Environmental Geography and Law: Toward a Synthesis

This Article introduces the new interdisciplinary field of Environmental Geography and Law, which has deep roots in ecology, social science, and law. Environmental and natural resources laws are situated in specific times and places where the climate, ecosystems, history and political economy influence both the land and the law. These places drive and constrain the way law develops. In turn, the law shapes places, from the dispossession and forced migration of indigenous groups, to land development via railroad land grants, to patterns of resource extraction and infrastructure development. Past efforts to integrate law and geography have focused more on critical theory approaches and less on interactions between the human and physical environment, but Environmental Geography and Law takes a more grounded and prescriptive approach. Through three case studies on climate migration, energy grid transformation, and water equity and environmental issues in California's Central Valley, we demonstrate the promise of the field to interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching. These three case studies share a mindfulness of vulnerability, fairness, and distribution of resources, and together illustrate that coordinated attention to environment, place, and law exposes old problems in a different light, illuminating potential new solutions.