Completed Projects
Shale Gas Law and Policy Project
The Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy has an ongoing project examining the rapidly-evolving law and policy issues arising out of the controversial practice of extracting natural gas from underground shale deposits through horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. A recent product of this project was a public comment letter filed by the Center in the shale gas regulatory proceeding underway in the State of New York. The Center’s letter focused on potentially significant greenhouse gas impacts not addressed in New York’s revised draft supplemental generic environmental impact statement.
Download the January 2012 Public Comment Letter.
Towards a China Environmental Performance Index
A team of researchers jointly led by Yale University and Columbia University released a report in December 2011 that introduces a framework for assessing China’s environmental management and performance. This analysis offers the first independent review of Chinese provincial-level environmental performance by international researchers.
While stopping short of producing a final index that would have ranked the 31 provinces and municipalities according to environmental performance, the report -- “Towards a China Environmental Performance Index” -- is a major first step in providing a blueprint for metrics the government can use to aid tracking progress toward policy goals. The report comes at a particularly salient time for Chinese policymakers, who are in the process of implementing local plans to implement the recently adopted 12th Five-Year Plan. The Plan is considered the greenest to date with high-level goals concerning climate change, energy, and environmental pollutants.
Download the English version of the report here.
The Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy released in May 2011 a first-of-its-kind empirical study on the relationships between trade and the environment. The report—called “Exploring Trade and the Environment: An Empirical Examination of Trade Openness and National Environmental Performance”—finds evidence that trade openness can have both positive and negative associations with environmental quality.
Download the Executive Summary, the Full Report, and the Data (Beta Version).
2nd Yale/UNITAR Global Conference on Environmental Governance and Democracy
Yale University hosted the 2nd Global Conference on Environmental Governance and Democracy in New Haven, CT, in the margins of the United Nations Millennium Development Goal Summit held in New York City September 2010. Focusing on the theme of Strengthening Institutions to Address Climate Change and Advance a Green Economy, the event examined the role of institutional structures and decisionmaking procedures in fostering (or impeding) low carbon and climate resilient development. Papers and discussion panels addressed various levels of governance -- global, transnational, national, sub-national, and local -- as well as specialized governance topics, including governance of climate change science, financing and forestry.
Clean Energy Innovation: Overcoming Barriers to a New Energy System
The new Yale Climate and Energy Institute, under the direction of IPCC Chairman Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri, hosted the first annual conference of the Yale Climate and Energy Institute in April 2010. The conference convened leaders in science, policy, business, and international affairs to discuss the barriers that prevent clean energy from achieving full-scale deployment as well as solutions for overcoming those barriers.
Read the full conference report here.
2008 Conference on Environmental Governance and Democracy, 10-11 May 2008
The Conference on Environmental Governance and Democracy took place at Yale University, New Haven, USA, from May 10-11, 2008, in the margins of the 16th Session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. The event brought together academic experts and practitioners from governments, inter-governmental organizations, civil society and the private sector. Participants took stock of contemporary research and knowledge gaps at the intersection of institutions, public participation and environmental sustainability. The objective of the Conference was to develop a research program and network to strengthen institutional approaches for effective and context-sensitive public participation in environmental governance. Discussions covered various levels of environmental governance, including international, national, regional, local, and corporate governance. About 160 participants with diverse backgrounds and affiliations participated in the invite-only event.
About the Forum: The Forum brought together the past, present, and future architects of the environmental governance system. This four-day conference took place in Switzerland in the summer of 2009. We gathered together those men and women that laid the foundation of our current architecture in Stockholm in 1972 in an effort to learn from their collective experience and wisdom as we devise blueprints for UN reform. The theme of the Forum was "Moving Forward by Looking Back" and it looked to seize a soon-to-be lost opportunity to connect generations of environmental thinkers and learn directly from the pathbreaking individuals whose ideas and aspirations formed the system as we know it.
The goals of the Forum were to:
1) understand the original vision for the international environmental governance system and recast it for the 21st century;
2) assess the current structures' performance and the factors that defined their strengths and weaknesses; and
3) outline a forward-looking blueprint for a reconfigured environmental structure and create a momentum for change.
We plan to use the results of the Forum to create a documentary, an interactive learning platform for professionals, researchers, and students, and an environmental governance course for diplomats in New York and Geneva.
Read more..>>
After the conference..>>
Global Environment and Trade Study (GETS)
Seeks to make trade liberalization and environmental protection more mutually reinforcing. A collaboration between YCELP, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minnesota and other partners, this project endeavors to provide better analytic underpinnings for efforts to integrate trade and environmental policymaking. One element of this work, (the Sustainable Americas Project) focuses on the lessons of NAFTA and the Free Trade Area of the Americas, while other aspects address the World Trade Organization. To download the final GETS report, please click here.
Environmental Protection in the Asia Pacific
Seeks to discover how environmental protection can be achieved in the context of rapid economic growth and integration in the Asia Pacific Region.
Regulation and Competitiveness Project
Provides an umbrella for a set of research efforts related to the competitiveness effects of variations in regulatory requirements, especially environmental standards, across countries.
Public-Private Partnerships for the Urban Environment
Supports UNDP's efforts to bring the public and private sectors together to address urban environmental issues.
Next Generation of Transportation Strategies
Applies new thinking to environmental issues in the transportation sector.
Powering China
Seeks to understand the environmental implications of China's economic growth.
Empresa Informa
Encourages a constructive and specialized dialogue in Latin America over corporate sustainability reporting practices.
Information Age
Corporate Environmental Policymaking