My current research focuses on the evolution of institutional frameworks in environmental and natural resources law.

I am working on a chapter for a book to be published by Carolina Academic Press on legal developments in efforts to address global climate change. In this piece, I deal with local and regional efforts in the Northeast to take the initiative on global warming and to tackle the federal government's inaction in controlling greenhouse gases.

In other research I've been pursuing my interests in the creation of institutional mechanisms for ecosystem management, and, in particular, the protection of biodiversity in aquatic ecosystems. Right now, I am looking at the role that environmental accounting systems play in coordinating human economic development with ecosystem dynamics. In the human economy, property and contract systems define allocations of resources, track financial arrangements, and memorialize exchanges in coordinating economic activities. Formal recordkeeping provides the memory banks that allow complex and large-scale management of human interactions. Ecological information systems that identify organisms, both human and nonhuman, in ecological patterns, and that track resource transformations and transfers over time, can serve an analogous institutional role, akin to a property rights system, in coordinating socioecological interactions.

On a practical level, I have been supporting efforts to obtain modernization and wise implementation water rights laws in Massachusetts and other New England states. As experiences in other Eastern states have shown recently, urban land use decisions and water diversions often occur without adequate attention to protecting aquatic ecosystems, leaving water-rich areas suffering from drought conditions. I have been engaged in various efforts by the Charles River Watershed Association and other nongovernmental organizations to restore adequate instream flows in depleted riverways such as the Ipswich River, and to update the state's laws, regulations, and policies on water management.

I worked on a lot of interesting cases as a government attorney before I started teaching in 1990. Picking one of them is a hard choice. Perhaps the most fun I had was collaborating with attorneys from other states and nonprofit organizations in suing federal government agencies during the 1980s for not doing their jobs under environmental laws. For example, before Congress finally enacted new legislation to deal with acid rain, Massachusetts pursued a series of suits, together with New York and other Northeastern states, against the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to implement the basic pollution control requirements of the Clean Air Act. We even had one case about pollution that crosses international boundaries, brought with fellow attorneys in Canada, Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Ontario v. EPA. Although we lost that particular case (in an opinion by then-Judge Scalia of the DC Circuit), the cases as a group laid important groundwork for later federal and regional successes in controlling smog and reducing other kinds of interstate pollution. These cases also helped to develop the expertise and build the coalitions that would support Massachusetts' recent winning arguments in the US Supreme Court in Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. EPA, a suit that called on EPA to do its job under the Clean Air Act in regulating the greenhouse gases that cause global climate change.

Not all of the cases that I was involved in were environmental cases. In the category of "most educational," I would include a class action housing desegregation suit against the City of Memphis, in which I represented a brand-new state housing development agency. My client was added as a party just to help finance a remedy, and I didn't have to do a lot of work in the litigation. But I did get to spend many months in US District Court in Memphis, listening to witnesses with long memories of life in Memphis in the 1950s and 1960s - and I got to spend some interesting evenings in the local jazz clubs, too.

"Ecosystem Resilience and Institutional Change: The Evolving Role of Public Water Suppliers," in Vladimir Novotny and Paul Brown, eds., Cities of the Future: Towards Integrated Sustainable Water and Landscape Management (2007).

"Special Challenges of Transboundary Coordination in Restoring Freshwater Ecosystems," 19 PAC. McGeorge Global Bus. & Dev. L.J. 13 (2006).

"State Survey: Massachusetts," in 6 Waters and Water Rights (Robert E. Beck ed., 1991 ed., 2005 repl. vol.) (2005, Supp. 2006, 2007) (treatise chapter on state water and wetlands law in Massachusetts).

"Can Fish Own Water?: Envisioning Nonhuman Property in Ecosystems," 20 J. Land Use & Envtl L. 293 (2005).

One of my favorite people, Rishi Reddi—a Northeastern grad and erstwhile environmental attorney, now turned fiction writer—recently published her first book. In Karma and Other Stories, I enjoyed both her insightful observations of human interactions and her sensitive attention to environmental details. Two other books that I especially enjoyed reading this year: Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City, and Amitav Ghosh's The Glass Palace, which both explore cultural change and conflict, played out against the backdrop of dramatically changing landscapes that reflect the shifts in societal organization and economic power.

Fortunately, since I have just moved from an old house into an even older one, I like fixing things in my spare time, recycling old spare parts and restoring things that have started to wobble, squeak and fall apart (as long as the problems aren't too serious). Some members of my family have talents in music and dance, and that means that I go to quite a few classical music and modern dance performances. I enjoy all kinds of activities out of doors, especially canoeing, bicycling and hiking.

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