We're a different type of journal.
Welcome to Justice, Ecology, Law & Place (JELP)!
Justice, Ecology, Law & Place is the renewed publication venue for a community of scholars and practitioners that once published in the Journal of Environmental Law & Practice. It is a sort-of “JELP 2.0”; that is, a place to find scholarly work at the intersections of Justice, Ecology, Law & Place. Thus, while the name change is intended to signal a rejection of the colonial constraints of “environmental law,” as it has been conventionally conceived and to set us off on a new course, maintaining the acronym is our way of signalling that we wish to maintain — and expand — our community.
Instead of continuing to uphold the conventions and assumptions of environmental law as it has been known, we are now interested in exploring, as a community, questions of justice and equality as they emerge out of the urgent and confounding crises that confront us: the climate emergency, ecological collapse, Indigenous resurgence, and racial justice.
We must grapple with the seeming inability of law to remedy or even mitigate climate change, environmental harm, biodiversity loss, and the continuing dispossession of Indigenous Peoples. We welcome contributions from those that are seeking to fundamentally transform existing legal systems and generate new alternative legal principles, practices, and concepts in pursuit of more just futures.
Latest posts
From “Private” Managed Forest Lands to Sts’lunuts’amat Forest Relations: Indigenous Jurisdiction, Ecological Integrity, and Fee Simple Title on Vancouver Island
Sarah Morales,* Estair Van Wagner,** and Michael Ekers*** In 2003, British Columbia introduced the Private Managed Forest Land Act (PMFLA) — a new regulatory framework for forest lands held in fee simple title. The legislation deregulated forestry operations for companies that own and manage (harvest and reforest) private forest lands. An intensive harvesting regime was introduced through removing limits to the annual allowable cut, streamlining planning processes, and greatly reducing oversight and enforcement of forest practices. The Act failed to recognize and protect cultural values on private land, and no language was included to uphold constitutionally protected Indigenous title and rights. The PMFLA has been critiqued in policy circles, and a small number of academic articles have touched upon the legislation, yet at this time, we lack a sustained evaluation of the legislation and its implications for forest management, Indigenous jurisdiction, rights and title, and the settler public. This article seeks to provide a detailed analysis of the regime and show how significant regulatory gaps in the PMFLA and outstanding questions of access, consultation, jurisdiction, and title continue to profoundly impact the territories, economies, and social and cultural rights of Indigenous Nations with private forest lands within their territories. Finally,
A Saltwater People: Water, Jurisdiction, and Dispossession: Protecting the Salish Sea
Robert YELḰATŦE Clifford* This paper explores the dispossession of the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples from their home waters, the Salish Sea. It posits dispossession as not only removal but also as the enforcement of a set of regimes that damage Indigenous jurisdiction and remove Indigenous Peoples from participation in land and water governance. To address this issue, the paper explores the definition of jurisdiction and examines different approaches to land and water management, including National Marine Conservation Area Reserves regimes, the Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas concept, and the application of legal personhood to water bodies. I investigate these approaches in order to determine whether they can support the revitalization of W̱SÁNEĆ law and the reclamation of W̱SÁNEĆ jurisdiction in the Salish Sea. In analyzing these different approaches, it becomes clear that each offers its own unique advantages and disadvantages, and that if the Salish Sea is to be protected, a layering of different initiatives and mechanisms, as is informed by W̱SÁNEĆ laws and jurisdiction, may be appropriate in the interim. 1. Introduction As a Saltwater People,[1] the W̱SÁNEĆ peoples have a vital relationship with the ocean and the beings who call it home. Regarding the dispossession of land, we might demand #LandBack or make the
Ecological Vulnerability and Socioecological Justice: A Vulnerability Approach to Ecological Law in Canada
Erin Dobbelsteyn* Ecological approaches to law and governance have emerged over the past few decades in response to the failure of contemporary environmental law to prevent and respond to the global socioecological crisis. Among its main objectives, ecological law aims to restrain economic activity within Earth’s ecological limits, restore and preserve the health and integrity of ecosystems, and create an ecologically just society. Given the infancy of a transition from environmental to ecological law within Canada and around the globe, debates persist regarding ecological law’s key principles, concepts, and features. This article contributes to this conversation by highlighting relevant and important links between ecological law and vulnerability theory, a critical theoretical approach established by Martha Albertson Fineman that recognizes vulnerability as a universal, inescapable, constant, and yet particular aspect of the human condition and that calls for greater societal and government responsiveness to this experience. I argue that vulnerability, when extended to the more-than-human world, is a powerful tool that assists in transcending the ecocentrism/anthropocentrism binary and encourages a focus on responsibilities that are responsive to the interdependence and differentiated vulnerabilities of humans and other species, ecosystems, and life processes on Earth in service of socioecological justice. The article also
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