Indiana Int’l & Comp. Law Review
Volume 32 Number 2 2022

SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT

INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE ENVIRONMENT:
SUSTAINABILITY, JUSTICE, AND CLIMATE

CHANGE AROUND THE WORLD

MARCH 4, 2022

WELCOME & INTRODUCTION

DEAN KAREN E. BRAVO*

BRITTANY DOYLE**

MARLEE JACOCKS***

Dean Karen E. Bravo:

Good morning and welcome to the annual Indiana International and
Comparative Law Review Symposium. We are pleased to see so many of you
virtually here with us. We hoped this year we would be able to meet in person,
but with ongoing COVID-19 concerns, we decided a virtual forum would be the
best option for this year. Thank you for joining remotely, and we hope to see you
in person next year. This year’s Symposium is focused on issues of climate
change, sustainability, and the environmental justice challenges that confront
corporations and communities as well as individuals here in Indiana and all across
the globe. We have an exciting lineup of panelists and environmental law experts
from all over the world representing public and private sector actors. Be sure to
stay tuned in for the keynote address at noon today presented by Dr. Carlton
Waterhouse, Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Land and

* Karen E. Bravo is the dean of the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of

Law. Dean Bravo is the first person of color and the second woman in the school’s history to lead

the urban-based institution. She is the 13th dean of the law school since its affiliation with IU in

1944. Dean Bravo joined the IU McKinney faculty in 2004 and has served in several leadership

roles, both within the law school and on the IUPUI campus. She became vice dean in Fall 2018.

** Brittany Doyle serves as the Executive Symposium Editor – Live. J.D. Candidate, Indiana

University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, Class of 2023; M.A. Public Relations, Indiana

University School of Arts at IUPUI, 2012; B.S. Political Science & Public Relations, University

of Southern Indiana, 2008.

*** Marlee Jacocks serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Indiana International and

Comparative Law Reivew, volume XXXII. J.D., Indiana University Robert H. McKinney Shool

of Law, Class of 2022; B.A. English, Ball State University, 2019.



192 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Management at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and very importantly,
a wonderful former colleague here at the law school and beloved professor of our
students. Thank you for attending the Symposium. I would be remiss if I did not
congratulate and thank our student editors and Symposium leaders for putting
together such a fantastic program today. A real testament to their innovation, their
determination, and ability to bring together experts from all across the world.
Please now welcome our Executive Symposium Live Editor, Brittany Doyle. 

Brittany Doyle:

Thank you, Dean Bravo. Today’s Symposium consists of three parts. First,
we will have a presentation on climate change. Our second panel will focus on
environmental sustainability, and at twelve o’clock we will have a keynote
address from Dr. Carlton Waterhouse. We allotted ten minutes for audience Q&A
at the end of each panel. You are welcome to enter your questions in the chat at
the bottom of your screen during the presentations, and your questions and
submissions are private. Only the presenters and Symposium staff can see your
submissions. Please welcome Marlee Jacocks, Editor-in-Chief of the Indiana
International and Comparative Law Review to explain the CLE.

Marlee Jacocks:

Thank you, Brittany, and good morning everyone. I am Marlee Jacocks, and
I have the privilege of serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the Indiana International
and Comparative Law Review. I want to take a moment to express my gratitude
for and recognize the hard work of the Symposium leaders, including Brittany
and her counterpart, Analiese Smith, and team members Virginia Speck and
Lizzie Ford. 

Turning to the CLE credit and information for today’s event. Please note we
must be able to monitor your participation throughout the duration of today’s
lecture in order for you to receive CLE credit. Please make sure you are not
joining over the phone by calling in and instead tune in via your computer or the
Zoom app on your phone. To monitor the engagement, there will be three polls
administered throughout each one-hour presentation. The polls will not be
announced, and you are not graded on your answer, but on whether you respond.
Each poll will stay up for a total of two minutes. Do not miss your chance to
answer. At the bottom of the screen, you should see the Q&A feature you can use
to pose questions to the speakers. At the end of the lecture, our speakers will
reserve ten minutes to answer the questions. If you have CLE-related inquiries,
contact Barbara Bleeker, and her contact information is on the screen. Thank you.



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PANEL I: CLIMATE CHANGE

MODERATOR: MR. STEVE WOLFSON

PANELISTS: 
PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER ROSSI

PROFESSOR DAVID COX

PROFESSOR YANMEI LIN

MR. JESSE KHARBANDA

MR. H. MAX KELLN

Ms. Doyle:

Thank you, Marlee. Let’s get into the introduction of our Climate Change
panelists. First up is Christopher Rossi, an associate professor at UiT, the Arctic
University of Norway. He is the author of five books on international law and has
written numerous law review articles. Professor Rossi served in the Clinton White
House National Security Council as Director of Human Rights, Democracy, and
Humanitarian Affairs. He has a Ph.D. in international relations from Johns
Hopkins, an LL.M. in public international law from the University of Iowa, a J.D.
from the University of Iowa, and a B.A. from Washington University. Welcome
Professor Rossi.

Our next panelist is David Cox, an environmental law attorney. Mr. Cox’s
expertise centers on international, environmental, and energy issues. He is
licensed to practice before the United States Supreme Court and the United States
Court of International Trade. Mr. Cox has taught at numerous universities,
including Indiana University, and he was appointed to Justice Sandra Day
O’Connor’s Eastern European Initiative to advise former Soviet bloc countries
on environmental issues after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He has also advised
numerous federal agencies on environmental issues, including the E.P.A.,
Department of Defense, and the Army Corps of Engineers. Welcome Professor
Cox.

Our third panelist is Professor Yanmei Lin, senior research professor &
associate director of the US-Asia Partnerships for Environmental Law at Vermont
Law School. Her research, which she will share with us today, focuses on China’s
development of environmental governance. Professor Lin helped design and
implement environmental law training programs for Chinese judges and
attorneys. She is the author of over thirty academic articles both in Chinese and
English. Professor Lin was named the 2022 Richard Brooks Distinguished
Faculty Scholar, an award given for significant contributions to the scholarly
mission of the Vermont Law School. She has been called the “unsung publishing
hero.” Previously, Professor Lin worked with the American Bar Association Rule
of Law Initiative’s China Program and a researcher for the China institute of



194 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Environment and Resources Protection in Minority Areas. She has a Ph.D. in
Environmental and Resources Law from China University. Welcome, Professor
Lin.

Our next panelist is Jesse Kharbanda, the Executive Director of the Hoosier
Environmental Council, Indiana’s largest environmental policy organization. Mr.
Kharbanda focuses the H.E.C.’s initiatives around environmental health and
justice, land and water protection, and climate solutions. Mr. Kharbanda also has
a strong focus to expand the tent of people who care about the environment. He
was named to the prestigious “40 Under 40” by the Indianapolis Business Journal
and holds graduate degrees from Oxford University. Thank you for being here,
Mr. Kharbanda.

Our final panelist is Max Kelln, partner at Faegre Drinker Biddle and Reache.
Mr. Kelln is fully devoted to the practice of environmental law and keeping up
with trends and developments. Mr. Kelln specializes in helping municipalities and
businesses come up with unique and practical solutions to be in compliance with
state and federal environmental laws. Mr. Kelln previously worked for the state
of Indiana and as the Environmental Health & Safety counsel at an international
pharmaceutical company in New York. Welcome, Mr. Kelln.

And our moderator for this Climate Change panel is Mr. Steve Wolfson. Mr.
Wolfson is a senior attorney with the International Environmental Law Practice
Group of the E.P.A. and an expert of international and comparative
environmental law. Mr. Wolfson is particularly interested in the intersection of
environmental rule of law and vulnerable populations, as the poor are often the
most vulnerable. His position affords him the opportunity to work with numerous
government agencies including the State Department. Mr. Wolfson, I am turning
the floor over to you to begin the panel. Thank you.

Steve Wolfson:

Thank you so much, Brittany, and welcome everybody. We have a terrific
and diverse panel today, including leading scholars and public and private sector
experts. I know each panelist has a lot to share with us. Just a reminder to the
panelists that we want to have some time for each panelist to speak and have
some discussion at the end so let’s keep us on track timewise. Now let’s begin
with the panel presentations and Professor Christopher Rossi you are up first. 

Professor Christopher Rossi:

Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Let’s start with problem number
one. Egypt has run out of water. Egypt has one hundred and two million people.
Egypt is fed and hydrated by the Nile River which has two branches. There is the
White Nile which forms from the Central Africa catchment area of Lake Victoria,
and there is the Blue Nile which forms from the highlands of Ethiopia. For our
purposes, it is the Blue Nile that is important here because the Blue Nile forms



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eighty-seven percent of the water column from the Nile River and flows north
through Sudan and Egypt to the Mediterranean. Ethiopia is the water tower for
the Nile and actually for all of the Horn of Africa. If you look at a map of Egypt,
you will see that Egyptians live on just 3.5 percent of their land. Egypt is the
driest country in the world, and Egypt surpasses the deficit threshold for countries
experiencing severe water scarcity. That means only through conservation, only
through recycling, and only through food subsidies is Egypt currently able to
cover its Nile water deficit. 

Problem number two is British colonial rule and an antiquated treaty system.
As you remember, Britain controlled Egypt and Sudan from 1882 to 1922, and
British rule formally ended in 1956. There was something called the Anglo-
Egyptian Condominium Agreement which jointly ruled Sudan, but in fact, the
British and the Egyptian flag were really controlled by the British, and the
Khedive of Egypt only nominally participated in the Condominium Agreement.
Britain had strategic objectives to find a pathway from Central Africa to the
Mediterranean and Suez Canal region, and it found that pathway through the
highway of the Nile River. In doing so, the British also accommodated strategic
interests relating to its world domination of the textile trade, thanks to water
coming from the Nile to hydrate Egyptian cotton. These were the objectives of
a treaty system that began in the 19th century and continued through the 20th
century that established hydro-hegemony in the name of Egypt for the benefit of
an imperial European power. We have the 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Exchange of
Notes which granted Egypt, read British imperial interests, control of twelve
times the amount of water that was allotted to Sudan as it was called, and it also
granted Egypt veto power over the construction of projects on the Nile. There is
a 1959 Nile Water Agreement that increased Egypt’s share of Nile water to fifty-
five billion cubic meters as opposed to Sudan’s interest which was eighteen
billion cubic meters of fresh water. The problem was the Sudanese never had an
ability to use all of their original share. So Egypt got accustomed to using far
more water than was allowed, though today, it won’t even say how much. This
intake agreement between two downstream signatories ignored calls for upstream
riparians from the White Nile and from Ethiopia, meaning the Blue Nile, to
participate in negotiations. For those who remember your Roman Law, there is
a principle of pacta tertiis which makes inapplicable treaties as opposed to third
parties. Egypt also secured through British-controlled water interests relating to
the flow of the White Nile. Interestingly, and importantly for our purposes, there
is no Blue Nile, which is eastern Nile basin-wide agreement, to utilize and
manage the water that exists and flows from Ethiopia through Sudan to Egypt.
History shows international law was used in this purpose to virtually forfeit the
water rights of upper riparians, and you have some projects involving Italy’s
attempted takeover of Ethiopia which resulted in an agreement in 1902 whereby
Ethiopia promised not to obstruct the flow of the Blue Nile. This 1902 agreement
has been used by Egypt to suggest that the water that is flowing from Ethiopia
cannot be obstructed at all. The Ethiopians say otherwise.  

We come to problem number three. Ethiopia is building a mega-dam.



196 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Ethiopia is building this dam right on the other side of the border with Sudan. It
is called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, or GERD. It is Africa’s largest
mega-dam, and it will take five to twenty years to fill this reservoir. It will
submerge an area four times the size of Cairo. It is twice as tall as the Statute of
Liberty, and it is as wide as the Brooklyn Bridge is long. It will cover seventy-
four billion cubic meters, and for Hoosiers, that means it will submerge sixty-four
million acres of land in one foot of water. 

Here is the real problem. Scientific models project that the mean and
interannual variability of annual water flow through the Nile will increase by
fifteen to fifty percent due to climate change. This dramatic increase in the Nile’s
output is the real danger facing the Nile. During periods of drought, it is feared
that Ethiopia may seek to store GERD water for power generation, and this water
would not then go to Egypt and Sudan for agricultural and municipal use. Therein
lies the rub. Egypt quietly recognizes that this dam is a fait accompli, and that its
position, Egypt’s position, as the hegemonic waterpower over the Nile, which it
has claimed a hegemonic rule since the time of the pharaohs, is in danger. What
Egypt now argues is that the dam should be filled in a slow period of time,
between twelve and twenty-one years, but the Ethiopians are not playing by the
rules set by Egypt anymore. 

So, hydro-egoism is hurting the chances of peace over an existential issue
which is access to fresh water, which as I just said, the Egyptians are in very short
supply of. We need to resort to customary national law to figure out what the
rules of engagement are in this trilateral relationship. Customary international law
holds that reasonable and equitable utilization of transboundary water resources
is the sine qua non for peaceful riparian relations. There is a water treaty. The
1977 U.N. Watercourses Convention which says this in articles five and six.
However, the equitable use principle in this treaty is not applicable because
Ethiopia and Egypt have not ratified the treaty. In fact, none of the riparian
countries surrounding the Nile have ratified this treaty. The Convention also
requires consultation with downstream States from the beginning of such mega-
projects. There was no consultation, and Ethiopia began the project during the
Arab Spring in 2011, and nobody knew about it until it was too late. The 2010
International Court of Justice Pulp Mills case also found that mega-dams are
required to take part in environmental impact analysis. Which allegedly was done,
so say the Ethiopians, but there is no proof of that. There is a considerable
complaint in the international community about the degradation to the
environment that is being caused by this mega-dam. However, if managed
properly, the GERD promises energy and water rewards for each of the riparian
neighbors of the Blue Nile. 

The solution here is to return to a principle of cooperative framework and
agreement, which does exist. There is a forestall agreement on how to manage
this resource, and it fundamentally relies on the principle, of the Roman Law
Principle of Servitude, which is to say the territory of one State serves the interest
of another. This includes dominant States which have servient obligations, such



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as upper riparians have, and it includes lower riparians. There are reciprocal
obligations under customary international law that will apply to the management
of the Nile so that we don’t end up with an example of the Harmon Doctrine
which the United States once attempted to apply against Mexico, which as the
upper riparian, meant the United States turned the spicket of the Rio Grande off,
and it ran dry the river of the Rio Grande in Mexico. This was the most notorious
example of riparian relations and servitude that you can imagine, and it was
immediately discredited. However, if we cannot resolve in a peaceful way the re-
establishment of a cooperative framework agreement between these three
riparians, we are going to run into a problem if and when the Nile River runs not
dry, but subjected to drought, and there is substantial evidence that shows that
rivers flood and rivers run dry, and there are periods of time that have been
scientifically shown to be affected by climate change which will turn into a
draught area for the Nile River. 

If we cannot fix this problem, there is going to be a very substantial chance
of war. Egypt has already promised it and the question is how we can reestablish
principles of servitude, Roman Law principles, relating to riparian relations
before a draught occurs. Benefits will accrue because mega-dams create mega-
electricity, and it also creates water pools for hydration that you can sell like
shares. This is what Ethiopia promises to do when the times are good, but
everybody is fearful, due to climate change predictions, that times will soon turn
bad. In which case the control over the GERD waters of Ethiopia will become a
potential problem. I will stop there. Thank you. 

Mr. Wolfson:

Thank you so much, Professor Rossi. That was fascinating. Our next speaker
dealing with a different geographical area is Professor David Cox. 

Professor David Cox:

Thank you. I am very pleased to be with you today. I would like to thank
Dean Bravo and Indiana University School of Law for hosting this conference,
and in particular, Analiese and Brittany for inviting me to participate. I also want
to recognize my teaching assistant, Sarah Colletti, who was invaluable in helping
prepare this presentation, and my chief of staff, Professor John Moreland is in the
audience today. I think you are in for a real treat in general with the presenters
today. I see a lot of talent and intellect and a lot of different subjects that are
going to be covered.

I am going to talk to you about Vietnam’s environmental and energy policy,
but when you see Vietnam, I want you to see potential and possibilities because
I think that they are a model for what can and is happening in many developing
countries. Many of which you may hear about today from other speakers. For the
last ten years, I have worked with Vietnamese National University, which is a
leading environmental and energy school in Vietnam, to help them develop their



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environmental and energy policy and to make recommendations to the
government. They have actually adopted Indiana University’s Environmental
Law course as the cornerstone of their environmental law curriculum. And it will
not surprise you to learn that within the academics and decision-makers involved
in that process, the ultimate answer is to shift from traditional sources of energy
to alternative sources of energy, but there are many obstacles to doing that. 

So we know Vietnam is in Southeast Asia. Population of ninety-three million.
I am not going to read all of these slides in the interest of time. It will not surprise
you to know that Vietnam has traditionally relied on coal fossil fuels and natural
gas for energy production. And of course, at one point their view of alternate
energy or alternative energy was to tap into an infrastructure that would allow
them to take advantage of energy produced through nuclear power plants and
through hydroelectric power plants, neither of which are extensively located in
Vietnam. So if Vietnam wants to move into the contemporary view of alternative
energy, and move past the use of coal, oil, and fossil fuels. And I have to mention
timber here because, traditionally, Vietnam was an area covered with dense
forests and jungles. And a lot of that has been clear cut away as Vietnam was
forced to use internal resources to try to meet its energy demands. 

Now, here are the obstacles as we look through, if you want to just generally
go through the next slides until we get to the goals for reduction of carbon
emissions, I am sure the audience can glean some background from those slides.
If Vietnam wants to move from traditional sources of energy to alternative
sources of energy, there are certain economic stumbling blocks or obstacles. You
can see from a number of these slides that consumption easily outpaces
production. And so these economic barriers to Vietnam that have existed for
years, prevent them from entering the free market and having the funds necessary
to develop alternative energy. One of these problems is infrastructure. Certainly,
they have a dilapidated power grid, and even transporting fuels and other types
of products on roads can be problematic with traffic and roads that are
dilapidated. One of the interesting things I learned when I went to Vietnam was
that their view was that the United States should come back into Vietnam and
develop an infrastructure in what formerly was north Vietnam, similar to what
they did for south Vietnam because you have this disparity between the
infrastructure that was put into place by American troops and the problems to the
north with infrastructure. So infrastructure from the power grid to traditional
infrastructure is one of the economic obstacles. 

Of course, another economic obstacle is the economy. The Vietnamese
economy is highly inflationary and really quite challenging in terms of coming
up with resources to try to invest outside of the country. Since consumption
exceeds production, they do not really have that much by way of marketable
exports, Vietnam does not have the cash or the currency or the clout to be able to
attract businesses and other governments easily to volunteer or to invest in the
Vietnamese economy. When I was there last, it took eight thousand Vietnamese
dollars to buy a packet of M&Ms and it took twelve thousand Vietnamese dollars



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 199

to buy a Coke, one hundred and thirty-eight Vietnamese dollars for a taxicab ride,
and five hundred thousand Vietnam Vietnamese dollars for a hotel room. You
could see how inflationary it is. Now at one point, it took one million Vietnamese
dollars to equal fifty dollars in U.S. currency. One of the problems here is raising
capital. Another problem is that the Vietnamese government is skeptical of
outside investment and imposes a lot of restrictions in terms of ownership or
regulation of anyone or any entity that wants to get involved in Vietnam. So a lot
of those restrictions are prohibitive and discourage companies and other countries
from getting involved in the process. You have a situation in which that is another
economic obstacle, the economy, the infrastructure, and the political situation,
although that is beginning to change somewhat. 

Still, Vietnam has established some goals in terms of reducing carbon
emissions. Their plight is not unlike what we experienced with the Eastern
European countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall or really any other developing
country at this point. After the fall of the Berlin Wall Justice O’Connor’s goal
was to have a group of professors and attorneys that could advise Eastern
European countries on environmental energy issues. Obviously, they did not have
an environmental protection in place, and they did not have a way to address
hazardous and industrial sites that were contaminated. But, these Eastern
European countries’ first priorities were to deal with public health, security, their
economy, and rebuilding their countries. And so environmental and energy issues
worked in the forefront. So I think you see the same thing with developing
countries that have large segments of an impoverished population, or that they are
trying to attend to the needs too, and so environmental and energy issues are not
always at the forefront.

I want to talk to you about a particular problem. We talked about the fact that
Vietnam has focused on trying to transition and center the environmental policy
to alternative energies but has traditionally used traditional sources. I am going
to talk about Ha Long Bay, which is in northeastern Vietnam. It is one of those
areas of the world that is known as the Eighth Wonder of the World. And as
Brittany flashes through the next several slides here, you are going to see a tale
of two cities. Ha Long Bay is a resort town. It is very popular in Europe because
of these islands you see in the background. These islands are a wonderful
environmental view to see. They are very breathtaking. But when Vietnam is
forced to turn internally and use resources that are available to it, because it
cannot afford to export or purchase resources from outside of the country, the
double-edged sword here is that these islands often contain coal reserves. The tale
of two cities is that you have this wonderful resort on one side with literally
hundreds of these islands lined up the eastern coast of Vietnam literally crossing
the bridge to the east, where they are beginning to extract coal from these islands
and use it as an internal resource, which obviously creates pollution problems.
And so the water is polluted. The beach is polluted. The air is polluted and you
literally, within half a mile, can see a total disparity between a resort town and
what seems to be an industrial town where they are extracting coal from these
islands, which has obviously the effect of destroying many of these islands.



200 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Undesirable. So one of the things that we have been looking at is trying to
develop alternatives to extracting the coal from these islands. They have already
deforested much of the country in terms of timber. They can only afford a limited
supply of fossil fuels. So coal is one of the main resources that they rely on to fuel
power plants and support their energy demands.

What has to happen for Vietnamese policy to change? Well, I have done
science for forty-two years. And one of the, I guess my take on all this has always
been, it is important to have people that paint with a broad brush on climate
change issues. And I guess very interesting with them–so many analogies
between the pandemic and climate change because climate change is another one
of those issues where the science appears to be unequivocal. Yet there was a large
segment of the population, and particularly in this country and the decision-
makers, that deny that it is a phenomenon or a situation that exists. The real issue
here is how to make these changes practical. It is important to have policy
analysts. It is important to set goals, but what has to happen for developing
countries like Vietnam, is there have to be resources available. There has to be
funding. There have to be companies and countries that are willing to invest in
Vietnam and invest in alternative energy. One of the things we are working on
right now is attempting to link Vietnam to some European countries that are
willing to invest in alternative energy and help Vietnam avoid the plight of Ha
Long Bay.

In essence, that is what I would want to leave you with today that I think
Vietnam is an area of tremendous potential, but this is not going to happen by
talking about it. It is going to happen because there’s an investment of funds.
There is an investment of people, an investment in alternative energy, and an
investment in human resources.

My last slide here is one of my classes from Vietnam. And I thought this was
fascinating. These fifty-six students that I had in an environmental law class in
Vietnam, and these students fought through pollution, poverty, and traffic, a
dilapidated school, yet their vision was how can we use this knowledge and this
information to change and help the world. I have taught in Europe. I have taught
in Canada. I have taught in the United States. I have taught in Vietnam. I have
done video conferences with other areas. And I always find students the same.
That they have some vision on making a difference and on changing the world
and doing something that will matter and help the environment. So in that sense,
I think that you will find that there are students sympathetic to this goal all over
the world. And I hope we can take advantage of that. Thank you for the
opportunity to speak today. Thank you, Steve. And I will yield to the next
speaker. 

Mr. Wolfson:

Thank you so much, Professor Cox. And I will just add that when I visited
Vietnam for the E.P.A. a few years back, I was also very, very impressed by the



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 201

energy and enthusiasm, both among the government officials there and also
among, the young students and young people involved in the NGO community,
the non-governmental organizations working on environmental issues in
Vietnam. So without further ado, we will move on to our next speaker, Professor
Yanmei Lin from Vermont Law School. Please take it away. 

Professor Yanmei Lin: 

Thanks, Steve, and thanks to the Indiana University School of Law for this
great opportunity for me to share our work in China to support civil society
groups led by environmental public interest litigation. We have been working in
China for more than a decade and our focus is really to support the civil society
efforts to participate in China’s environmental governance. Right before the
COP26 last year, China submitted its updated NDC [National Determined
Contribution] to the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change]. Although we know the schools are not completely new, but
compared to China’s first NDC, the updated NDCs are, I think are more
ambitious, which aim to have this CO2 emission peak before 2030, and achieve
carbon neutrality before 2060, and China aims to increase the share of non-fossil
fuels in primary energy consumption to around twenty-five percent.

We also know China is facing many challenges to achieve those goals. In
particular, the long-term goal of achieving zero emission before 2060. For
example, you can see here that China has the greatest number of coal fire power
stations compared to any country or territory in the world. And almost fifty
percent of the global coal electricity generation is from China, and China still
heavily relies on coal for its energies. To meet the long-term goal of civil
emissions, China has to strengthen its domestic laws and policies and use
additional efforts to further restrict new coal construction and accelerate the
retirement of existing coal capacities.

To accelerate the efforts at the international level, China and the U.S. issued
a Joint Glasgow Declaration showing their intention to cooperate on enhanced
climate actions and meet the Paris Agreement goals in the coming years. I think
during this geopolitical tension between the two countries, the Declaration is a
starting point for them to build trust and develop new ideas that can shape and
accelerate climate action, including regulatory frameworks and new legal tools
and environmental standards.

At the domestic level, although Xie Zhenhua, China’s climate envoy, said at
the press conference announcing the Glasgow Joint Decoration that in China
when we make a commitment, we will take real action and honor our
commitment. But we also have to see that there are fundamental tensions in China
between centralized session of authority, which is the central policy, like trying
to meet the zero-emissions goal, but also the tension between effective local
governance. So whether the policy can be effectively implemented at the local
level is really the question. In recent years, in order to address this fundamental



202 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

tension, the Chinese government introduced an Environmental Public Interest
Litigation [EPIL] system, which is a bottom-up approach that was first nationally
enacted in 2015, to empower civil society group to file EPIL in courts to hold
polluters and ecological destructors accountable for their environmental
violations. The EPIL cases did not only promote environmental compliance.
NGO-led cases resulted in pollution cleanup, remediations, ecological restoration,
and payment of environmental damages. 

In 2017, the EPIL system actually expanded to improve the prosecutors.
Prosecutors are the legal monitoring authority in China, and the EPIL system
enabled them to sue government agencies for their illegal actions or inaction on
enforcement. At the end of 2017, the Chinese government issued a pilot policy
to enable government agencies that are tasked to manage natural resources and
the environment to file ecological damages claims in the courts. By the end of
2020, more than four hundred NGO-led environmental public litigations were
filed with the courts. I think many of those cases do not directly address climate
mitigation, but many of them actually are related to climate mitigation. Here are
some landmark cases that you can see that show the spectrum of legal advocacy
actions NGOs took that address climate litigation. The first case is Friends of
Nature; one of China’s oldest NGOs filed a case suing the China Sinohydro
Group company. This case is very significant because they challenged the China
hydro-power and stopped the dam construction in order to protect the habitats of
China’s endangered species, green peafowls, shown here. This is a preventive
case, which means that a development project that is not sustainable and does not
protect biodiversity will be barred or will be challenged and stopped by the
courts. This case was selected as one of the ten cases that promoted the rule of
law in China in decades. 

Another case is Friends of Nature suing Hyundai Motor, and this case is
trying to hold the automobile industry accountable for emission standards updated
by the Chinese government through the updated clean air law. This case is trying
to promote a transportation transition to more clean fuel and electronic cars. More
cases are shown here that target coal fire power plants, trying to stop coal fire
power plants’ environmental violations of their standards and trying to recover
environmental damages through the coal fire power plant. The fourth type of case
are from the All-China Environmental Federation [ACEF]. They are suing a real
estate developer for using outdated materials that could not meet building codes
and promote green building and circular economy law implementation in China.
And, very common in EPIL cases, it is the NGO suing operators on illegal mining
and illegal deforestation to protect the Carbon Sink.

And there are two pending cases that directly address climate change. We call
them the core climate litigation cases in China. And in this case, Friends of
Nature are suing State Grid Gansu Branch and Ningxia Branch, and the plaintiff
contends that these branches failed to purchase the qualified electricity generated
by wind power and solar power plants and causing this waste of renewable
electricity to be replaced by coal power. The plaintiff requests that the defendants



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 203

pay for the wasted renewable energy, and electricity, and compensate for
environmental damages. Even though this case is still pending in the courts, the
national energy authority actually issued several policy documents requiring the
state corporation to update the grid and give the local government the means to
address these containment issues.

There are still many challenges for NGOs and civil society actors in China
to address climate mitigation. For example, China’s NGOs still have not been
granted a standing to hold the government accountable. China still has not
enacted a national climate change law, so there is no specific legal responsibility
for the local governments to meet their carbon emission targets. Recently, we
heard that the Supreme People’s Court is trying to issue guidelines to help the
courts to [hear] more cases that relate to climate change. One suggestion put
forward is to allow cases that challenge local governments’ policy and normative
documents that are not inconsistent with the central government’s climate goal.
Finally, one type of case to watch is China’s NGO trying to target financial
institutions. According to China’s Green Credits policy, financial institutions are
not to fund projects that are not consistent with the climate goals.

I think there is still much work to do, but one thing we can say for sure is that
there are many sectors in China, in particular the civil society groups, that are
very active in trying to meet the zero-emission goal in China. That is what I
would like to share. I will give the floor back to Steve.

Mr. Wolfson: 

Thank you so much, Professor Lin. And next, we have a local perspective
from the Hoosier Environmental Council. We have Jesse Kharbanda. Please take
it away, Mr. Kharbanda.

Jesse Kharbanda:

Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Steve, for the moderation and Brittany,
for the invitation, the McKinney School of Law for hosting this, and to all of you
who are attending. If you are not familiar with the Hoosier Environmental
Council, we seek to advance a vision of greater environmental health and justice,
of land and water protection and accelerated climate solutions. The means by
which we do this are through education, technical assistance, and public policy
advocacy.

What I would like to talk about is near-term opportunities to advance climate
solutions in Indiana. And you might say, well for an international conference like
this, why does Indiana matter? To put things in perspective, of course, when we
think about climate solutions, we are probably thinking about the national level
and the landmark infrastructure and investment in jobs act that was passed, which
will lead to significant investments in transit and rail and in our grid and in
electric vehicles. And we might also think about efforts to try to resurrect the



204 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Build Back Better bill that President Biden has been championing, but we know
that it is facing paralysis right now in Congress. And I think that is what really
gravitates us towards the states. Indiana may appear very small in the global
context, after all, we are only 0.085 percent of the global population and 0.4
percent of the global GDP. Yet, Indiana is very plugged into international
markets. We have eight hundred employers in Indiana that are of international
nature and more than two hundred thousand jobs in Indiana are attributed to these
international investors. Furthermore, Indiana plays an outsize role in America’s
economy. We are the top manufacturing state in the U.S. We are top five in
agriculture in the U.S. We have been a top coal state, of course, not something to
brag about from a climate perspective, but that is something pretty noteworthy
about our economy. We are one of the leading states in terms of the density of our
highway network. If we decarbonize and adapt in an innovative rapid way, then
I think Indiana can be a real model for an array of peer states that are of a similar
ideological nature, as you can see from this map.

What I would like to do is talk about briskly is the Indiana Statehouse, where
the Hoosier Environmental Council spends a lot of our time, and really hone in
on those particular public policies that are being debated and advanced in the
General Assembly that have to do with climate solutions. This might be a little
bit counterintuitive for people who follow the Statehouse because there is this
perception that there is a lot of denialism, but the rhetoric is changing, and the
comfort level with climate issues is changing. Even among those who might be
perceived as the greatest skeptics.

Let’s talk first about just overall emissions—climate solutions that cut
emissions. Of course, we know that the power sector has historically been the
dominant source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. That is
changing because of the retirement of a number of coal plants. And now
transportation is number two, but electricity is still a major contributor to
greenhouse gas emissions. So let’s start there. One area that the General
Assembly has debated increasingly is on rooftop solar. There were five bills in
the General Assembly that had to do with trying to make rooftop solar more
accessible and affordable for Hoosiers. You might think, well, this is the domain
of the wealthier, the upper middle class, and so forth. But the fact of the matter
is the National Renewable Energy Lab has concluded that we could get forty
percent of America’s electricity from rooftop solar. The public policy that we
establish in Indiana really matters. Now, it also matters because, as we see from
this graph, there has been a profound and exponential increase in the number of
natural disasters facing America, and rooftop solar plays an important role
because it decentralizes the electricity grid. And we see that in this image right
here. Decentralization reduces risk and increases the resilience of our grid. One
thing to keep in mind here is that there is going to be one bill that will become
law that will make rooftop solar more accessible for those who live in a
homeowner’s association. That is a meaningful area of climate solution progress
in the General Assembly. 



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 205

The second area is around electric vehicles. As I mentioned, transportation
is now the dominant source of carbon emissions in America. One dimension, of
course, of decarbonizing the transportation sector is switching to electric vehicles.
We see here that regardless of the underlying grid, electric vehicles are found to
cut emissions drastically. The public policy to be aware of here is that there is a
bill that will also become law that will allow utilities to establish pilot programs
for electric charging stations and for facilitating investment in the purchase of
electric vehicles in the service territories of the different utilities in our state. This
is going to significantly increase EV [Electric Vehicle] infrastructure in Indiana
and will become law. 

A third area is transit. In this case, the General Assembly has been a bit
hostile to this climate solution, where there have been efforts to try to undermine
the expansion of IndyGo, which is by far Indiana’s largest mass transit system.
Thanks to an array of diverse advocates, bills that would have undermined mass
transit in Indiana were defeated. This matters because transportation is the top
source of greenhouse gas emissions in America. As you can see here, there is a
much lower carbon footprint on a unit basis for transit versus traditional
automobiles.

Another area that was discussed in the General Assembly had to do with
something called SMRs, which are Small Modular Nuclear Reactors. These are
nuclear power plants that are dramatically lower, as you can see from this image,
than your traditional nuclear plans. But the problem that we have at the Hoosier
Environmental Council regarding SMRs, is that there are very costly means of
cutting carbon emissions on a per megawatt-hour basis, compared to a paradigm
centered around renewables and storage. Yet having said that, a bill that will
facilitate future investment in SMRs is also going to become a law. Another area
that is also going to become law has to do with carbon capture and storage. This,
of course, is this notion of liquefying and injecting carbon dioxide into the sub-
surface, possibly ten thousand feet underground. And there is a bill that again,
will become law, that sets the state regulatory framework for making investments
in carbon capture and sequestration. 

Now, let me spend just a couple of minutes talking about climate solutions
that make us resilient. One is wetlands. As many of you know, we passed a really
devastating bill that wipes away a significant amount of state-level protections for
our wetlands, and wetlands are an incredibly important climate solution because
they act as an enormous sponge. In the backdrop of more frequent and more
intense flooding, wetlands are vital to prevent downstream flooding. And yet we
passed a law last year that significantly deregulates state jurisdictional wetlands.
Now, there was a bill introduced this session that would have provided tax credits
to property owners that protect the wetlands. Unfortunately, this bill was denied
a hearing. Another bill that falls into the realm of climate resilience has to do with
renewable energy projects of a utility-scale. And the thing I want to topline here
is this issue of the groundcover underneath these solar farms. Is it going to be like
this, which is turf grass, or is it going to be like this, which is pollinator-friendly



206 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

deep-rooted grass. That has huge implications for the climate resilience of rural
Indiana. Happy to talk more about that in the Q&A. 

There is also the issue of coal ash waste pits, which are located along rivers.
In this backdrop, but more frequent and more intense flooding, these coal ash
waste pits can be ticking time bombs from a climate resilience perspective,
because they are unlined, and they are very close to riverbanks. There is a worry
that they could end up contaminating our rivers. This has certainly happened as
we have seen in other states. Unfortunately, the bill in this context was denied a
hearing as well. We made progress in terms of climate mitigation in the General
Assembly this session, but not really so much on the resilience side. There was
an effort to try to enact a climate task force. That bill was also denied a hearing
and, on a positive note, a bill that would have tied the hands of our state
regulators to initiate rulemaking more stringent than the federal government was
defeated in the Senate against remarkable odds. So, with that, I look forward to
staying in touch with you and look forward to the panel discussion.

Mr. Wolfson: 

Fantastic. Thank you so much for that local Indiana perspective, and also a
global perspective on what is happening in Indiana. Now to round out the panel,
our final presentation is from Max Kelln of Faegre Drinker Biddle and Reath law
firm to discuss representing companies and the regulated community. Please take
it away, Mr. Kelln.

H. Max Kelln: 

Hey, good morning. I will just get right into it. At Faegre, I really do have the
pleasure of helping companies craft and implement what is called Environment
and Social Governance, or ESG, policies. It is a real sort of buzzword these days
around corporate management. As a result, I really get a front-row seat on how
these companies are adapting to the growing national and really international
regulations around greenhouse gases. A quick example, here in Indiana, I had the
pleasure of recently touring one of the automotive manufacturing facilities here
in our state. As Jesse [Kharbanda] showed, we have quite a number of them. At
the facility, I got to meet over a dozen greenhouse gas engineers employed by
that company that is located just at that plant. Now, I bet you, those jobs probably
did not even exist over a dozen years ago. So it is really surprising to see that
level of change here over the last ten or fifteen years. I want to kind of touch on
a few trends here regarding litigation involving U.S.-based corporations that have
an impact on their projects and operations overseas. I cannot believe it, but it has
been almost fifteen years since I graduated from the IU McKinney School of
Law. The types of lawsuits that were sort of all the rage back then were these
investor activist/investor lawsuits that are investors of U.S. based corporations
suing U.S. based companies based on environmental type claims that may be in
investor documents, like a prospectus. If you are an investor in that company and
you feel like the company misrepresented what it said in its prospectus in terms



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 207

of its environmental goals, including climate change, you could file a derivative
lawsuit for damages claiming that it affected shareholder value. 

Now, the second round of environmental type regulations around companies
was involving so-called green claims. That is companies who make specific
product claims regarding environmental sustainability or some other
environmental-related claim with respect to a specific product. I think these
lawsuits are still ongoing. A recent one is against a cosmetic company around its
claims that its cosmetics are all-natural, yet, it is alleged that testing of those
products contains what is called PFAS [per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances],
which is a sort of emerging bio accumulative contaminant that is mostly
unregulated here in the U.S. 

The third type, and this is the more recent trend that we are seeing, are
lawsuits by environmental groups, not by consumers themselves, but
environmental groups sort of on behalf of consumers against companies regarding
their global statements regarding sustainability and environmental compliance,
pointing to statements that are made in tweets or on their website or otherwise
made by their CEOs. The most recent example is this lawsuit filed by the Earth
Island Institute against Coca-Cola in the Superior Court for the District of
Columbia in June of 2021. Essentially the lawsuit alleges that, contrary to Coca-
Cola’s representation, the company remains a major plastic polluter, does not
have a sustainable enterprise as it claims on its social media, and has a long
history of breaking the public promises and sustainability goals that it makes,
pointing to things like its sustainability report. As a result, this group has filed a
lawsuit under a state consumer marketing statute claiming that these claims are
meant to persuade consumers to buy their products, and that they are deceptive,
or that they fall under these deceptive marketing type statutes that a number of
states have. Pointing to companies and the statements that they have made as if
they are a kind of standard marketing type claim and trying to get companies to
live up to those goals I see as a sort of new round and new sort of evolution of
those types of lawsuits that really began as investor lawsuits over a decade ago.

Ms. Doyle: 

Thank you very much, Max. We are going to begin the Q&A session. Several
questions were submitted. This question is specifically for Professor Cox. What
roles do other Asian countries, specifically those with large GDPs, such as China
and Japan, play in Vietnam, reaching its environmental goals? And are there areas
of international trade or other agreements between Vietnam and these other
prosperous countries that could help Vietnam more quickly reduce its dependence
on homegrown fossil fuels?

Professor Cox: 

Well, it is my personal opinion that help is going to come from the United
States or from Europe or from other countries. There are difficult relationships



208 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

between Vietnam and China, Vietnam and Korea, and several other Southeast
Asian countries. A lot of that is rooted in conflict from the sixties and the
seventies. Certainly, there is a potential role to play for countries like Korea and
other countries that have an abundance of resources, but it has not really
happened historically. I think it is more likely to come from European countries
that seem to be ahead of the rest of the world in terms of development of
alternative energy, alternative energy policy, or the United States or Canada. I
guess my view is that would be wonderful. There could be more inner
cooperation between Asian countries on these issues, at least as far as Vietnam
is concerned. And Steve may have a different experience. I do not really see it.

Ms. Doyle: 

One question for the whole panel: how might the conflict between Russia and
Ukraine affect the abilities of countries to work together on international climate
change initiatives? And this is open to the entire panel.

Mr. Wolfson: 

Well, just maybe a minor point, but one thing that the conflict has done is it
has taken over sort of the news space. The U.N. just released a very important
report on climate change adaptation and impacts on Monday, and we have seen
some coverage of that report but not nearly as much as the previous U.N. report
in August. And this is sort of a sequel to that August report. And it is largely
because the conflict in Ukraine has sort of pushed climate, not just off the news
agenda, but sort of down on the priority list for people around the world,
including people in governments. There is a very serious impact in terms of the
attention level that climate is getting right now around the world. 

Mr. Kharbanda: 

You know, one other dimension I would add is just, I worry greatly about the
fact that how are you going to involve Russia in future international cooperation.
There is going to be so much anger continuing at Russia. How do you try to
formulate bilateral agreements related to methane emissions from Siberia or
cutting deforestation in Siberia, or of course, finding a way to decarbonize the
enormous carbon footprint of the energy sector in Russia. I am extremely
worried.

Ms. Doyle: 

Thank you. Mr. Kharbanda, you stated that a bill will become law. Do you
mean that the bill has already passed and then will be codified? Or do you mean
that the bill is expected to pass? The General Assembly is in conference
committee right now, I believe.



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 209

Mr. Kharbanda:

Yes. Yes. Great question. And the answer to that is that these bills have
passed the House and the Senate. If there has been a situation of a difference
between those two, rather than going through conference committee, the original
bill author has concurred on the bill, which means that it goes through a
concurrence vote where the bill author tends to be deferred to by the body in the
General Assembly. These bills are destined to the governor and are going to be
signed into law. 

Ms. Doyle: 

Thank you. Professor Cox, what types of energy generation are feasible in
Vietnam? Assuming foreign investment does occur. Is there an openness to
nuclear power or some skepticism about its safety as it is in the U.S.? 

Professor Cox: 

I do not really have a barometer in terms of whether there is, an openness to
nuclear power. Certainly, a lot of the alternative energy resources that we see
used in other countries, like solar, and wind power, because of the topography
and geography of Vietnam, I think are extremely practical. And it could be
applied to supplement Vietnam’s energy sector. 

Ms. Doyle: 

Thank you. Professor Lin, China currently has four times as many coal power
plants as any other country in the world, which clearly presents several
environmental threats. What is the most likely alternative energy source that
China could rely on to help reduce its number of coal power plants? 

Professor Lin: 

Sure, I think China already built a lot of renewable energy facilities and
generates a lot of renewable energy, but in order to replace all of the coal fire
power and only rely on wind power and solar is not realistic. I think, currently,
they are still thinking natural gas would be the alternative energy for coal. 

Ms. Doyle: 

Great, thank you. Max, this question is for you. Climate change creates a
wide array of environmental issues as we have discussed here. What subset of
climate change issues do you foresee as having a global impact the fastest? An
impact, which may ultimately lead to conflict in the future, and what can we do
as a society? You represent corporations and communities, municipalities. How
can communities prevent conflicts down the road?



210 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Mr. Kelln: 

That is a tough one to tackle. I do think the U.S. really does have pretty
powerful tools at its disposal in the forms of laws and statutes that do affect
corporate behavior internationally. I think the market is already reacting, given
that the United States is such a global base of companies founded and
headquartered here. We are going to continue to see that trend. I think one of
them is in order to back up these environmental claims that corporations are
making, they rely on various credits to make those claims. For example, a
corporation may say that its operations are carbon neutral. Those claims are in
part based on projects that are created by entities and groups, other than that
corporation. The corporation will enter into a contract with some entity that does
a project that creates these credits, but that project may be overseas. It may be in
India. Those corporations will have to enforce those contracts in these other
countries so that they can support those claims for U.S. investors and U.S.
consumers. We are going to increasingly see more intertwined lines between
things that corporations say and do in the U.S. and their operations overseas. 

Ms. Doyle: 

Thank you. We have time for one more question. This is for Professor Cox.
How much of Vietnam’s goals are compromised by its own geography? Is it a
coastal country? My image is that it has lots of wetlands, so it is not harshly
subject to flooding and ocean sea levels.

Professor Cox: 

At least in the areas, I traveled and what formerly would have been north
Vietnam and along the coast, or certainly large areas that would be conducive to
alternative energy. And the irony of deforestation is that there are areas in which
there are unfettered wind flow areas to put solar panels. In that sense, I think there
is a great potential in Vietnam, even geographically for alternative energy. 

Ms. Doyle: 

Thank you. That concludes our first panel. For our climate change panelists,
there are some more questions in the Q&A chat box, and you are welcome if you
have time to try and answer those. But for now, we are going to switch to our
sustainability panel. I do want to mention Professor Rossi had answered several
of the questions, so I apologize for not directing questions to you. I should also
mention that Professor Christopher Rossi, who was our first presenter, submitted
an article for publication for the Symposium publication, which will come out in
a few months, specifically discussing his presentation today. Stay tuned for that.
Thank you very much to panel one.



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 211

PANEL II: ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

MODERATOR: CHANCELLOR ANDREW R. KLEIN

PANELISTS: 
DR. PROFESSOR STELLA EMERY SANTANA

MS. MEGHAN KRISHNAYYA

MS. MORGAN MICKELSON

Ms. Doyle: 

We are going to transition to our Environmental Sustainability panel. And
again, please be sure to type in any questions that you have during the
presentations, and we will get through as many of those as we can. 

I have the distinct honor to introduce our moderator for this panel, the new
interim Chancellor of Indiana University, Andrew Klein. Chancellor Klein is the
Paul E. Beam Professor of Law here at McKinney and a former Dean of the law
school. Chancellor Klein focuses on the intersection of tort and environmental
law and has coauthored two casebooks and a student textbook. He is a member
of the American Law Institute and previously served as Reporter for the Seventh
Circuit Court of Appeals Civil Jury Instructions Committee. Chancellor Klein,
“Dean Klein” as he was previously known in these halls, is a favorite professor
to us law students and has won at least ten student teaching awards over his
career. He was also Editor-in-Chief of the Emory Law Journal while he was a
student in law school. Chancellor Klein, thank you for being with us today. Please
begin by introducing your panelists.

Chancellor Andrew R. Klein: 

Brittany, thank you so much. Before I introduce our panelists, how about a
virtual round of applause for Brittany and her students. I hope everyone here can
see how proud we are to have students like this, doing this kind of work here at
the McKinney School of Law, and I have to say now at the IUPUI campus,
Brittany and to all of your classmates, we are really, really proud that you put
something like this together, so thank you. 

Ms. Doyle:

Thank you, sir. 

Chancellor Klein:

It is my privilege to introduce a really outstanding panel of speakers. I am
going to quickly give the introductions to the people that you will be hearing
from, and then we will begin a conversation. One of our panelists today is Dr.
Stella Emery Santana, who is an adjunct professor here at McKinney School of



212 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Law, a former visiting professor here, and a really important part of the
McKinney Law family. Dr. Santana has an extensive resume. I cannot go through
the whole thing. She is a full-time professor of law at Centro University
F.A.E.S.A. in Brazil. She is affiliate faculty at Florida International University
College of Law in Miami. She is a member of the Brazilian Institute of
Environmental and Corporativism Studies and Research, the International
Sustainable Development Research Society, and a member of the Latin American
Initiative for Law, Society and Culture. Which means Dr. Santana does a lot of
stuff and is really smart we are eager to hear from her later today.

Our second panelist is Morgan Mickelson, the Director of the Office of
Sustainability from the City of Indianapolis. Ms. Mickelson and her team are
tasked with implementing the city’s first sustainability and resilience action plan,
Thrive Indianapolis. She previously worked closely with the Office of
Sustainability as the Climate Advisor through the American Cities Climate
Challenge. Ms. Mickelson holds a Master of Science in Climate Justice from
Glasgow Caledonian University and currently serves on the Greater Indiana
Clean Cities Board of Directors. Welcome, Ms. Mickelson.

Our third panelist is Meghan Krishnayya, Vice President of Compliance and
Permitting at Brown and Caldwell. Ms. Krishnayya is a chemical engineer and
brings more than twenty-four years of industrial and consulting experience to
environmental, health, and safety management. More recently, Ms. Krishnayya
has focused on clients’ needs for water resiliency and sustainability, matching up
water engineering projects that meet corporate environmental social, and
governance goals with municipality and watershed needs in communities. We are
really pleased to have you with us, Meghan. You can see what a great panel we
have. We have public sector, private sector, and academics all together to talk
about this important issue.

The panelists and I met about a week or so ago, and one thing we thought we
would do before we get to the formal talks, is really quickly go around to each
panelist and have them talk to you about what they mean when they say
“sustainability.” That is a word we throw around a lot, but we do not often define
it. So really quickly, Dr. Santana, why don’t you start. What does sustainability
mean when you hear that word?
 
Dr. Professor Stella Emery Santana: 

Thank you, Dean Klein. It is a pleasure to be here and yes, let’s start it by
discussing sustainability. There are two things that are important to
understand—sustainable development and sustainability. In 1987, the World
Commission on Environment and Development published a report called Our
Common Future. They described what sustainable development would be.
Sustainable development is a type of development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability for future generations to meet their own
needs. I know this is an open and very vague concept, but they say that in order



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 213

to have sustainable development, we have to balance between three essential
elements: economic, environmental, and social. Furthermore, as we develop new
studies, the cultural aspect of sustainability is also included in this concept of
sustainable development. So now we have four perspectives of sustainable
development: the economic, the ecological, the cultural, and the social. All of
them together—they are essential to understanding the requirements for
sustainability. Now to achieve sustainability, we need to balance these elements.
One might think now that sustainability and sustainable development are the same
thing. The answer is no. Sustainable development is the pathway to achieving
sustainability. Sustainability would be a long-term goal. Let’s say we need to live
in a more sustainable world. Sustainable development would be to have a
sustainable agriculture, sustainable forestry, sustainable production, and so on.
To finish this, the overall goal of sustainable development is that the long-term
stability of the economy, the environment, and the social, our lives, it is only
achievable through integration and acknowledgment of all these elements—the
economic, environmental, the cultural, and the social, through the decision-
making process. I give it back to you, the Dean Klein. 

Chancellor Klein: 

Thanks, Dr. Santana. That was really outstanding. Let’s hear from Ms.
Mickelson and hear from the public sector from the city. What does sustainability
mean from your perspective?

Morgan Mickelson: 

Thank you, Dean Klein. Dr. Santana, that was a wonderful definition. I like
the global perspective, and then I will bring it down to the local as Dean Klein
was suggesting. Here in Indianapolis, we are really focused on what makes
stainable neighborhoods and that look like healthy, happy, and equitable
neighborhoods. A key tenant to this that we constantly talk about is resiliency. I
think that is the next word that I need to start communicating to people to ensure
we all understand what I am talking about. Resiliency is basically the ability to
recover from different disasters, whether that is a personal disaster you have or
a natural disaster, that is giving you a hardship that you are facing in your life.
The ability to recover from those is a central tenant to sustainability that we are
now looking at when we are focusing on adapting to our new climate, and I will
hand it back to Dean Klein now. 

Chancellor Klein: 

Thanks so much. Let’s ask Ms. Krishnayya because you come at it from a
corporate perspective, you are dealing in the private sector, and I would be
interested in hearing how you define sustainability.



214 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Meghan Krishnayya: 

Very much. Thank you, Dean Klein. Appreciate that. I would put it back in
balance. I am just looking at the balance of various environmental media with
each other. So not trading air or carbon for water. If you are making advances in
carbon that you are not having that detrimental effect on water, because you also
need to take into balance the various stakeholders. It is really nice to see that we
have moved forward, that the shareholder is no longer the most important
stakeholder. The folks living in the community, the employees at industrial
facilities and manufacturing facilities, those voices are a lot bigger to bring in that
part of balance. Cause that, really is key for sustainability. Whether you are
talking about carbon, water, circular economy, or biodiversity. Taking all those
into account is really where we are focused right now in looking at sustainability
and industry. 

Chancellor Klein: 

All right. I think that was fantastic because that really gives people a better
sense of what we are dealing with when we talk about this important topic. At this
point, I am going to have each of the speakers give their primary presentations.
After they do, I may have a few follow-up questions, but I will also be mindful
of the clock. And Brittany, certainly interrupt me if I am not mindful of the clock
so that we can take some audience questions as well. Dr. Santana, the virtual
podium is yours. 

Dr. Santana: 

Thank you so much, Dean Klein. I will be sharing a PowerPoint slide as well.
So let’s start from the beginning. First of all, I wanted to thank, I had great
students helping me, research students, helping me to make these PowerPoint
slides, and making the research itself. So I want to thank Hubert Logan from IU,
he was the class from 2019. He did amazing research in Indiana. And my two
former students from Brazil Natalia Bastas and Pedro Meladge have developed
amazing work as well. So I appreciate it. So let’s start from the beginning. My
talk to you will build the legal aspects of water as a human right, according to the
2030 agenda, a comparative analysis between Brazil and the US. Now here in this
first picture I have my son David, he is seven years old, enjoying the beautiful
ocean and enjoying the clean, not polluted, ocean water. And in the bottom
picture, I have Indiana’s river. This is a picture from the Conservation Law
Center website, and they made this incredible report on water and quality of life
in Indiana. If you have not looked over this report, you will have, you must, that
is something you really must do. So, we have both river and ocean waters that are
going to be talking about here this morning. 

It is important to understand that water is a human right, and as a human
right, it is a precondition to human existence. No one can live without water. It
is a necessity to sustain human life and clean water guarantees the minimum



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 215

conditions to live a dignified life, but not everyone, not every country has
understood and understand today, that water is a human right. So, when we are
talking about the right to water, what does it guarantee?

Well, we are first talking about physically accessible water. People should not
have to walk five miles to get some water. We need to have enough quantity of
water that you can use for your daily needs. You need to have safe water. Safe
water means clean water. The quality of the water is good for human and animal
consumption. Affordable water. It does not really matter if you have an expensive
water bill that you cannot pay. This is not the right of water being guaranteed and
all the right of water will be really directed to personal and domestic use of the
water. 

Here, you have a table that I made with the difference in this comparison that
we are using about how water is understood as a human right internationally in
Brazil and then in the United States. So internationally, this discussion started in
1977 in the Mar del Plata conference. In this Conference, it was the first time that
water is considered an essential good for human life. And then in 1986, the UN
Declaration on the Rights to Development talks about the basic need of water as
a basic need. Then, in 1992, we have the International Conference on Water and
the Environment also called the Dublin Conference. And they also talk about the
importance of water to human life. The 1992 Agenda 21 also describes water as
an important part of human life. We have to have water in a sustainable world.
But for the first time as the world considered water as a human right, it was
established in the UN General Assembly Resolution 64/292 from 2010. In 2010,
that is when the United Nations, for the first time, really states that water and
sanitation are basic human rights. Now, what happens in Brazil as we are doing
this comparison between Brazil and the U.S? The 1988 Constitution guarantees
a right to a clean and healthy environment. It does not talk about water nor water
as a human right, but the courts here in Brazil have granted the right to access
water, the right to water, and the right to water distribution. But we still do not
talk about water as a human right, but in these court cases, we have had some
judges stating that water is a basic human right. And that is why they granted
these rights to those plaintiffs. In 1997, it was approved, the National Water
Resource Policy. This treats water as a common good. It treats water as an
economic value. But it also talks that we need to have a sustainable use of water.
Brazil does not follow directly within its legislation, water as a human right, but
we have already had established living court decisions that water is considered
a human right in the country. Now in the United States.

Ms. Doyle: 

Professor Santana, I am so sorry to interrupt, but your slides are not
advancing for the screen. We are still on slide one.



216 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Dr. Santana: 

Really? What is happening? Let’s see. Can you see now? 

Ms. Doyle: 

Now I am seeing the water and human rights. 

Dr. Santana: 

Oh, perfect. Thank you. I am sorry about that. So now in the United States,
water is mostly considered as a public good and the U.S. abstained from adopting
the UN Resolution 64/292 that established that water is a human right. But three
states in the U.S. have legislation declaring that water is a human right. In
California, in 2012, it was approved Assembly Bill 685. We have in the
Massachusetts Constitutional Article 97, that established that water is a human
right. And in Pennsylvania Constitution Article 1, Section 27, also states that
water is a human right. So we have positive and negative moves around the
world. Can you see my second slide? Is it moving now? 

Ms. Doyle: 

No, we are still on water and human rights. You are in presentation mode,
maybe?

Dr. Santana: 

Okay, let me try, just give me one second here. Let me stop sharing and go
back again. Share screen. What about now? 

Chancellor Klein: 

You are on the next slide. You may just have to individually advance them
because I think you are in presentation mode.

Dr. Santana: 

Oh. Okay. Sorry about that. So what happens now, moving forward, then let’s
talk about sustainability. How do we get sustainability and water together? At the
United Nations, every fifteen years, they launch a new program. In 2015, we
finalized the United Nations Millennium Development Goals and in 2015 it
starred in the UN Agenda. It established seventeen goals so we could achieve
sustainability or a sustainable world. It is important to mention that for the first
time we are having an index. So in each of these targets, we have one-hundred
and sixty-nine specific goals that need to be achieved. There is a way to measure
if we are achieving or not this goal of sustainability. The 2030 Agenda is in the
category of international soft law. Which in other words, means that it is not a



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 217

hard law. It is not an international legally binding instrument. But it can, and
should, guide states toward new decision-making processes in the future. And
maybe it can lead in a few places to hard law as well. So in this presentation, let
me see if now we will move. Is it going now? Did it change this slide? 

Chancellor Klein: 

No, it did not. So you just have to, you will just have to do to each time you
move, you will just have to push the button yourself from your desktop.

Dr. Santana: 

Yes, I am doing that and that is not going, this is disturbing. Sorry about that.
So I do not know what is going on because . . . let’s see again. Crossing my
fingers here.

Chancellor Klein: 

I think you are good now.

Dr. Santana: 

Right to water and sustainability. So the connection between water and
sustainability happens in two specific goals. Goal 6 is a clean water and sanitation
and Goal 14 life below water. So Goal 6 is to ensure access to water and
sanitation for all. While Goal 14 conserves and sustainably use the oceans, seas,
and marine resources. One might be thinking now, are we talking about ocean as
an important source of water as well? And I say, yes, oceans, they are very
important to regulate rainwater, drinking water, weather, climate, and food. So
even though the focus of Goal 14 is related to oceans, we cannot deny how
important it is to the general goal of water which is Goal 6. Now, as we move
forward, some scholars they have . . . now can you see my slides? Now I have to
ask every time until we get it. 

Chancellor Klein: 

You are good.

Dr. Santana: 

Thank you. So some scholars that do study oceans, they have connected
Target 14 with Target 6 within, four specific targets, within Goal 6. Now just as
an example, protect and restore ecosystems now on Target 14, and then we need
Target 6 to protect and restore water-related ecosystems. So there have been
studies combining these two areas. And the scholars that do research on water,
they have connected water to oceans, and their view on how they are connected,
just change a little bit by, for example, Goal 6.3, improve water quality



218 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

wastewater treatment, and safe reuse connected to reduce marine pollution,
protect and restore ecosystems and reduce ocean acidification. There is a direct
connection between Target 6, which is clean water, and Target 14, which is ocean
water. 

Now, how are Brazil and the U.S. doing in relation to SDG [Sustainable
Development Goals] ranking? So there are one-hundred and sixty-five countries
that compromise themselves to follow the SDGs. U.S. is thirty-two under one-
hundred and sixty-five. While Brazil is sixty-one under one hundred and sixty-
five states.

It is also important to mention that SDG 6 is better achieved in both
countries, Brazil and the U.S. when compared to SDG 14. Oh, my goodness.
SDG 14, it is almost nothing. We are going to talk about this very briefly. SDG
6, in Brazil, depends on political will. If we do not have political will, we will not
make the necessary arrangements to achieve one hundred percent of the targets.
While in the U.S., to achieve one hundred percent of the targets within SDG 6,
the U.S. faces some challenges in water quality due to old infrastructure, water
efficiency, and participation in the decision-making process.

The way each state in the U.S. deals with water management affects the
U.S.’s overall targets, because, due to federalism, the U.S. states have more
power to deal with environmental and river and management of their own
resources than in a centralized country like Brazil. Now in relation to SDG 14, the
main issue for all of the countries of the world is that most of the indicators
within this goal, they do not have a global methodology. Without one, it is just
almost impossible to measure progress. According to the United Nations, about
forty percent of the world’s population lives within a hundred kilometers of the
coast. If we are not managing properly, the quality of our oceans, if we are not
managing well the quality of fresh water, and if we are not managing domestic
and industrial waste properly, the results will affect freshwater availability as a
whole. Especially in times of rapid climate change as the presenters on the first
panel demonstrated so well. More than three hundred million people around the
world rely on desalinated water for some of or all of their daily water needs. In
2016, one hundred and fifty countries used desalination. It was the equivalent of
86.8 million cubic meters of desalinated water produced a day. This was
produced from the International Water Association.

Now, and I am almost done. Why should you care? This is a map that shows
water stress levels of urban areas with a population bigger than three million in
the world. This data was produced by the World Resource Institute with data
from the United Nations. You can see that here in North America and Middle
East and Asia, and some parts of Europe, we are in a very level, extremely high
level, of stress water. Now, all we need to live is water. We cannot live without
water, but water is needed in all different dimensions. Let’s say our basic
everyday needs—agricultural and recreational use. So, as I said in 2020, this map
was published in the New York Times. What happens when you have science



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 219

being published in a very well-known paper around the world? This map, by
doing that, we see that every common citizen, those who are not experts or
scholars on the issue, will start evaluating if things are going well, or if things are
going bad. Now, in the areas that I just mentioned, you can see that people all
over are being affected, and to be more specific, the economically disfavored are
facing the major environmental injustice in our time, because they simply do not
have water or cannot afford water.

Now, can you imagine a near future with climate change affecting how we
predict the use and the needs of water? What the scenario will be? I have been
researching water and oceans for over a decade, and I do not see much progress
in achieving different goals as we move forward. But, I see each day more people,
governments, and corporations, like you are going to see in this panel, making
better-informed decisions and having better practices related to water, simply
because more people are aware of the issues we are facing.

And finally, as future attorneys, public servants, and leaders of your cities,
states, and countries, what will you do with this information? Let’s think and act
sustainably. And you can be sure that you can count on me to be part of the
solution. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your patience.

Chancellor Klein: 

Thank you, Dr. Santana. That was a really, really interesting presentation. We
appreciate that. Let’s make a transition, and I am going to turn the virtual podium
over to Ms. Mickelson who is going to give us a call it a local perspective, but
really it is a municipal perspective because my guess is that the perspective you
bring to the table is similar to your colleagues all over the country. So, Ms.
Mickelson, the podium is yours. 

Ms. Mickelson: 

Thank you, Dean Klein. Yeah, that is exactly right. I will actually be diving
into our sustainability and resilience action plan today. All right. So please let me
know if you are not seeing my slideshow?

Chancellor Klein: 

We are good. 

Ms. Mickelson: 

All right. Perfect. This is just a brief overview of the Office of Sustainability.
Our mission is that we lead by inspiring lasting environmental, economic, and
neighborhood vitality through collaboration, education, and community action.
We envision an Indianapolis that is resilient. A resilient community of inclusive
and healthy, happy neighborhoods. These are just a few of our climate



220 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

commitments made by the administration. Most notably, Special Resolution 21
Mayor Hogsett made in 2017 in committing the City of Indianapolis to carbon
neutrality by 2050. There are a few others, and we are still in declarations and
other ones, notably the American Cities Climate Challenge that is wrapping up,
but that brought me to Indianapolis and really dedicated a lot of resources to
accelerating our climate action.

And then of course is Thrive Indianapolis, which I will dive into today.
Notably, it is a part of the comprehensive plan of Marion County as well. These
are just a few areas we are focused on, if you are interested, happy to dive into
them more, but I will not spend much time today. They are more of our
programmatic pieces to the Office of Sustainability. I think it is important to
really discuss what climate change looks like here in Indianapolis, so we know
what we are going to have to adapt to, right? We are going to see more rain and
more extreme heat in Indianapolis as with many parts of the country. We will be
seeing similar new hazards, so that rain is going to look like more precipitation
overall, but more extreme events as well in which we receive a lot of rain really
fast and that is going to overwhelm our infrastructure. That is something that our
engineering team is thinking a lot about and how we might accommodate and
adapt to that new normal. Additionally, extreme weather. More hot days. I heard
recently that extreme heat is the number one killer in the United States around
different climate hazards. So, it is really important. I think it is one of the number
one killers because it is a silent killer, right? Like you do not really notice you are
having a heatstroke until it is too late. We need to be looking at how we can make
our neighborhoods more resilient to that. Whether it is creating a network of
neighbors that are checking in on each other or different solutions, people can get
really creative.

Now, let’s dive into Thrive Indianapolis. I defined sustainability and
resiliency a bit earlier. I will just dive right in. This is a bit of context around how
Thrive was created. It is at heart a community plan. We wanted the community
to have a say in what went into our plan. I really wrote, well, I really value this
piece because I am able to rely on the action items being something that the
community wants to see. Therefore, they are vetted a little bit, and I get to take
that and really advocate for this on behalf of the community. This is our social
vulnerability index that was created in conjunction with Thrive to help us make
decisions. Basically, we took twelve different socioeconomic indicators and
overlaid them on a map of Indianapolis. We also took the different climate
hazards that we are expecting to see in Indianapolis and overlaid those two maps
together to be able to identify specific neighborhoods that actually are going to
be most at risk to these new hazards. Therefore, we should really focus our
resiliency efforts here because it might be more difficult for these specific
neighborhoods to recover from said disasters. This is just saying a brief overview
of the different components of Thrive, just so you have the full picture. 

Two overarching goals that are most important in my head related to climate
change really guide the entire body of work in Thrive. Our commitment to carbon



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 221

neutrality, of course, and our commitment to an equitable implementation by
prioritizing all decision-making through an equity lens. Additionally, we have
four core values leading the plan with eight plan elements. Under each element:
key objectives, action items, performance metrics, and output metrics. That is
how we are going to be ensuring that we are implementing something. We are
going to be able to measure it through these output metrics, much like how Dr.
Santana was talking about. You need to be able to measure your progress to
ensure you are actually achieving sustainability. 

These plan elements are highlighted here on this map and it, to me, reflects
the sustainable development goals really well in the sense that everything is
interconnected to one another. Sustainability is just not just about renewable
energy or ensuring that our green space is not polluted. It has every piece of our
life that we touch interconnected. This helps to demonstrate how public health
and safety is actually a key component to a sustainable future. Let me check the
time. All right. The first element that I will dive into is the Built Environment.
Here we really envision an Indianapolis that has sustainable buildings at its core,
right? I will go ahead and jump to our first achieved action item, actually. It is a
recent policy that we passed from the Office of Sustainability, which is to develop
an energy and benchmarking program. That will just require large buildings to
disclose their energy consumption to the City of Indianapolis. In turn, after you
start understanding how much energy you are using, you are more likely to
reduce your energy consumption. And so that is what we are helping to facilitate
through this ordinance. 

The economy section. This really looks at how a thriving economy is the
underpins to a resilient neighborhood and community, right? We are looking at
how to ensure that everybody has access to climbing the mobile economic ladder.
Moving onto energy. We are, here in this section, we are really advocating for the
transition to a renewable energy, both on our grid and locally, maybe at the
household level. So one of the action items that was recently achieved actually
was partnering through Sun Solar United Neighbors. They piloted a low
to moderate-income program putting solar panels on the houses of individuals
that qualified, and that was a really great program to help lower the energy
burden. Urban agriculture looks at food insecurity and how that plays into true
sustainability for a city. Our Office of Public Health and Safety leads most of
those initiatives. Natural resources. This is really looking at our air quality and
our green space. One of our flagship programs is Knozone, and this is an air
quality awareness program that we administer through the office. A recent
addition to our brand is a highly evolved brand encouraging the use of electric
vehicles. Public health and safety. Again, this is managed by our Office of Public
Health and Safety, but it is looking at how a safe community is truly resilient,
right? Because we know all the systemic issues are interconnected and dependent
upon each other. Transportation and land use is looking at how can we make
shared mobility options a little bit more accessible for everyone so that you
have the ability to take the bus if you so desire. One of the most recent action
items here is the passage of our transit-oriented development ordinance, and this



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will allow for more dense housing and more dense infrastructure along our bus
rapid transit lines. We are really excited about the passage of this and what it is
going to mean for our community. And finally, our last element is waste and
recycling. Many people might know that this is the fastest-growing sector for
greenhouse gas emissions. While it is relatively low, it is growing rapidly, and so
we know we need to address this issue. Currently, we are looking at how we
might support universal curbside recycling for the entire City of
Indianapolis. And with that, I will turn it back over to Dean Klein.

Chancellor Klein: 

That was a great presentation, Ms. Mickelson. I mean, I have to say I am
struck both and daunted a little bit, by all that you have to address. But I’m also
really impressed by what you have put together in our city, so my congratulations
on that. Ms. Krishnayya, I am really excited for your presentation because
it occurs to me that you, and your colleagues, in parallel roles plays such an
important role because you really have to serve as the bridge between the
sustainability issues in local communities, as we just heard, but also, the
businesses that help keep our economy thriving. So, I am going to turn the
podium over to you, and really interested to hear your reflections on the topic.

Ms. Krishnayya: 

Thank you. Thank you so much Dean Klein, and it is great as a resident here
in Indianapolis, and seeing what Indianapolis is doing through the Thrive
Indianapolis program, it is just great to see what that is and how that connects to
what we are doing in industry. So I wanted to share three perspectives that are
key drivers right now for sustainability in industry. I am talking across the
U.S., not necessarily specifically in Indiana, but Indiana is definitely a part of it.
Regulatory drivers, stakeholder drivers, and disclosure are all key pieces that we
are seeing move forward sustainability in a different fashion than we have seen
it over the past twenty years. In regulations, industry is very used to being
regulated with laws around permits, for air, for water, for waste. Looking at
media in an individual fashion through the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water
Act, through RCRA [Resource Conservation and Recovery Act]. But now we
have environmental justice requirements such that industry needs to give
consideration to what tends to be lower-income areas or more distressed areas
where heavy manufacturing is occurring. And are those individuals much more
exposed and much more sensitive and vulnerable to the air admissions, to the
water quality in the areas of operation, and making sure that those requirements
are being taken into consideration when applying for a permit or obtaining a
permanent renewal. 

There are also new regulations coming out later this year from the SEC
[Securities and Exchange Commission]. So it is not just through EPA and through
the state-related environmental agencies, but just as Sarbanes-Oxley [Act] came
into account years ago for looking at environmental legacies and making sure that



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 223

corporations for setting aside money to clean up legacy sites that had groundwater
impact, soil impact in areas where they were not operating. New SEC
requirements that relate to sustainability or ESG, Environmental Social
Governance are coming into play. That will have to put in balance the financial
aspects as well as the environmental aspects of operating. I think of
environmental justice and think of what has been in play with legacy sites for
operations have ceased, but there is contamination in reasonably looking and
working with the pharmaceutical company and trying to put into balance toxicity
in groundwater and making reductions to go from parts per billion to parts per
trillion in certain toxicities, but then recognizing and working with EPA, there is
a tradeoff to reduce the toxicity of that groundwater. The tradeoff is a huge
increase in electricity demand for treatment, and therefore, greenhouse gas
emissions. And that will occur for the next thirty years of treatment. So really
needing to balance this out and using some of the new tools for the
groundwater, looking at groundwater that is not being used as drinking
water, should there really be a trade-off then for the air that the community is
breathing, both with greenhouse gas emissions and criteria pollutants. So those
are new areas that are being looked at now whereas, in the past, they would
have been looked at individually. And that is a really key driver being looked at
for entire industrial portfolios. 

The other pieces I mentioned earlier, you are talking about what sustainability
means for me, is looking at the stakeholders, and no longer having a
shareholder being the dominant stakeholder. You have employees, you have the
communities, local governments, and local utilities that are all key players to
industry and taking that into balance. I give a lot of thought to our powered
industry, as you know, here in Indiana, we are making large transitions from coal
to gas and looking a lot at renewables. And thinking about what the industry is
looking at more so now is we cannot achieve everything just within the fence
line. We need to be looking out. Outside the fence line as we look at the supply
chain and what we need to bring in from the supply chain, what is going back out
in the supply chain. Same piece happens with the environment and looking at
natural capital. So, whether it is a power company or a mining company, taking
a look at where you might have upstream and downstream impacts, that again,
can be multimedia from an environmental standpoint. Thinking of a power plant
right now, that is looking at an ability to meet permit requirements, so regulatory
requirements, related to temperature with wastewater discharge and making sure
that you are not increasing the temperature of a river in such a way that you are
negatively impacting aquatic life. One of the best ways to do that is to look
at how do you add biodiversity to that discharging surface water? How do you
model out what adding new plantings, some of them are going to be shorter
plantings, and some of them are going to be trees. But working on modeling
what thirty years looks like in adding shade to a river along the riverbanks, that
will also prevent stormwater erosion and sediment from going into the river, that
will then again later cost money to have to take out and treat. But also increasing
that biodiversity and habitats for sensitive creatures and creating a wonderful
carbon sink at the same time with the plantings that you are putting in. So again,



224 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

what could easily be looked at as a Clean Water Act issue, looking at a permit
complaints issue on temperature, has so many more opportunities outside the
fence line and looking at making sure that you are treating fairly the community
in which you are operating, where discharges happening, and not just the benefits
downstream to possibly more affluent communities. And that goes in, taking a
look at what is coming in upstream, and water is such an easy one to be able to
visualize. If you take and make investments upstream in your surface water
supplies to add biodiversity again, that also helps clean the water and you can get
natural attenuation factors that help clean the water such that you are not having
to do as much treatment and bring the water into your facility. Which again, not
only costs but also adds more electricity demand, which is increasing
your greenhouse gas emissions, other criteria pollutants, and emissions for it. So,
being able to take a look at all those stakeholders working with them and what
is the community looking for? How do you blend that in with community
goals and net-zero goals for carbon, for water, that are being looked at for 2030
and 2050? That is just as important coming to industry because they can play part
of that, and they have monies that they can help bring to communities that they
are working in to help make those investments. 

A key piece now that is happening, but especially over the last three years, is
transparency occurring through reporting and disclosure. ESG reporting and
disclosure CDP, Carbon Disclosure Project, is one that I have been working on
for many years with clients, but there is now a global harmonization of standards
occurring. And there is a rapid succession of harmonization that happened in
2021, and as we go through 2022, that part is going to equilibrate, which is
extremely important for accountability. Because now it is not just qualitative
statements or quantitative statements that are based on one-time wins for the
environment of making a reduction by closing a facility, but it is holding to long-
term goals using science-based targets or SBTs for accounting for methodologies
that can be compared to each other. That way people can really start to understand
commitments and, is there an actual impact that is happening? Where in the past
the term greenwashing would have been used. There is a competitive edge
to industry to have a global harmonization of these standards. Knowing what the
goals are that they are working toward. But also saying that they can compare
themselves to their competitors in that they are doing better in this area. That also
happens to be really good for their stock price if they are a public company. And
as a private company is really good as part of supply chain and attracting
customers, but also attracting key talent to be part of their workforce. So, all of
this is being taken into consideration now as companies look at their long-term
operations. Where are they going to invest in additional operations? Where will
they expand manufacturing? It is going to be a place that has water availability. It
is going to be a place where they can easily put into balance environmental
considerations with operations. They are looking at modeling these pieces
and investing in their communities and being held accountable for it. Part of what
I wanted to show here is with this global harmonization coming with standards, it
will not solve the differences in regulations that we are seeing between Europe
and the U.S. in particular, for multinational corporations. But having, what is on



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 225

the left here, having accounting standards and environmental standards, that are
getting more aligned in a global harmonization will make it easier for
corporations to make these commitments that are actually bringing results. To
take their natural capital, put in their just transition plans, and get to those, those
net-zero actions. You can see here the trending over time, almost twenty years
here, carbon obviously has been at the forefront of it, but water and forestry have
really been coming into play in much bigger spaces for the industry. In the
monetization of risks and opportunities for corporations, shows that it makes
sense, literal dollar sense, that it is five times more expensive to not act around
the risks around water and in carbon than it is to actually take action on it. I will
close, bringing it a little bit closer to home with the Mississippi River Region. If
you take a look at what companies are reporting to CDP right now. In the Global
Water Report in 2020, that $1.93 billion worth of money needs to be invested to
reduce water risk, and the cost of not addressing it will be $2.5 billion. It is not
exactly five times over cost here in the Midwest area because we are not so water
distressed, but it is still a much greater cost to not act for the industry than to
act. So, these pieces here of monetizing it are a huge driver in keeping folks
motivated to reach those goals, and not just to be talking about it anymore and
have an impact on the neighborhoods in where we are living and working. With
that Dean Klein, I will put it back to you and questions that may have come in.

Chancellor Klein: 

That was a great question, I mean that was a great presentation. I am going
to take the privilege of doing just one moderator question of you, and then I will
give it back to Brittany. We are conscious of time, and we do want to save time
to get to the questions that we are seeing come in the chat. But one follow-up on
my end, and I am going to direct it to all three of you. As you and probably most
of the audience is aware, the United Nations has actually set Global Sustainable
Development Goals, SDGs. So if you could briefly, I am going to go in this
order have Ms. Krishnayya first, let us know whether corporations pay
attention to the SDGs and set their goals around the United Nations targets. I
would then like Ms. Mickelson to talk about whether Indiana, the City of
Indianapolis, or other municipalities or government organizations are
implementing SDGs. And then Dr. Santana, since you are an international law
expert, real briefly, your sense of whether the SDGs are effective at all in
addressing sustainability issues. So that is my question to the panel. We will start
with Ms. Krishnayya.

Ms. Krishnayya: 

Okay, thank you, Dean Klein. Yes, absolutely corporations are paying
attention to them. It is one of their best ways to communicate in their corporate
sustainability reports how they are achieving impact because that is something
that translates whether they are operating in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, or
the U.S. I think it is one of the best ways to increase the education of folks that
are not in the business to understand what impact is. Because the more that



226 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

we can bring that to everyone’s understanding and that people increase their
education and knowledge, the better decisions people make in their purchasing
power, as well as having an impact. So, the SDGs are very important to industry.

Chancellor Klein: 

Fantastic. So, Ms. Mickelson, how about from a municipal’s perspective?

Ms. Mickelson: 

Yes, absolutely. The SDGs are incredibly important. As it was previously
explained, they provide a common framework for us all to communicate how we
are doing. I mentioned that our Thrive Indianapolis is closely related in that it has
a pretty comprehensive outlook of where we are focusing our attention and
certainly, I have been giving more thought around maybe applying how the
sustainable development goals fit within each of our action items. One of the
things I am thinking about there is related to green financing. We could be more
attractive as a municipality, receive a better credit rating, and whatnot if we do
start to align ourselves more closely with the sustainable development goals. 
 
Chancellor Klein: 

Thanks, and Dr. Santana from the ivory tower, do you believe that these goals
are making an impact? 

Dr. Santana: 

So, well, a general overview of the SDGs is that it is been very hard for
countries to achieve one hundred percent of the goals. And if you see the five first
countries in the ranking, Finland, is number one. They have eighty-five percent,
Sweden eighty-five percent, Denmark, eighty-four, Germany eighty-two, and
Belgium, eighty-two. They are all developed countries that already
had environmental policies very strong in their own country. The higher countries
can internalize and have hard law within the SDGs, meaning that they make it
binding to everyone. The higher the chances we can achieve more goals instead
of having soft laws that they are not binding in countries and environmental
policy in general. They are very, not close, very good close friends of anyone
because it changes the way we do things. It changes our culture. It changed the
way business industries; they have to change the way of production. So, because
it is not, it has a cost in the beginning that will be worth it at the end, if you can
say that we are going to have a good end. I believe that unless it becomes hard
law, we are going to have trouble achieving these goals. 

Chancellor Klein: 

Thank you. Brittany, I am going to let you jump back in now and manage the
questions from the audience. 



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 227

Ms. Doyle: 

Thank you. Our first question is open to all the panelists. What can be done
on an individual level for us to increase awareness and action towards
sustainability?

Ms. Mickelson: 

We, in Thrive, have a list of what you can do. It ranges from choosing to
drive less, using reusable bags, etcetera. However, you might not be surprised to
think policy is really influential and so I would say, be very active in both your
local, state, and federal politics. And to vote. Think about where these candidates
sit on these issues and then vote someone to office that is going to take the action
that you would like to see. 

Ms. Doyle: 

Thank you. If you live in Indiana, we do have elections this year for
state, local, and federal offices, so make sure you are registered to vote. Ms.
Krishnayya, would you like to respond? 

Ms. Krishnayya: 

Could not agree more. Exercise your voice and vote, for sure. But look to get
actively engaged in finding a website from the community that you live in to get
the knowledge for it. Be more aware of the risk in the areas where you live in,
too. Becoming more knowledgeable. Something as easy as buying a home
and looking at a FEMA map for where you live. Are you supporting areas where
it’s not really a sustainable living area for that as well. Our hazards are lower here
in, Indianapolis as they are in some other areas, but becoming an
informed consumer, and an informed homebuyer and a community activist is very
helpful. 

Dr. Santana: 

If I may say, if I just may add one little thing, share your knowledge on social
media. Use social media to be an advocate for sustainability. When you find
things out, share with your friends. So social media really helps to spread the
knowledge in a very fast and effective way. 

Ms. Doyle: 

Thank you. Director Mickelson, this question is directed toward you. What
impacts will new federal passenger rail spending have on city transit plans as it
relates to sustainability? 



228 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Ms. Mickelson: 

Yes, absolutely. I think I could speak more broadly in the sense of all the
federal funding coming down the pike. We are really excited for it and everyone
in this space is kind of gearing up and getting ready to go. But we are also kind
of hurry up and wait. Right? Like, there is a lot of rulemaking and
appropriations that need to be happening. And so, it will make an incredible
impact for our city though. No matter what the money is for, we are talking EVs,
we are talking rail, we are talking all sorts of things, and these are going to be
once-in-a-lifetime type investments that we are all really looking forward to
seeing coming. 

Ms. Doyle: 

Great, yes, as a resident of Indianapolis, I am much looking forward to
increased mass transit. Fun tidbit, actually, in 2016, there was a ballot referendum
here in Marion County to increase taxes to help pay for the red line. Randomly,
I was the voice for that radio ad, so if you were listening to the radio in 2016 and
heard someone plugging for you to vote yes on that ballot initiative, that was me,
and it passed. Thank you very much. 

Ms. Mickelson: 

Now the purple line just broke ground, so now we are getting our second
VRT line. Big stuff for us is happening. 

Ms. Doyle: 

Yes. Ms. Krishnayya, this question is directed toward you. It says, I thought
water temperature controls were already addressed. Is this goal an enlargement
of efforts, improvement of methods, or increase coverage by individual
companies or actors that have not been performing?

Ms. Krishnayya: 

Really looking at more sustainable ways of implementing those controls. So
certainly, in the past, technology has been relied on a lot. And technology is
great, but you tend to have trade-offs because you have increased energy
demands, which therefore has increased greenhouse gas emissions and other
emissions with it. Water consumption is part of it. If you can take natural capital,
and what I mean, there are just actual plantings to help you with that and find the
multi-environmental immediate impacts from it, that is a more
sustainable solution to temperature control versus relying on technology
alone. Really just trying to, to look at where can we put technology in balance
with natural capital for the solutions.



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 229

Ms. Doyle: 

Professor Santana, how can states and countries reconcile international calls
for sustainability with their own economic growth, especially in communities that
are not placed to take advantage of incentives for sustainable initiatives?

Dr. Santana: 

Well, so this is a very hard question. Well, my opinion is, we have to make a
stronger goal as a society. We have to make stronger commitments as an
individual, and we have to better vote. So, worldwide speaking, right? You are
going to have elections soon. We are going to have an election here in Brazil this
year as well. But we have to make stronger connections to our politicians. What
is happening and in countries that are non-developed or developing countries is
that let’s say now due to the pandemic moment, everybody only talks
about reestablishing the economy. So, remember when I talked about that, when
we think about sustainable development, you had to think about economic, social,
environmental, and cultural. What is happening right now we are forgetting
completely there are three other spheres of sustainable development and we are
focusing on economics because unfortunately, we are still using the GDP as the
main way to measure growth in the world. So, the higher the GDP, the best the
country will be in terms of growth. So, we have to change the mindset. We have
to pressure to change this mindset. And we have to be better-informed
consumers. We do not have to change our phones every year. We do not have to
change our computers every year. We do not have to change our cars every
year. We do not have to have three rooms of clothes. We have to
think sustainably as an individual, so industry and business, they respond to
consumers. If you buy a good quality product, you will not be needing to change
it every other year. We are going to be making better use of our money, and most
importantly, of our natural resources. I do not know if I have replied, but it is a
very hard question.

Ms. Doyle: 

Thank you very much. All right, that is going to conclude our sustainability
panel. For our panelists, there are some additional questions that we did not have
time to get to, in your Q and A box, so if you have time, please feel free to answer
those. We will have a brief break before we begin our keynote address by
Dr. Carlton Waterhouse at the top of the hour at 12 o’clock eastern time. Go
ahead and take a quick break and we will be back in about ten minutes. Thank
you so much. 

INTRODUCTION OF KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Dean Karen E. Bravo:

Good afternoon, just barely, and welcome back everyone. I am going to take



230 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

the privilege of having the microphone to express my pride in our students. This
wonderful team of students and Symposium editors for the International and
Comparative Law Review for the wonderful work they have done in bringing
together phenomenal speakers, such informative speakers for this Symposium
shared with all of you who are attending this program. Thank you very much to
the students for making us proud. And now to go onward, we have a
distinguished keynote speaker who has had a long and illustrious career as an
international expert on environmental law and environmental justice. Dr. Carlton
Waterhouse began his legal career at the Environmental Protection Agency,
serving as the lead counsel of several environmental enforcement cases. He is a
four-time recipient of the EPA Bronze Medal Award, in addition to several other
accolades. I could go on for many minutes. And Dr. Waterhouse entered
academia, eventually becoming a professor of law right here at Robert H.
McKinney School of Law, where among other things, he directed the
Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Law Program. After his time here,
Dr. Waterhouse began teaching and building the Environmental Justice Center
at Howard University. He has returned to the EPA as Deputy Assistant
Administrator of the Office of Land and Emergency Management. Last year,
President Joe Biden nominated Dr. Waterhouse to serve as the Assistant
Administrator. Dr. Waterhouse has dedicated his career to public service and
advocating for underserved communities. I am honored to introduce to you our
keynote speaker, and I hope I may claim my friend, Dr. Carlton Waterhouse. 

KEYNOTE ADDRESS ON ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

Dr. Carlton Waterhouse:

Thank you so very much Dean Bravo for the kind words, my friend. It is
really a pleasure to be back in Indiana for this event, though virtually. I have so
many friends who are participating in this conference and who are present there.
It always warms my heart, and I am very thrilled right now with the opportunity
to be before you all this afternoon. Thank you so much to the students who have
organized the Symposium and also for the wonderful job you have done in seeing
it through. I was able to only catch the tail end of the last panel as my friend Dr.
Santana was providing her remarks, but I found those to be really informative and
insightful. I will not belabor the point. My name is Carlton Waterhouse. I am
President Biden’s nominee to be the Assistant Administrator for Land and
Emergency Management, and currently the Deputy Assistant Administrator for
the Office of Land and Emergency Management. And so, today if you do not
mind, I realize with a fifty-minute talk, who wants to listen to somebody talk for
fifty minutes on zoom? Right? I figure we need to at least provide some visuals
for those of you in the audience that could help expand the different ways that we
are able to interact. We will get your eyes involved a little more. I will take this
moment to try some technology and see if I can share my screen with you right
now. 

I am hoping you can see that, and I will put it in presentation mode. This talk



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 231

is just an opportunity for me to be able to talk with you about some of the
important issues that we are addressing within our office, the Office of Land and
Emergency Management specifically, and then within the EPA that I think really
relate to some of the very important issues that you are all are addressing through
this really insightful Symposium. 

So one, I want to take a moment and talk about environmental justice, and
then I am going to say a few things about recycling and the circular economy. In
that context, in terms of talking about environmental justice, many persons have
heard the term used and had some of you may use the term or may have talked
about what it means, and after spending some wonderful time at IU, at the
McKinney School of Law, I began my time at Howard University running an
Environmental Justice Center, so we certainly used the concept of environmental
justice in the way we organized our activities as a center and worked with
students there. I will take a few minutes to share a little bit about what that meant
for us. And it meant for us that we would educate our students in understanding
what were the causes of environmental injustices, and what are the solutions that
can help to address the injustice we saw in the environment. When we talk about
injustices in the environment or seeking and fostering environmental justice, we
are talking about the realities that people live on the ground in their relationship
to the environment in which we all live. And that means where people live, where
they work, where they play, where they worship, and where they go to school.

In thinking about that, I want to talk about the way we frame environmental
justice in our exploration of the subject at the center, but even before that, when
I was teaching environmental justice and exploring environmental justice issues
with the great students and faculty at the IU McKinney School of Law. 

When we think about environmental justice, what we should think about is
four aspects of life in our society and four ways in which we interact with the
environment and institutions around us. So, when we talk about environmental
justice, we are talking about distribution of pollution, distribution of the adverse
health effects of pollution, and distribution of what we might call the dis-
amenities associated with pollution and contamination. But then we also talk
about distribution of the services, distribution of the goods, distribution of the
jobs and employment and career opportunities in our society that, in fact, cause
adverse pollution impacts. So, what we are saying when we talk about
environmental justice, one frame is the distributional frame. On the top side of the
coin, is what we might call “the bads” associated with the environment that are
caused by “the goods” of certain kinds of activities. So, the certain goods of the
activities are the economic prosperity that flows from them, the employment and
career opportunities that flow from them, and the goods and services that flow
from them. 

On the bad side, we are thinking about adverse health effects, the adverse
economic consequences, and the adverse psychological and emotional impacts.
So, if we have a facility producing a hazardous or dangerous chemical that is



232 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

located in your neighborhood, there might be positive impacts by those employed
by the facility. If the facility is profitable, there will be positive impacts for those
who are shareholders in the company, there are positive impacts.  There are
positive impacts for those who are employed at the head of the company or
maybe running the specific facility. Or the technical people who are engineers
and scientists or technicians who work to operate the facility. Positive impacts
that they experience as a result of the facility’s operation. Impacts that benefit
them, benefit the people they love, that benefit their children and others around
them, that allow them to have a certain lifestyle. That allows them to enjoy a
certain set of circumstances and experiences, educationally and otherwise. 

But, in addition to those positive economic benefits that employees and
management, and shareholders enjoy from the operations of that facility, there
can be another side. And that side can be pollutants that may be regularly emitted
from the facility that land in the yards of their neighbors. It could be a haze that
actually develops over the entire community or over, maybe, an entire region of
the community, or it could be the consequences of having risk to the groundwater
that is posed by the pollutants that the facility is in fact producing. Or it could be
inhalation of particulate matter that causes and contributes to asthma and adverse
asthma effects and contributes to heart disease and lung disease, or it could be
exposure to other harmful pollutants that come from the facility. When we talk
about environmental justice, one frame is just thinking about the distribution of
the positives and negatives of the activities that have an environmental impact.
And the example I have given you will show one frame of environmental justice.
There is an injustice associated with community members who bear the burdens
of the pollution that is being emitted from the hypothetical facility, and there is
also a further injustice in that there are people who are benefitting from the
facility’s operation who do not typically bear the burden of the pollution. So, we
have people who are bearing an environmental pollution burden that puts health
at risk, diminishes their quality of life, and will they also are not the same people
who are reaping the economic benefits and are about to thrive more fully as a
person through reaching and aspiring to career goals, having positive benefits on
one’s investments that produce long-term economic benefits, the miracle of
compound interest for shareholders. Right? And so, we can see that we have an
injustice in a distributional frame—a distributional injustice. Some have a
disproportionate share of the benefits and others have a disproportionate share of
the burden. In our society that often is characterized along lines of class where
one has a certain economic position or socioeconomic status, puts one on one side
of the equation versus the other side, and it can have a racial component. Many
numerous studies have demonstrated there are substantial racial disparities in
terms of how this scenario plays itself out, or who finds themselves burdened
with the pollution, and who finds themselves benefitting from the economic
activity that produces the pollution. 

When we talk about environmental justice we need to talk about a
distributional frame, but beyond the distributional frame there is justice in the
context of process. A procedural frame is an aspect of justice. Justice in the



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 233

procedural frame means how are people being included in the decision-making
that leads to their adverse impacts that they experience from this hypothetical
facility. Right? So, were these people able to be at the table to help decide that
this facility should be able to locate in their community? That is procedural
justice. They are going to be impacted adversely, are they also able to have an
impact on that decision. Beyond being able to have an impact on the decision
about where the facility would be located, how about decision on how the facility
operates? How long the facility operates? What are the pollutants that are coming
from the facility? How close the facility can be to their property and their home?
Whether the facility is near schools where their children attend. What is the level
of procedural justice associated with people who are adversely impacted from our
hypothetical facility? That is an important frame around the question of
justice—is justice a matter of the process. Right?

We see typically environmental procedures are really grounded in
governmental activities, so activity of the federal government, the activities of the
state government, the activities of the local governments, and the activity of the
facility. Typically, however, people who are most impacted by the facility’s
activities in an adverse way have little or no voice in the decision-making about
where the facility operates, how long the facility operates, and what the level of
pollution the facility emits. Those decisions are in the hands of other people.
Well, from a very basic standpoint, the community’s inability to help drive the
decision that is primarily going to have an adverse impact on them and a positive
impact on other people, itself represents a procedural injustice. Justice as process.

We also have another frame of justice when we think about justice from the
standpoint of recognition. Right? And what recognition means is not just that we
have a process for the involvement of communities, but we recognize
communities as important partners in the way we carry out all of our activities
that have environmental impacts. Right? So, we recognize community expertise.
We recognize community knowledge. We recognize community wellbeing at the
center of our decision-making rather than just seeing communities as a tangential
component of our decision-making. In other words, we are centering the people
who are potentially going to be adversely impacted in our process and in our
substantive activities that relate to their long-term health and wellbeing. This is
an important set of framing principles that I think are critical for thinking about
environmental justice. Not just in the domestic context, however. Right? This is
critical in the international context, and even though as we get outside of the
shores of the United States, and we are not primarily looking at the question from
the standpoint of America’s fault lines around justice, economic, social-economic
status, race, and ethnicity, for example. We look at it in the broader international
context and we find there are different fault lines in different places. We find
religion maybe. Particular language group or tribal identity. Maybe geography,
maybe a fault line in one country or another that determines whether your
community is on the adversely affected side of economic activities that have
environmental impacts or on the positively affected side. Environmental justice
is not just a domestic reality, it is a global reality, and it looks different in



234 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

different communities, but on a global context, it is the same challenge. Right?
How do we as human beings decide how to engage in activities and processes and
orchestrate a process that is going to have different impacts on different people
and whether those different impacts can be characterized by who the people are.
We know one tribe is going to be the ones receiving the benefits of the activity
and another tribe is those who are going to be suffering the burdens of the
activity. One might think of, for example, being in Nigeria and contrasting the
challenges that have been raised by people who live in the Niger Delta region,
Port Harcourt, and other places who are suffering the adverse harms of oil drilling
that have taken place there verses the complaint that has been made that the
people who benefit from the oil wealth are disproportionately located in the
northern regions of the country and we can see how the fault lines existed and had
how that framing itself represents a typical issue as they have articulated of
environmental justice. 

With that said, with regards to environmental justice, I want to move on to
say a little more about some of the things we are doing at EPA that I think relate
broadly to climate and broadly to issues of justice as well. So when we think
about climate, climate should be able to be understood from the standpoint of
how people are being impacted by decisions that we are making in a global
context because of the environmental consequences of those decisions that are not
just discreet within one country or another. One neighborhood or another. One
city or another. One state or another. But literally, all over the globe, we are
suffering impacts that result from these decisions. And those impacts are seen in
weather events. Those impacts are seen in heat island effects in particular cities.
Those impacts are seen in wildfires that we experience. Those impacts lead to
flooding. They basically lead to sea-level rise that can wipe out an entire island
or an entire community or people’s homes, whether people live on the coast or
live in the midst of the sea. The sea-level rise events are cataclysmic when they
destroy homes, and they represent the elimination of habitats and places where
people have lived and thrived for hundreds and even thousands of years
historically. And when we think about climate change, we have to understand that
the impacts of climate change are felt in disproportionate ways which gets back
to the whole question of justice. The disproportionate impacts and some groups
contribute more to the causes of climate change through their economic activities.
Through these ways, they engage in their practices for transportation and for
lodging, and for employment. And for their use of technology. You will find one
country may have people who have a footprint for the production of greenhouse
gases that leads to climate change that is far larger than another country. So, you
can see how one country’s footprint could be twelve and a half and another
country’s footprint could be only a five. 

Yet, the country that has a footprint of a five in terms of the contribution of
greenhouse gases can find itself suffering the flooding, or the heat island effects,
or the increased weather events, or the wildfires that are much greater than a
country that is a twelve. Right? That gets to one of the matters of climate justice
at its core. At the core, we are talking about the inequities associated with harms



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 235

and benefits. Right? Harms and benefits. 

In the context of the Environmental Protection Agency, how are we leaning
into this issue and addressing these challenges? I am happy to say President Biden
has prioritized this. Prioritized the issue of environmental justice and he has
talked about it specifically, but beyond talk, he has moved to action. One of the
things he has done is create an executive order on climate justice. That executive
order on climate justice calls for us within the federal government, federal
agencies, to take action to address the problems of climate justice and climate
injustice. In doing so, one of the signature aspects of that is the creation of the
Justice40 Initiative, and the Justice40 Initiative calls for the federal government
agencies to decide and to determine where they are going to distribute their
benefits and that they do so in a way that sees at least forty percent of the benefits
they produce are going to disadvantaged communities. And that is called the
Justice40 program and the Justice40 program within the EPA is taking many
different forms. It is taking forms of us within the agency to direct our programs
and resources in a way that makes sure that disadvantaged communities as
defined by the CDQ [Council on Environmental Quality] through their Justice40
screening tool, find themselves beneficiaries of forty percent of the benefits of our
operations. Why is that important? Well, that goes back to my earlier discussion
about justice in a distributional context, because when you think about the
distributional context, there is a disparity in the benefits in the economic activities
in our society and the harms associated with economic activities that have adverse
environmental effects. 

And so we see Justice40 designed in a way to see that the government
responds to those inequities in a way that seeks to counter those inequities by
providing enhanced benefits for disadvantaged communities. And so that is
something we are excited about within the broader federal government. But also,
down at the agency level. I work at the Environmental Protection Agency, so my
boss, Administrator Michael Regan, has leaned in on environmental justice and
made it also a priority. So, within the EPA, we are prioritizing environmental
justice in the way we are moving forward to address climate change and to
address other aspects of our programs. In fact, the Administrator has directed us
to embed environmental justice in all of the work we do. I am happy to say that
within the Office of Land and Emergency Management, where I bring leadership,
we have done just that. And in doing that, we have drilled down to our individual
programs to address environmental justice in multiple ways. One of the ways we
are looking at environmental justice is in the context of our actions. We have
created an Environmental Justice Action Plan. And that Environmental Justice
Action Plan that we have created is available online. It is in draft right now. We
are excited about and looking forward to receiving comments from those who are
out there and if you go into the web browser and whatever one you use and you
put in “OLEM Action Plan.” Stands for the Office of Land and Emergency
Management. OLEMEJ or Environmental Justice Action Plan and put in the
browser and hit return you will find in fact the Action Plan will come up and we
will ask folks to grab the Action Plan and take a look and give comments on the



236 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Action Plan because it lays out in detail how we are seeking within our office to
address environmental justice in the way we go about doing our work and
fulfilling our responsibility to protect public health and the environment. 

In that context, we have some programs that are focused on addressing also
issues of climate change. In everything we do, we are making sure climate is
addressed, but everything we do does not directly relate to climate mitigation, nor
does it directly relate to climate adaptation. But some of our programs have a
clear direction and a clear impact on mitigation and adaptation. We have been
going through the process of analyzing the programs to see which of those have
an adaptation effect and we are addressing that right now and advising the
Climate Adaptation Plan for the agency that was originally created in 2014. And
we are looking at where the vulnerabilities are from climate change that are going
to be impacted by our programs and how the programs can help address those
vulnerabilities to make sure the way they are carried out continues to be effective
and notwithstanding what is coming as a result and what is already here as a
result of climate change. 

We also have some programs that can help to mitigate the effects of climate
change and I am going on to say more on this right now because that takes us to
consideration of the National Recycling Strategy and the circular economy that
I mentioned earlier that I would get into. Of course, people are aware that waste
production has a substantial adverse impact on the creation of greenhouse gases
and that waste production, which breaks itself out into multiple aspects. Right?
One has to do with the reduction of waste which is food waste. The reduction of
waste that is electronics waste. The reduction of waste that is plastic waste. All
of these not only have some potential climate impacts through greenhouse gas
production, but also they have impacts on our quality of life. The quality of life
of our seas, the quality of life of our rivers and oceans. Because we have a model
now that is linear when you produce products, the products are used and
discarded and then the products become a problem. The waste problem. The
circular economy idea says what we are looking to do is create an economic
model that says we do not look to produce a product and send it through the
linear system and then discard it. That fits in with the number one philosophy for
addressing waste that the EPA developed some time ago which is reduction. The
first step in the reduction of waste has to do with reducing the amount of waste
we produced in the very beginning. Second one is reuse whatever we could reuse.
Third is to recycle, and I will say a little more about recycling right now. 

We came out with a National Recycling Strategy this fall. And this National
Recycling Strategy focuses on ways that we are able at a national level to enhance
the quality of our recycling systems. To do that, we identified individual actions
that stakeholders can engage in to make sure that our recycling system is more
effective. That it is more sustainable. That it is stronger. Also, within the
[National] Recycling Strategy, it calls for recognition that recycling cannot get
us there. Right? Let me take a moment and emphasize that. We in this strategy
acknowledge that recycling is in [itself] not the solution. Recycling is not the



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 237

solution to America’s waste problem. We need to move from recycling to a
circular economy. That does not mean we are throwing out recycling. Recycling
has a role to play. But we have got to note this idea of reduction and reuse and
recycling that goes back to the earliest principles that says recycling is not the
first step, but it is a third option after we have already reduced and reused. So,
how do we put all three steps in the process to achieve a circular economy? That
is what we are working on now. We are taking comments from people to hear
more about how we can enhance circularity through our processes and programs,
but I can tell you one thing I am excited about that we are doing is going to be
related to the way we use our natural resources and the way we approach natural
resources. Why is that? That is because natural resources have a big impact and
the way we go after extracting natural resources has a big impact on us in terms
of our environmental challenges. 

For example, fifty percent of global climate change impacts come from
natural resource extraction and processing. That is huge. That is absolutely huge.
So, we can see how the way we approach natural resource extraction and
processing is going to have a huge impact on greenhouse gas production. Well,
why is that important? Because if we have a circular economy rather than a linear
economy that begins with extraction and ends with waste, we have a circular
economy, we begin, rather than with extraction, we begin with waste and we take
that waste and we use that waste to produce some product, and as we go around
the cycle we come back with waste and new product production. Right? 

I was honored very recently in this context to participate in some recent
technology challenge awards that we had where we actually provided awards to
companies that were showing leadership in this area. And so, for example, we
gave out an award yesterday for a company that produces a line of computers
with eighty-five percent of formerly-used products, and so, they are beginning
with old products. Eighty-five percent of it for that system, and then designing
and building everything from that. And so, the sense of reuse, right? We see that
we ultimately are achieving great advances on decreasing the need to extract
natural resources, and the need to reduce things like plastics and other things in
order to advance circularity. What else is important about cutting down on our
natural resource extraction and processing? Ninety percent of global biodiversity
loss and water stress come from this activity. So, it is huge for us to move to
circularity, and of course, eleven percent of global species loss. 

What is the circular economy approach in a graphical form? I have already
shown you all and mentioned it to you, but if you look at the graphic, it will help
you get an even better sense of what we are talking about or what I am talking
about when I mention circular economy. So, if you look at the graphic, you can
see how we change what the raw materials are that we are using as inputs for
economic production, and that is critical. So, if our raw materials rather than
mostly being extracted, are coming from products that were formerly produced,
then we will see how we are ultimately deriving a circular system. Right? That
allows us to go from design to processing, to distribution, and then to reuse and



238 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

repair, which is critical. The reuse and repair section of the circular economy
replaces a discarding section that leads to the linear—that reflects rather the end
of the linear system. So, the linear system will end with the idea of discarding a
product whereas the circular system, instead of just discarding a product, says no
we want to reuse and repair products, and then we collect those reused and
repaired products, and we move forward with products being recycled so that
they can be used again as an input instead of raw materials. And of course, there
is some waste remains that will come out of the process, but the idea is to go from
almost a hundred percent waste from our economic activities to a small
percentage of waste with most of our products going back as inputs for new
material. This is really, really huge. Right? 

If we think of things like the adverse impacts of extraction, or on local
communities, the adverse impacts of extraction in terms of health effects. In terms
of disruption of daily life, if we go back to our example of what people in the
Niger Delta region have complained about. We can see that they complain about
flaring, that they complain about oil spills, and what the impacts are is adverse
impacts of flaring on their health and oil spills have prevented them from
engaging in their traditional activities, economic activities, life-sustaining
activities, like fishing and farming. So, if they cannot fish and farm because of the
prevalence of oil, and then their health is adversely impacted by flaring, not to
mention being impacted adversely by their contact with oil that is in the ground
and in the water, in the places where they formerly farmed and fished. We can see
then that this idea of extractive industries has had, in many cases, adverse impacts
on people’s health and wellbeing when not managed responsibly in an
environmental context. And so, eliminating and drastically reducing the need to
go back and do more extraction has an important benefit in the environmental
justice arena. Right? We are taking fewer communities, subjecting them to poor
practices of mining or poor practices of extraction, and then we are providing
instead the use of inputs from previously used materials that do not put people’s
environment at risk. And that is a positive movement for us that has not just
ramifications that are important in the domestic context, but huge and important
ramifications in the broader, global context. Okay, let me move on. 

When we ultimately look at some of the specifics of what we are doing, we
are developing a new goal that will help us to reduce climate impacts of materials,
and we are centering equity at the heart of the way we are moving forward with
this work so that environmental justice and equity, as I framed it earlier, is built
into our process. From enhanced stakeholder engagement and through designing
systems that begin with the idea of recognizing communities, and the importance
of communities, and protecting communities, and advancing communities’ health,
and advancing communities’ welfare, and producing good opportunities for
careers in green fields. We are trying to center equity in the way we develop our
move towards a circular economy. Moreover, we want to make sure that beyond
having communities centered and recognized, that we are distributing
opportunities for communities in a way that is equitable, as opposed to only
having opportunities distributed for people who are not living in the communities



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 239

adversely impacted. Our workaround circularity is also being embedded through
our environmental justice work so that it is grounded in environmental justice as
we advance and develop it. 

Moreover, let me say a little more about how we then through our approach
are in fact addressing our need for circularity. We have our Circular Economy
Strategies Series that we are developing. Part one was the National Recycling
Strategy that we already developed, but we have part two which is the plastics
strategy and that is a strategy that is going to deal with the problem of plastics.
Plastics are a problem. We know plastics are a problem, and we have seen that in
our seas, through their pollution, and how plastics have adversely impacted
ecosystems and adversely impacted so much animal life because they are
disruptive. That does not even get to the discussion about microplastics and its
impact on us in terms of our health and impact on animals and the broader
ecosystem. So, plastics are a problem that needs to be addressed. There are a lot
of different debates on how to address plastics. Some will say we should address
plastics through banning them. There is new international work that has happened
around that recently where there are a lot of people who want to call for a plastics
ban. Some cities have already started to ban plastic. Some ban plastic bags in the
grocery store. Some have put a tax on the use of plastic bags in grocery stores. All
of this is to try to work towards decreasing our overuse of plastics. We also
understand plastics in many items are under-recycled. In other words, we might
take those items and put them in recycling bins and there is no market for their
use after they have been put into the recycling bins. What happens, if there is
nobody who wants to buy that product that has been dutifully recycled by a
consumer, and then a local government has set up a system for collection to
collect those, and then a recycler has, through good practices and operating
procedures, used mechanical and individuals to sort through everything that they
have gotten in the recycling bin to make sure that they have it adequately and
properly collected, and there is nobody to buy it. Where do we go? We really
need to deal with the issue of plastics and all of the materials associated with the
recycling system. 

Beyond developing that strategy as a plastic strategy, we also are working on
a food waste strategy, critical minerals, and electronics strategy. The idea of
critical minerals and electronics says it is wiser for us to extract critical minerals
in electronics that have been discarded as waste than it is for us to go digging in
new places more than we need to. If we can get valuable minerals that we need
for our society and technological developments, whether computers or solar
panels or other kinds of technology that need to come from critical minerals, we
reduce the extraction that we have to do when we use critical minerals for that
work instead. So, we are developing a critical minerals and electronics strategy,
and then ultimately, we will move on to concrete, wood furnishings, and textiles.
Our ultimate goal as written here is to help the nation to reduce waste, to promote
circularity, to address climate change, and to advance environmental justice.

Ultimately, we do need your help at EPA in order to implement the actions



240 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

that are called for in the National Recycling Strategy. We do not have the
authority to mandate that people engage in certain kinds of recycling activities all
over the country. We do not have the authority to make people engage in a
circular economy. But we do have the ability to make a call, and that is what we
are doing, providing leadership and to get the word out about what the best
practices are that we can engage in that will promote this circular economy.

Now, let me make a comment about circularity in a way that I think it is
important to wrap us up. And that comes to the fact that we have, under the Save
Our Seas 2.0 Act, new authority to fund improvements. We can provide
leadership through funding, but we cannot apply it through mandating. We have
new authority to fund improvements for solid waste management programs and
infrastructure. And the Save Our Seas 2.0 Act directs us, by Congress, we have
been directed, to develop a strategy to help us improve the nation’s infrastructure,
and that is what I called earlier the plastics strategy. And we were also directed
under that legislation to report on eliminating barriers to recycling, to report on
ways to spur markets for plastics, to report on opportunities that relate to
innovation, and also to conduct a study on how we can create less plastic waste.
So, we are working both in the context of providing funding to move forward on
a circular economy, but also we are working in the context of doing research to
get an understanding of how we can advance through some of these hurdles that
we have towards getting greater circularity. 

In that context Congress has, let me say something about the other reports
first, and I will move on. We have other studies also other than those that were
in Save Our Seas, that we are developing, and that will shine greater light on
policies that relate to reuse recycling and conservation and reports that are
looking at the impacts of disposal on packaging containers and manufactured
goods, and that is an important study we have undergoing to help us understand
how our disposal and other changes on these packaging containers and
manufactured goods have an adverse impact. 

As I hasten to my conclusion, I will note there is a variety of different bills
that are in the hopper, but most importantly, I want to talk about the Infrastructure
Investment and Jobs Act, which is no longer just a bill. It was signed into law,
although we call it a bill. This bipartisan infrastructure law makes a huge
investment in the way we move forward at EPA to address the challenges we
have been talking about today, primarily through funding our superfund program
at three and a half billion dollars that allows us to get the program out of the
mechanic’s shop and out on the racetrack to move forward to get things done
faster and get more sites cleaned up effectively. One billion and a half dollars for
our Brownfields Grant Program, which is critical for providing communities with
the resources they need to assess contaminated sites, and to clean up
contaminated sites, and provide worker and career training. These grants, we
want more people to apply to, and I have made it my priority to go out on the
circuit and tell as many people that will listen. I am just short of standing on the
corner in downtown Indianapolis to get the word out in downtown and in every



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 241

city in the United States to let people know we have enhanced funding to get
communities the resources they need to clean up sites that do not reach the level
of contamination that the state governments and federal government would be
involved, but still serve as a weight or a burden on their communities causing
environmental challenges to them and leaving property inadequately developed.
Right? And so, I am working with my staff to make sure the word gets out that
the billion and a half extra dollars means we have more resources for the
community, and we are prioritizing the way we use the funds through anti-
displacement. We are developing our own criteria to reward people who are going
to design grant proposals that are going to help to push back on what often
happens so that the community members who live in the community when it is
contaminated are then replaced with a new set of community members who get
the benefit of the community once it is cleaned up and new amenities brought to
bear. So, we want to work with affordable housing advocates and others,
everyone who wants to do this work.

But, I am here to talk about the infrastructure, the Swiffer Grants that we have
now been provided as a result of our investments that Congress has made, and the
SWIF grants we have, which are Solid Waste Infrastructure grants, are to help us
do education, materials management and also provide funding for the
development of America’s solid waste infrastructure. That means communities
that are out there and do not have recycling infrastructure and solid waste
materials infrastructure. We are given funding that allows us to give resources to
people who do not have that, so we are using the funding to give resources to
communities who do not have infrastructure now so that they can build capacity
in order to better manage the solid waste issues they face. And, again,
environmental justice is critical there. We know all communities that are not in
the same situation. Whether rural, urban, small town, or big town, neighborhood,
we want to make sure everybody has the resources available to make sure they
can engage in the best practices that lead us towards circularity, and that has an
effective system for managing solid waste that goes from Alaska to Puerto Rico,
right? And everywhere in between. But beyond that, we will also, in addition to
providing capacity-based grants to communities that need to build capacity, we
will provide grants to those who are the highest performing and are using
innovative technologies and techniques that reflect circularity, in order to
highlight and signal the effectiveness of some approaches that will further us
along this critical road that leads to environmental justice and environmental
climate justice for all. And so, we are really excited about these SWIF grants. We
have the first round of grants that are going out before the end of the calendar
year, and those grants will go out noncompetitively to communities that we are
envisioning. We have not finished designing the program. We just got the
direction and funding for the program this fall, and I do not want to get ahead of
my staff. But, we are envisioning getting those grants out before the end of the
calendar year and getting those funds to help build capacity and in the following
years, providing even more resources, some of which will go towards providing
grants to people and awards to people who are doing it right, and doing it well,
and doing it in an exceptional manner that should be an example and an



242 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

illustration to people across the country of what the best practices are and can be
in the move towards circularity. 

We are going to build up the bottom and reward and build up the people at
the top to help everybody move up. That is our philosophy and that is our
approach. It is a circular economy, not for some, but for all. All right, with that
said, that covers the bulk of what I wanted to share today. Even though I may be
two minutes early, I am excited about the opportunity and so grateful and maybe
we can have two extra minutes for questions and answers. Thank you, everyone.

Ms. Doyle:

Thank you, Dr. Waterhouse. It was wonderful a presentation. I personally
really enjoyed your discussion on the circular economy and energy approach.
Growing up for me, it was all about recycling, but you are right, recycling is not
enough. We have to reduce and reuse. We have several questions that came in.
The first question is from Max Kelln, he is an attorney in Indianapolis at Faegre
Drinker, and he was a panelist for the climate change panel this morning, and he
asked if you can address the EPA’s use of Title VI funds of the Civil Rights Act
to address environmental justice and any modification of that under the Biden
Administration. 

Dr. Waterhouse:

Thank you so much for that question. I know a little bit about Title VI from
my last time at EPA. I worked there from roughly 1991 to 2000 as an attorney,
and I was engaged in helping to develop the agency’s Title VI Program in the
nineties. That is no longer in my wheelhouse, but I can say that within the EPA,
greater emphasis is given to ensure compliance. Title VI is something written
back in 1964 as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but was not rigorously
applied to the environmental context historically, and so, what this administration
is doing is emphasizing that that is civil rights law, which means people who live
in the states and receive our grants have a right not to suffer the effects of racial
discrimination in the distribution of the benefits and services, and I talked about
early access of distribution in terms of environmental justice. And so, that is what
Title VI is about. We are not changing the statutes. I do not think we have gotten
involved in even changing the regulations, but the administration is focusing on
the compliance and making sure that our partners are making sure that the people
who live in their states are not having resources disproportionately distributed
based on people’s racial identity. These are basic requests that I think we are
moving forward to have conversations with stakeholders and partners in the states
on how we can do this effectively.

Ms. Doyle:

Speaking of compliance, one of the other panelists from the sustainability
panel, Meghan Krishnayya, she is a Compliance and Permitting Officer, Vice



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 243

President of Brown & Caldwell. And she asked how well are state environmental
agencies supporting environmental justice efforts from the EPA? And
specifically, she says New Jersey and California have strong regulations and the
question is do you anticipate seeing more environmental regulations being
supported by state agencies? 

Dr. Waterhouse:

What an excellent question. The Environmental Council of the States [ECOS]
is one of the leading organizations and a leading partner with the EPA in
addressing the issues associated with environmental protection at the state level.
ECOS has its own committee on environmental justice, and that committee on
environmental justice includes representatives from California and other states
dealing with this issue and so, I am really excited about the leadership that we are
seeing in the states to address environmental justice. At American University,
there is a survey going on, a law survey, that looks at all of the environmental
justice laws in the states. States are out there passing legislation we have not seen
yet from the United States Congress. And so, states are leaders in the area, and
we expect to see more legislation and more leadership development at the state
level. 

Ms. Doyle:

Great, thank you. Touching on what I had asked first is that arguments have
been made that one of the reasons the United States falls behind several other
countries in terms of recycling is because of lack of education on the topic. I am
a nontraditional student and a little bit older than other law students, but we had
no recycling programs or anything in my public school system growing up, and
it is something I had to learn as an adult. Do you find any credence to these
arguments? If so, how can we promote more education in the recycling context?

Dr. Waterhouse:

I am glad you mentioned that. Part of what we have received from Congress
in our SWIF program I talked to you about and other related funding is to provide
education and to enhance the knowledge that people have about recycling in their
community and recycling opportunities. We are really excited about being able
to take the fifty-five million dollars per year investment that we have over the
next five years to develop solid waste management programs and infrastructure
along with the fifteen million dollars per year over the next five years for
education and outreach on recycling and source reduction. And so, my hope is
that as we invest our fifteen million dollars a year over the next five years, we
will see others follow suit in the state and local levels to maximize the benefits
of those educational grants. 



244 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Ms. Doyle:

Great, thank you. We have had a couple of questions specifically discussing
how recycling, there is an argument that recycling is not cost-effective, and one
says I read an article recently that the cost of recycling is more expensive than
just discarding a product. And so, how will the circular economy approach affect
the accessibility of materials and products for different socioeconomic statuses?

Dr. Waterhouse:

It is a good question. Recycling costs like other costs are not static. They are
dynamic. They depend on the existing market at the time, in the community
where you are. And so, there is no one-size approach that says recycling is the
best thing financially since sliced bread, it is the new cryptocurrency, and we
cannot say it is horrible, in terms of finances. It depends on the market at the time.
And so, we, as consumers, by demanding or asking for products that are made
from recycled goods, increase the economic cost-effectiveness of recycling. Our
practices as Professor Santana was saying at the end of the last session, our
practices relate to sustainability. If we make sustainability a priority in the way
we spend money, then we will see businesses prioritize sustainability in the way
they develop their products. That as a result, the market has shifted to circularity.
We are talking about building a circular economy, not that we are in one. We are
in a linear economy now, so we do not reward recycled goods in the same way
we will in a circular economy. Really, this requires a shift by all of us, and why
I mention that grants help to reward people already doing this to some degree, in
a way that running their practices. I think there is hope for that. And as the
economy shifts, also the costs and benefits of recycled products will shift, so they
are not just at the higher end of the economic spectrum for people to buy, but
available to everybody. But we need everybody to be involved. This is an all-
hands approach, and we need help from you all to spread the word and engage in
your own consumer practices that help promote circularity as well. 

Ms. Doyle:

Tactics like planned obsolesce famously advanced by companies such as
Apple seem incompatible with a concept of a circular economy. What can the
EPA do to combat these practices before devices can reach consumers? 

Dr. Waterhouse:

You are absolutely right. I think this goes back to Professor Santana’s
wonderful comments about the way we buy products. If we reward a cellular
phone manufacturer with planned obsolesce by continuing to buy every new
iteration they have of their devices, then we are in fact, we are in fact rewarding
their planned obsolesce. That is our behavior. We have to be part of the solution
and have to recognize our own engagement as consumers, we can be part of the
problem. Right? So, it is not a casting of blame or putting it on one side or the



2022] SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT 245

other. We have a role to play, and they have a responsibility, but they respond to
us. In many ways, we at the EPA have the power to use funding and other
mechanisms to develop best practices to encourage extended producer
responsibility and that causes companies to think about whether they want all of
the products coming back to them. We have seen states engage in producer
responsibility. And if you take responsibility for every phone that comes back to
you, you are going to think about whether you want planned obsolesce because
ultimately, it does not become the consumer’s problem, it becomes your problem.
[Jurisdictions] that put extended producer responsibility in place due to legislation
have moved the needle a bit on how companies will think about planned
obsolesce and those kinds of practices. We have to politically engage in a way
that promotes the circular economy. We have to economically engage in a way
that promotes the circular economy. We at the EPA are using the authority we
have and the tools we have to promote it, but we do not have the authority to
require it. So, we are getting out to try and educate and spread the word to let
people know let’s work together to move the needle on where we are. 

Ms. Doyle:

One final question. Has the EPA looked into programs initiated in countries
like Germany where cities and towns are given authority to set up recycling
programs, such as providing households with separate bins for collection day for
landfills, glass, and plastics? 

Dr. Waterhouse:

This is more in the weeds than I normally deal with at a recycling level, but
I can tell you people are looking internationally for models and examples and
looking to spread the knowledge in terms of the way we provide support for
communities. In America, recycling is something very much done at the
jurisdictional level and controlled at the local level and that is one of the
challenges we have. We do not have one national system. Every local government
has the ability to design and set it up in the way they think makes the most sense.
What we are doing that relates to that is developing what we think are some of the
best practices that communities can engage in that will help move the ball
forward for all of us. If we can get communities to work towards best practices,
things we learned from Europe, things that we learn from Asia, or wherever we
find good practices going on around us, we can help to be good thought leaders
in helping to set up a better system for the future. But, you are right. This is all
hard. I do not want to give you the impression that it is easy. This is hard, and it
takes all of us leaning together, but the truth is, when we all lean together, it is
much easier to move the plow. So, I am looking forward to others leaning with
us, to put their shoulders against the plow, so to speak, along with us at the EPA,
to help move us toward a circular economy.



246 INDIANA INT’L & COMP. LAW REVIEW [Vol. 32:191

Ms. Doyle:

Dr. Waterhouse, thank you very much and thank you to all of our panelists.
That concludes our Symposium for today.

Dr. Waterhouse:

I did not realize we were wrapping up. I have to recognize Chancellor Klein
who is on this call for being such a great chancellor, a great dean, a great
professor, running IU’s Environmental and Natural Resources law program, as
well as being a great colleague and friend. I just wanted to acknowledge him and
so many others on this call before I say goodbye. 

Chancellor Klein:

You are very kind, Dr. Waterhouse. We just appreciate you giving your time
to our school and campus. It means a lot to have you here. 

Dr. Carlton Waterhouse:

Glad to be here, Chancellor. It is good to see you in your new digs. 

Ms. Doyle:

I want to thank all the attendees for joining. For those of you receiving CLE
credits for attending the Symposium, you will receive an email tomorrow with
further instructions. While you really only saw my face today on the Symposium
staff, there is a small army of women behind me on the Symposium that helped
put this together. I want to thank Analiese Smith, Virginia Speck, and Lizzie Ford
for all of their assistance. Thank you again, Dr. Waterhouse, and to all of our
panelists, for being so engaging and answering audience questions. I hope you
have a wonderful day. Thank you.