Thomas C. Sorensen Seminar: Learning to Live with the Trickster: Resilience Theory and Environmental Law in the Anthropocene

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Location
Hardin Hall – Auditorium (1st floor), School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska – Lincoln (East Campus)

Hardin Hall – Auditorium (1st floor)
School of Natural Resources
University of Nebraska – Lincoln (East Campus)
3310 Holdrege St.
Lincoln, NE 68583

Co-sponsored by the Nebraska Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit, UNL School of Natural Resources, UNL Department of English, the University of Nebraska Public Policy Center, and the UNL College of Arts and Sciences through the Thomas C. Sorensen Endowment.

Environmental and natural resources law in the United States assumes that natural systems operate within limited ranges of variability and can always be restored to their proper “balance.” Hence, that it is possible, even easy, to assess and regulate sustainable use of natural resources. Modern ecological studies in general and resilience theory, in particular, called these assumptions very much into doubt even before climate change was recognized, but climate change has propelled us into a world of continually changing ecosystems and baseline conditions. This talk, based on Melinda Harm Benson’s and Robin Kundis Craig’s book, The End of Sustainability, explored how American culture and law can better adapt, prepare for, and respond to the trickster of the Anthropocene.

Robin Kundis Craig
Robin Kundis Craig is the James I. Farr Professor of Law at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she is the Acting Director (2016-2017) of the Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment and affiliated faculty with the University’s Global Change and Sustainability Center. Professor Craig specializes in all things water, including the relationships between climate change and water; the water-energy-food nexus; the Clean Water Act; the intersection of water issues and land issues; marine biodiversity, marine protected areas and marine spatial planning; water law; and the relationships between environmental law and public health.  She is the author, co-author, or editor of 11 books, including The Clean Water Act and the Constitution (ELI 2nd Ed. 2009), Environmental Law in Context (Thomson/West 4th Ed. 2016), Toxic and Environmental Torts (Thomson/West 2010), Comparative Ocean Governance: Place-Based Protections in an Era of Climate Change (Edward Elgar 2012), Modern Water Law (Foundation Press 2013), Water Law: Concepts and Insights (West 2017), and The End of Sustainability (forthcoming from Kansas University Press in 2017).

 

Click here to listen to the presentation.
Click here for a PDF of Robin Craig’s PowerPoint presentation.