The Environmental Law Institute has launched several programs in international and comparative environmental law in 1975.

In April, the Ford Foundation made a grant to ELI which will support research comparing the implementation of laws of several industrialized nations that govern the production, use, transportation, storage, cleanup of spills, and recycling or "ultimate" disposal of toxic substances. A related study supported by this grant will report on the implementation of Japan's 1973 law for the compensation of victims of pollution and compare it to the approaches prevailing in the United States and selected civil law nations. The Japanese approach projects the number of victims of toxic substance pollution, calculates the budget for a compensation fund, and allocates the costs of the fund to the companies which produce the substance. These concurrent, year-long studies will be carried out respectively by Will Irwin of ELI and Prof. Julian Gresser of the University of Hawaii Law School and should each result in a book useful to those who formulate and implement environmental policies. The Ford Foundation grant will also support publication of an ELI monograph by Will Irwin on various European nation's systems for charging for wastewater discharges.