Development impacts many aspects of the food system, including where food is grown, how far food must travel, where distributors and retailers are placed, and who has access to fresh and nutritious food. By viewing development and its associated impacts through a sustainability and life-cycle lens, we can rethink the role of development and how communities can grow while fostering a strong, inclusive, affordable, accessible, and healthy food system. This Article focuses on the way local governments regulate development and how that impacts the food system.

In China, the year 2023 witnessed the further evolution of environmental protection and development of legislation and rulemaking. This mainly included adoption of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Ecological Protection Law, revision of the Marine Environmental Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China, and adoption of a series of judicial interpretations. This Comment summarizes some of the year’s major developments.

The United States has historically valued free access to most public lands. But federal land management agencies also rely on users’ fee dollars to support critical operations. This tension between “free access” and “user pays” has been an important feature of public land law since the late 1800s. The primary statute at issue is the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA), which authorizes fees at some sites while mandating free access at others.

Congress in the 2020s has authorized three new environmentally focused grant programs relating to western waters and appropriated $450 million in multi-year funding. The Bureau of Reclamation is responsible for creating and implementing these programs, giving it a new tool and resources for addressing stubborn environmental problems—some caused by the Bureau’s many dams.

The U.S. Supreme Court's October Term 2022 had major implications for environmental law, including its most significant Clean Water Act decision ever. Upcoming cases in October Term 2023 have the potential to be just as impactful. On September 25, 2023, the Environmental Law Institute hosted a panel of experts who provided an overview of key rulings and major take-aways from the Court’s prior term, and discussed cases that have been granted review or are likely to be considered by the justices in the upcoming term.

In April, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) proposed new regulations governing land management decisions on public lands. Dubbed the “conservation rule,” this rule seeks to protect intact landscapes, restore degraded habitat, and manage for ecosystem resilience.

This Comment argues that what is needed to make sustainability work for business is a National Business Sustainability Council that would develop and promulgate sustainability criteria, be able to evaluate whether specific small businesses are meeting those criteria, and be able to “certify” that a small business is, in fact, meeting these criteria, and is therefore “sustainable.” It asserts the Council’s criteria and evaluation methodology should be both rigorous and transparent, such that when the Council awards a sustainability certification to a business, the federal and state governmen

The fashion industry continues to grow exponentially, along with marketers’ use of false and misleading claims about “sustainability” and other environmental attributes of fashion garments. This Article explores recent instances of greenwashing in the industry and other countries’ efforts to address the issue, and proposes specific ways that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should improve its guidelines for environmental marketing claims and expand enforcement.

This abstract is adapted from Justin R. Pidot & Ezekiel A. Peterson, Conservation Rights-of-Way on Public Lands, 55 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 89 (2022), and used with permission.