| On June 4–6, 2008, the Natural Resources Law Center of the University of Colorado at Boulder Law School will be hosting its annual summer conference at the Law School’s Wolf Law Building in Boulder, Colo.
This year’s event, Shifting Baselines & New Meridians — Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West, focuses on how the American West is changing and how those changes will impact our natural resources.
Among the most significant changes are rapid population growth in the West and a changing climate that has already begun to disrupt historical weather patterns.
As the West changes, so too do the pressures on our land, water and energy resources. The legal and political institutions that evolved to manage these natural resources have, for the most part, served us well. But it is far from clear that these institutions are capable of adapting as quickly and as extensively as may be necessary to serve us in the future.
This conference explores these themes and considers how the transformation of the West may foreshadow fundamental changes to our legal and political institutions.
The agenda includes panel discussions on:
Water for the 21 st Century: The big questions in Western water and rethinking Western water law. -
The Future of Energy: Practical and sophisticated solutions to overcome the energy bottle-necks to meet the overarching goal of climate neutrality.
Values of the American West: Diverse ethical approaches to protecting natural resources and whether it is possible to reorient our understanding of our ethical duties to the environment and to foster more sustainable communities. The Role of Western Journalism in Relating Difficult Stories: A discussion by journalists who specialize in relating stories about the ways in which communities or regions address the limits of their landscapes. Species and Habitats in the American West: The current state of the Endangered Species Act and the potential legal methods of maintaining biodiversity such as reform of the Endangered Species Act and ecosystem services.
The Urbanizing West—Limits to Water, Limits to Growth: The appropriate means to better reconcile the apparent disconnect between land-use planning and water planning in water-short areas. The Politics of Change and Natural Resources: How the 2008 election may affect the future of natural resources law and policy. This discussion will provide perspectives on this critical issue.
Heidi Anne Horten is responsible for promoting Natural Resources Law Center activities and
accomplishments, serving as liaison to the Advisory Board, and
assisting the Director in developing Center programs.
Her background in natural resources includes working for national
environmental consulting firms where she served as project coordinator
for water resources investigations, marketing and public relations
manager for client development and interface, proposal and grant
coordinator, and corporate Technical Editor. She has been editor for
many committee reports including the National Research Council's Board
of Mineral and Energy Resources Groundwater Resources in Relation to Coal Mining.
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