ELI Engages in International Environmental Law Programs

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, clean-up 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 Professor 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.

ELI has become co-sponsor of the publication of Earth Law Journal: Journal of International and Comparative Environmental Law with the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources and Friends of the Earth. The Earth Law Journal is published by A.W. Sijthoff Publishing Company of Leyden, The Netherlands, and its purpose it "to encourage the use of law as a tool for protecting the biosphere from environmental damage." The Journal "will help man, as the Trustee for Nature and succeeding generations, in the creation of stewardship laws guiding the affairs of man in his natural and human environments." The first issue includes articles on legal protection of the environment in the USSR and on industrialized nations' air pollution laws; abstracts of New York City's noise control code and of the English common law of footpaths; and reviews of books comparing easements as conservation techniques in the United States, Germany and France and discussing international cooperation in the protection of nature. The Journal's 38-member board of editors represents many nations and institutions and includes David Sive, Chairman of ELI's Board of Direcotrs, and Will Irwin of ELI. (Inquiries about subscriptions or submission of manuscripts may be directed to Will Irwin at ELI.)

At the suggestion of the International Legal Center in New York, ELI is this summer hosting the Executive Secretary and Director of Research of the Ghana Law Reform Commission, Mr. Ofori-Boateng, as a guest scholar. Mr. Ofori-Boateng, who took his legal training at University College, London, and is a member of the bar of Lincoln's Inn, London, was a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School for the 1974-75 academic year. At ELI, he will analyze Ghana's present laws for managing water resources and controlling water pollution and draft substantive and procedural provisions for improving those laws. He will work with several staff members who have had experience drafting, administrating or observing legislation combining water law and administrative law.

ELI is presently considering the development of its international and comparative environmental law programs. Suggestions of subjects that need attention are welcome and may be addressed to Will Irwin at ELI.