Research Reports

While nations and multinational corporations profit from mining operations around the world, local communities face the resulting negative impacts. Mining communities have begun to exercise their right to prior informed consent to mining operations, despite skepticism in the international community and business world. However, in December 2003, the World Bank's Extractive Industries Review endorsed prior informed consent for its projects and private projects.

This new report shows that federal judges’ political affiliation may be a decisive factor in determining the outcome of cases brought under the nation’s premier environmental law. The study of recent litigation under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which governs a wide variety of federal agency actions that affect pollution control, natural resources, and public lands, reveals a wide division between appointees of Democratic and Republican presidents in rulings in these cases.

This handbook describes some of the many tools and approaches that Africans can use to promote public health, defend the natural and human environment, and protect human rights.

Invasive Species Control: a Comprehensive Model State Law provides the statutory framework for a comprehensive state program to detect, control, and manage the threat of invasive species across all taxa. The structure of the model law is based generally on the 17 state tools for managing invasive species identified in ELI

This report on mitigation performance standards attempts to capture the status of the peer-reviewed literature on selected biological indicators, abiotic factors, functional assessments, and developmental trajectories to help evaluate the success of compensatory mitigation within a constrained regulatory time frame. Ultimately, this report may provide the background research to help the federal agencies in their development of performance standards and monitoring guidance by 2005.