Symposium on Climate Change, Water, and Adaptive Law

Title: Symposium on Climate Change, Water, and Adaptive Law
Location: Czech Center Museum, 4920 San Jacinto, Houston, Texas 77004
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Description: The University of Houston Law Center and the Environmental & Energy Law & Policy Journal are pleased to announce a Symposium on Climate Change, Water, and Adaptive Law to be held on Friday, February 26, 2010, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Czech Center Museum, 4920 San Jacinto, Houston, Texas 77004. Leading experts from diverse universities, disciplines, professional backgrounds, and policy making roles will address how law and the legal system need to adapt to address the impacts of climate change on water resources and regimes, and the extent to which it can.

For more information or to register, please visit http://www.law.uh.edu/eelpj/symposium.html, or contact Chief Symposium Editor/Director – Lisa Baiocchi-Mooney, lcbaiocc@central.uh.edu. The Symposium will offer 8 hours of CLE credit for the State of Texas.

Water use and climate change share a complex, dynamic, multiscalar interdependence. Water use contributes to climate change in the energy used to transfer water substantial distances, the destruction of carbon-sequestering vegetation and erosion of soils (and the subsequent release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere) from too much or too little water, and the facilitation of sprawling (and arguably unsustainable) development, among other relationships. Hydropower has been suggested as an alternative energy source that reduces emission of greenhouse gases, but poses a variety of other ecological and social concerns. Perhaps most importantly, climate change will affect water supplies and watersheds, contributing to water scarcity, rising sea levels, saltwater intrusion into groundwater, more severe storm-event cycles that alter watershed hydrology, and changes to riparian vegetation and stream structures that similarly alter watershed functioning and composition. This symposium will address the capacity of water law to adapt to the changing, uncertain, and potentially extreme demands and stresses that climate change — and our responses to climate change — will put on water resources.

Speakers include:
Luncheon Keynote Speech: The Hon. Eliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso), Texas
State Senate

Panel on State and Local Adaptation to Climate Change’s Impacts on Water:
1. Robin Kundis Craig, Attorneys’ Title Professor and Associate Dean for Environmental Programs, Florida State University College of Law (Opening Presentation of the Symposium)
2. Noah Hall, Assistant Professor of Law, Wayne State University Law School; Visiting Professor, University of Michigan Law School; Executive Director, Great Lakes Environmental Law Center
3. Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold, Boehl Chair in Property & Land Use, Professor of Law, Affiliated Professor of Urban Planning, Chair of the Center for Land Use & Environmental Responsibility, University of Louisville; Symposium Visiting Professor, University of Houston Law Center
4. Kathleen Miller, Scientist III, Institute for the Study of Society and the Environment, National Center for Atmospheric Research
5. Daniella Landers, Shareholder, The Sutherland Law Firm, Houston, TX

Panel on Energy, Climate Change, and Water: The Complex Intersection
1. A. Dan Tarlock, Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Program in Environmental and Energy Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology
2. Lea-Rachel Kosnik, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Missouri-St. Louis; Dispute Resolution Panel Member for Federal Hydropower Dam Relicenses, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
3. Amy Hardberger, Attorney, Environmental Defense Fund, Austin, TX
4. Elizabeth Burleson, Assistant Professor of Law, University of South Dakota School of Law; Consultant, United Nations
5. Scott Deatherage, Partner, Environmental Law Section, & Practice Group Leader, Climate Change & Renewable Energy Practice Group, Thomspon & Knight, LLP, Dallas, TX
Start Time: 8:00 am
Date: 2010-02-26
End Time: 17:00 pm