Adapting existing laws to environmental change

Creating new laws to address changing environmental conditions may be a challenge, but according to research published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, some existing laws may provide flexibility to allow conservationists and wildlife managers to create new standards for protection as environments change. “The goal is to avoid system collapse — to ensure that we guide adaptation and transformation so that the evolved social-ecological systems are productive, support biodiversity, and continue to contribute to human well-being, even if they are different systems from what we’ve been used to in the past,” said Robin Craig of the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, one of the co-authors of the study.

Read more at Science Daily.