The historian Paul Kennedy has defined "grand strategy" as a commitment to a major result in international affairs, a commitment to be pursued flexibly but comprehensively and determinedly, until the end is realized. Grand strategy presumes that the ends are few; grand strategies address true strategic priorities. The grand strategies chosen by nations tend to define what those nations stand for in the world.

Should western nations have a grand strategy of promoting development in the poorer countries? Does the United States have such a strategy today, and is it pursuing it?

Any suggestion that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) enforcement activity is less than vigorous is incorrect. Instead, EPA is pushing enforcement on all fronts. Its cases are also increasingly innovative. EPA referrals of criminal cases to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) steadily and dramatically increased from 20 in fiscal year (FY) 1982 to 107 in FY 1992 to a record 278 in FY 1997 and declined slightly in FY 2000 to 236.

"I'm Not Dead Yet: Genetic Mutation That Lives Up to Its Name Is Found."¹ This heading from the December 15, 2000, New York Times is a precursor to one of the most fiercely debated issues of our times. Genetic modification with the use of biotechnology is now perceived as a goldmine due to the prospects that it holds for combating the problems that were hitherto considered mostly unsolvable.

What is the United States' obligation to conserve biodiversity? What is the relationship between biodiversity conservation and sustainable development? At both international and national levels, biodiversity conservation has recently emerged as a construct to unify a number of disparate, older environment objectives such as wildlife conservation, the preservation of endangered species,¹ and the dedication of land for heritage purposes such as parks, nature reserves, wildlife refuges and other similar categories into a single overarching legal category.

Introduction

Agriculture in the United States eludes easy categorization and description. The system is diverse in climate, geography, crops, and agronomic practices. For example, it includes the truly vast midwestern dryland grain belt as well as some 46 million acres of land in organized irrigation systems. Because this system is built upon the energies of successive waves of immigration, it also reflects a healthy diversity in its cultural approaches to farm production.

Introduction

One of the most significant outcomes of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was the sobering estimate of the financing needed by developing countries to promote sustainable development and the demand that northern countries dramatically increase concessional financial flows to the South.

Introduction

The Price-Anderson Act (the Act)¹ is the legal backbone for the development of civilian nuclear power in the United States, and for the conduct of nuclear weapons complex environmental cleanup. Initially enacted in 1957, and amended since, the Act was intended to limit the accident liability of nongovernmental entities that produce nuclear power and/or work with nuclear materials and provide compensation for injury and damages caused by accidents.²

It is now well understood in the legal and business communities that environmental statutes may impose liability on current owners of contaminated property without regard to the fact that the environmental damage may have resulted from activities of prior occupants that predated the current owner's acquisition of the site.¹ A business that acquires a contaminated property and consequently inherits such liability may attempt to recover under its occurrence-based comprehensive general liability (CGL) policies that were in effect during the time that pollution occurre