public participation

Guest Blogger Ralph Faust: Improving Public Participation at the California Coastal Commission 

The California Coastal Commission is a state agency whose mission is to preserve and manage the state’s coast. Its decisions regarding planning and development implement core state policies and determine individual legal rights. Both the perception and the reality of a fair, just, and accessible process is crucial to maintaining public confidence in the Commission’s decision-making.  In February …

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China’s Pollution Challenge

Can a new law save China’s environment?

Benjamin van Rooij and I published the following in the New York Times op-ed page today.  In short, it is about the challenges the new Environmental Protection Law will face in practice and the critical reforms needed to overcome these challenges: China’s national legislature has adopted sweeping changes to the country’s Environmental Protection Law, revisions …

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Can “Social Risk Assessment” protect China’s environment?

I’ve just returned from a month in Qingdao, China, so this story in the New York Times caught my eye. China’s new leadership has announced that it will require a social risk assessment before any major industrial project can be begun. The idea is to forestall the increasingly violent environmental protests that have caused the …

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