If you haven’t heard of “ecocide”, I suspect you will in the coming years. That’s because British lawyer, Polly Higgins, has made it her life mission to have the UN recognize ecocide as a 5th Crime Against Peace (alongside genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, W
Environmental Law Alert Blog
Through our Environmental Law Alert blog, West Coast keeps you up to date on the latest developments and issues in environmental law. This includes:
- proposed changes to the law that will weaken, or strengthen, environmental protection;
- stories and situations where existing environmental laws are failing to protect the environment; and
- emerging legal strategies that could be used to protect our environment.
If you have an environmental story that we should hear about, please e-mail Andrew Gage. We welcome your comments on any of the posts to this blog – but please keep in mind our policies on comments.
The Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) met this past week (Sept 27th to October 1st), passing – and declining to pass – a wide range of resolutions, many of them touching on environmental issues.
We turn on the tap and it’s there. It rains, and then the water disappears. A stream flows along next to a residential neighbourhood, but others lie underground, captured in pipes and forgotten. All in all, most of us don’t give much thought to our urban watersheds, unless there’s a crisis.
On July 26th Salmon Arm’s City Council voted to allow SmartCentres to build a major new shopping centre outside of the City’s core on environmentally sensitive land adjacent to the Salmon River. That’s bad for the environment, a
Last winter (from December to February 15th) the BC government held public consultations on “new statutory protections to further safeguard our environment from cosmetic chemical pesticides.” The response was overwhelming.
It’s been four months since the end of provincial government consultations on the regulation of cosmetic pesticides (here's West Coast Environmental Law's
(Community Values Drive Responsible Waste and Resource Management)
Turns out that good top-soil is important not just for gardeners, but for city planners as well. Topsoil can provide valuable water conservation management services for cities.
On May 18, the BC government announced that a mobile air quality monitoring station has arrived in Peace River Country.
If you live in Richmond then, from today (April 15th) until June 30th, you may see planes flying overhead, spraying you with a pesticide, known as Foray 48B, to attack Gypsy Moths that might be hiding in your backyard. Foray 48B contains a naturally occurring b