States should enact a rights of nature law, federally.

...

Rights of Nature laws are not as prevalent in the United States [as they are abroad]. Surprisingly, a small town in Pennsylvania, Tamaqua Borough, was the first place, globally, to legally recognize the rights of nature. On September 19, 2006, the Borough Council of Tamaqua Borough enacted the Tamaqua Borough Sewage Sludge Ordinance.3 The ordinance made the use of sewage sludge as a fertilizer unlawful.4 The purpose of the ordinance is to “protect the health, safety, and welfare of the residents of Tamaqua Borough, [as well as] the soil, groundwater, and surface water, the environment and its flora and fauna, and the practice of sustainable agriculture.”5 Other than this and some other small examples, The

United States relies on its federal statutes to legally help protect the environment.

There is an evolving relationship between mankind and nature. Different countries are on different paths with varying levels of protection. Although the United States has strong federal statutes to control pollution, they do not seek to redefine the relationship between humans and the environment. We need to rebuild our relationship with nature so we can create a more sustainable future for generations to come.

1 Issac Goeckeritz, The Rights of Nature: A Global Movement - Feature Documentary, YouTube, (Mar. 31, 2020), https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kuFNmH7lVTA&ab_channel=IssacGoeckeritz%7CFilmmaker.

2 Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants, 47 (Milkweed Editions 2015).

3 Borough of Tamaqua, Pa., Ordinance 612 (Sept. 19, 2006), http://files. harmonywithnatureun.org/uploads/ upload666.pdf.

4 Id. at §§ 5 and 7.1.

5 Id. at §3.

** Editor’s Note **

The Rights of Nature was edited to adhere to the constraints of this publication. A more complete version of the writing can be found by accessing the online edition of the 2024 WELU.