N-1-1-020.55.1 Internet and Environmental Law, by John E. Bonine*, John Muir, nineteenth century naturalist, once wrote that when you take hold of anything in this world, you find that it is hitched to everything else. A growing number of young environmental lawyers and public interest scientists around the world are putting this principle of ecology to use in the Information Age. They are using electronic mail and computer conferencing to obtain information transnationally that before now has been largely unobtainable in their own countries. With this information and advice, they are rewriting the book on environmental law in the developing world. Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (E-LAW), formed by public interest lawyers from Peru, Ecuador, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and the U.S., recently began operation. Members of E-LAW are committed to helping get good science and legal information into the hands of lawyers (often volunteers) who are representing citizen groups at the grassroots level. Their goal is that government policies will be made with the full participation of those affected by pollution and environmental harm, and that environmental laws will be properly enforced. After receiving a grant in late 1990 to get the Alliance off the ground, the E-LAW members decided that rapid, cheap communications through e-mail had to be at the heart of their work. For their initial e-mail and conferencing host, they selected Pegasus in Australia and Econet/Peacenet in the U.S. (a project of the nonprofit Institute for Global Communications (IGC) and member of the Association for Progressive Communications (APC)). Within a few months they had E-LAW offices in Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, and the U.S. online through national packet-switching networks. Other countries have proved to be much more difficult. The greatest quantitative difference in environmental protection through information exchange can be obtained in those countries that have the least access to computer networks. When the barriers of cost and technology are high, successfully leaping those barriers with environmental law and science information can be like a drink of water to a parched person. Consequently, E-LAW participants found that to link together they would have to use whatever computer links were available, and ask for help where none exists. In Ecuador E-LAW has been working to get connected through Ecuanex, an academic and nonprofit uucp network partially funded by the United Nations Development Programme. In Peru the public interest lawyers are waiting for the final steps in setting up PeruNet to be completed. E-LAW's public environmental law discussion conference is now carried through Internet/Bitnet/Fido links to three dozen bulletin boards in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on ComLink, and is now being started on Worknet in South Africa and Mango in Zimbabwe. The conventional wisdom said that Sri Lanka is impossible. But monitoring of a mailing list devoted to technical discussions of low-cost e-mail revealed that a new academic and research UUCP network is being established in Sri Lanka (LankaNet). E-LAW moved quickly to get hooked up and professors at the University of Moratuwa cooperated. In the Philippines, the E-LAW offices has experimented with FidoNet as a possibly cheaper alternative to direct calls to Econet. Meanwhile, international networking expert Randy Bush of Portland, Oregon, has been advising the non-technical E-LAW users in Eugene about adopting a more distributed approach through the Internet, Bitnet, and UUCP, particularly where the APC systems do not reach. Working with Econet, he has designed a linked mailing list that will allow E-LAW's discussion conferences on Econet to be networked through the Internet to quite remote sites, despite the e-mail-only connection. Does all this make any difference? Owls in Australia and Amazonian Indians in Ecuador would be likely to say yes. An urgent request was flashed to E-LAW U.S. in August for information that would help an Australian barrister protect the Sooty Owl and 24 other sensitive species in a State Forest. In response, a U.S. scientist who had worked extensively on both the Northern Spotted Owl of the Northwest U.S. and the Sooty Owl in Australia produced decisive evidence. A court granted an injunction against the logging in late September. The court's ruling that the government was violating a variety of environmental laws has been called one of the most significant in Australian environmental history. Ecuadorian public interest lawyers have been fighting to prevent oil drilling in a National Park in the Amazon considered to be the most biologically diverse on the planet. They uncovered information on improper interferences in the Ecuadorian judicial system by certain foreign oil companies, drew up a complaint to the U.S. government, and publicized the complaint worldwide on computer networks. Combined with other activities by rainforest protection groups, it appears that these efforts had something to do with the announcement in October by the major North American oil company seeking drilling permission that it would not pursue the project. Other public interest lawyers are seeking information on the safety of planned nuclear plants in Asia, on health effects of a plastics production process in Sri Lanka, and on threats to still other National Parks in South America and Central America. The thirst will not soon be sated. Once the information stream starts trickling through the Internet, Bitnet, UUCP, FidoNet, and APC systems into a region, numerous nonprofit groups and their public interest attorneys quickly line up to drink from it. In the end, environmental policy decisions will be made by the governments, courts, and peoples of each country. But until now there has been an imbalance in information and persuasion. Those who build or operate industrial or development projects have had worldwide resources to press their points of view. They could even (as in the case of toxic dumping in the Third World) roam the world searching for countries where information about possible dangers is the most absent. Now, those who question the safety or environmental impacts of unwise projects are catching up, and the nonprofit computer networks like the Internet are providing the essential basis for changing the balance. * Professor of Law, University of Oregon