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Royal C. Gardner, The Ramsar Convention and the Concept of Consensus, in Wetlands and International Environmental Law: The Evolution and Impact of the Ramsar Convention (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Royal C. Gardner et al., Ramsar Sites and Their Ecological Character: A Cornerstone of the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, in Wetlands and International Environmental Law: The Evolution and Impact of the Ramsar Convention (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Royal C. Gardner, Waters of the United States: POTUS, SCOTUS, WOTUS, and the Politics of a National Resource (Island Press, 2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
In 2023, the Supreme Court made one of its most devastating rulings in environmental history. By narrowing the legal definition of ‘waters of the United States’ (WOTUS), the court opened the floodgates to unregulated pollution. But while tremendously consequential, the decision was also simply the latest in a long series of battles over WOTUS, and which rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, wetlands, and perhaps even farm fields were to be protected by the Clean Water Act of 1972.
Waters of the United States is an unprecedented exploration of this history—and its importance for today’s efforts to conserve a critical natural resource. The book not only examines how bodies of water are legally defined (and therefore protected), but who gets to decide on these definitions. The result is a fascinating look at the ongoing power struggle between the president and federal agencies, the courts, the states, and Congress, over water quality.
Waters of the United States offers the detailed analysis necessary for any lawyer or environmental advocate to understand the nuances of water policy, while spinning a compelling narrative for readers who have never cracked a law book. The unique mix of insights into environmental law, history, and politics is required reading for anyone who cares about the future of the nation’s water.
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C. Max Finlayson et al., Closing the Driver–Response Loop for Halting and Reversing Wetland Degradation and Loss from Agriculture, 75 Marine & Freshwater Research MF24050 (2024)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Context. The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands has considered agriculture–wetland interactions, but without linking policy responses to agricultural drivers of change.
Aims. Assess the disconnect between the rhetoric of analysing and reporting on the role of agriculture in wetland loss and degradation (the ‘drivers’) with actions on the ground (the ‘responses’).
Methods. An analysis of almost 400 Convention documents was undertaken to understand how the Convention has addressed agriculture and what
responses were identified. The documents were filtered through a word search for their relevance to the direct and indirect drivers of degradation in wetlands.
Key results. Although there was a focus on issues and problem framing and generic responses, they were insufficient to address the range of drivers
underpinning agriculture–wetland interactions. They also present a generic and partial viewof agriculture and broader food systems.
Conclusions. We make the following four recommendations for addressing the driver–response gap: deepening our understanding of the drivers in agriculture that affect wetlands; exploring and exploiting windows of opportunities within agriculture that are aligned with wetland use; enhancing our ability to work with indirect drivers; and ensuring that resolutions agreed through the Convention are more specific on key drivers of adverse change in wetlands.
Implications. The current impetus for ‘agriculture transformation’ creates an opportunity for the Convention to broaden its engagement in wetland–agriculture interactions and close the driver–response loop.
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Rebecca L. Kihslinger et al., Unpacking the Revised WOTUS Rule Dialogue, 53 Envtl. L. Reporter 10887 (2023)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
On August 29, 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a direct final rule that revised the "waters of the United States" (WOTUS) definition rule. This rule amended the final WOTUS rule, previously published in January 2023, to be consistent with the Supreme Court's May decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency. On September 14, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a panel of experts to analyze the new rule and discuss its regulatory and policy consequences. Below, we present a transcript of that discussion, which has been edited for style, clarity, and space considerations.
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Robert M. Hughes et al., Waters of the United States: An Urgent Call for Action by Fisheries and Aquatic Science Professionals, 48 Fisheries Magazine 465 (2023)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
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Royal C. Gardner et al., The Initial Response of Biodiversity Conventions to the COVID-19 Pandemic, 48 William and Mary Envtl. L. and Policy Review 1 (2023)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the operations of global biodiversity conventions, requiring virtual meetings in place of in-person events. Yet the pandemic also highlighted the importance of biodiversity conservation as a mechanism to reduce the risk of zoonotic diseases, as the October 2020 report issued by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services ("IPBES") emphasized. Now that in-person, international meetings have resumed, this Article examines the extent to which four biodiversity conventions-the Agreement on the Conservation of African-Eurasian Migratory Waterbirds, the Ramsar Convention, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, and the Convention on Biological Diversity-considered the nexus between biodiversity conservation and human health in the context of zoonotic disease. While the biodiversity conventions have taken several steps, individually, to emphasize the importance of biodiversity conservation to human health, this cross-cutting issue could be used for
greater coordination among the conventions.
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Royal C. Gardner et al., Ramsar Convention Governance and Processes at the International Level, in Ramsar Wetlands: Values, Assessment, and Management (Peter A. Gell et al. eds., Elsevier, 2023)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
Various players participate in the governance of the Ramsar Convention. The Conference of the Parties (COP), which typically meets every 3 years, consists of the Convention’s Contracting Parties and holds ultimate decision-making authority. At each COP, Resolutions are adopted, providing instruction and guidance regarding the Convention’s implementation. Between COPs, the Standing Committee, consisting of Contracting Parties based on regional representation, exercises decision-making authority. The Convention’s Secretariat, which is located in Switzerland, provides administrative support, while the Scientific and Technical Review Panel is the Convention’s scientific advisory body. The Convention is further supported by International Organisation Partners, which are intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations. Ramsar operates largely through consensus and collaboration. Much of the Convention’s first 50 years focused on building institutional structures and developing technical guidance. Yet, as the Global Wetland Outlook indicates, the Contracting Parties have thus far failed to halt wetland loss and degradation.
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Royal C. Gardner et al., Ramsar at the National Level: Application and Incorporation into Domestic Law, in (Peter A. Gell et al. eds., Elsevier, 2023)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.
A Contracting Party to the Ramsar Convention assumes certain obligations under international law: designation and conservation of wetlands of international importance (Ramsar Sites), wise use of all wetlands within its territory, and international cooperation regarding shared wetland resources, including species. Although it is a framework convention that lacks a formal enforcement mechanism, the Ramsar Convention influences domestic legal regimes in a number of ways. Its impact on domestic laws, policies, and practices for wetlands depends in part on whether a particular Party subscribes to a monist, dualist, or mixed approach to international law. In a monist system, Ramsar obligations, including those flowing from Resolutions agreed upon at the regular Conference of Parties, may apply directly within a domestic legal regime. Under a dualist approach, Ramsar obligations may require specific implementing legislation before they are effective within the domestic sphere.
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S. Mazeika Patricio Sullivan and Royal C. Gardner, US Supreme Court Opinion Harms Watersheds, 381 Science 385 (2023)Clicking on the button will copy the full recommended citation.