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n-1-1-020.55.1a
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N-1-1-020.55.1 Internet and Environmental Law
by John E. Bonine*, <jbonine@oregon.uoregon.edu>
John Muir, nineteenth century naturalist, once wrote that when you
take hold of anything in this world, you find that it is hitched to
everything else.
A growing number of young environmental lawyers and public interest
scientists around the world are putting this principle of ecology to
use in the Information Age. They are using electronic mail and
computer conferencing to obtain information transnationally that
before now has been largely unobtainable in their own countries. With
this information and advice, they are rewriting the book on
environmental law in the developing world.
Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (E-LAW), formed by public
interest lawyers from Peru, Ecuador, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia,
the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and the U.S., recently began operation.
Members of E-LAW are committed to helping get good science and legal
information into the hands of lawyers (often volunteers) who are
representing citizen groups at the grassroots level. Their goal is
that government policies will be made with the full participation of
those affected by pollution and environmental harm, and that
environmental laws will be properly enforced.
After receiving a grant in late 1990 to get the Alliance off the
ground, the E-LAW members decided that rapid, cheap communications
through e-mail had to be at the heart of their work. For their
initial e-mail and conferencing host, they selected Pegasus in
Australia and Econet/Peacenet in the U.S. (a project of the nonprofit
Institute for Global Communications (IGC) and member of the
Association for Progressive Communications (APC)). Within a few
months they had E-LAW offices in Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia,
and the U.S. online through national packet-switching networks.
Other countries have proved to be much more difficult. The greatest
quantitative difference in environmental protection through
information exchange can be obtained in those countries that have the
least access to computer networks. When the barriers of cost and
technology are high, successfully leaping those barriers with
environmental law and science information can be like a drink of water
to a parched person. Consequently, E-LAW participants found that to
link together they would have to use whatever computer links were
available, and ask for help where none exists.
In Ecuador E-LAW has been working to get connected through Ecuanex, an
academic and nonprofit uucp network partially funded by the United
Nations Development Programme. In Peru the public interest lawyers
are waiting for the final steps in setting up PeruNet to be completed.
E-LAW's public environmental law discussion conference is now carried
through Internet/Bitnet/Fido links to three dozen bulletin boards in
Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on ComLink, and is now being started
on Worknet in South Africa and Mango in Zimbabwe.
The conventional wisdom said that Sri Lanka is impossible. But
monitoring of a mailing list devoted to technical discussions of
low-cost e-mail revealed that a new academic and research UUCP network
is being established in Sri Lanka (LankaNet). E-LAW moved quickly to
get hooked up and professors at the University of Moratuwa cooperated.
In the Philippines, the E-LAW offices has experimented with FidoNet as
a possibly cheaper alternative to direct calls to Econet.
Meanwhile, international networking expert Randy Bush of Portland,
Oregon, has been advising the non-technical E-LAW users in Eugene
about adopting a more distributed approach through the Internet,
Bitnet, and UUCP, particularly where the APC systems do not reach.
Working with Econet, he has designed a linked mailing list that will
allow E-LAW's discussion conferences on Econet to be networked through
the Internet to quite remote sites, despite the e-mail-only
connection.
Does all this make any difference? Owls in Australia and Amazonian
Indians in Ecuador would be likely to say yes. An urgent request was
flashed to E-LAW U.S. in August for information that would help an
Australian barrister protect the Sooty Owl and 24 other sensitive
species in a State Forest. In response, a U.S. scientist who had
worked extensively on both the Northern Spotted Owl of the Northwest
U.S. and the Sooty Owl in Australia produced decisive evidence. A
court granted an injunction against the logging in late September.
The court's ruling that the government was violating a variety of
environmental laws has been called one of the most significant in
Australian environmental history.
Ecuadorian public interest lawyers have been fighting to prevent oil
drilling in a National Park in the Amazon considered to be the most
biologically diverse on the planet. They uncovered information on
improper interferences in the Ecuadorian judicial system by certain
foreign oil companies, drew up a complaint to the U.S. government, and
publicized the complaint worldwide on computer networks. Combined
with other activities by rainforest protection groups, it appears that
these efforts had something to do with the announcement in October by
the major North American oil company seeking drilling permission that
it would not pursue the project.
Other public interest lawyers are seeking information on the safety of
planned nuclear plants in Asia, on health effects of a plastics
production process in Sri Lanka, and on threats to still other
National Parks in South America and Central America. The thirst will
not soon be sated. Once the information stream starts trickling
through the Internet, Bitnet, UUCP, FidoNet, and APC systems into a
region, numerous nonprofit groups and their public interest attorneys
quickly line up to drink from it.
In the end, environmental policy decisions will be made by the
governments, courts, and peoples of each country. But until now there
has been an imbalance in information and persuasion. Those who build
or operate industrial or development projects have had worldwide
resources to press their points of view. They could even (as in the
case of toxic dumping in the Third World) roam the world searching for
countries where information about possible dangers is the most absent.
Now, those who question the safety or environmental impacts of unwise
projects are catching up, and the nonprofit computer networks like the
Internet are providing the essential basis for changing the balance.
* Professor of Law, University of Oregon