DURHAM, N.C. – A panel of six legal and environmental experts, including Nicholas School of the Environment PhD student Mary Turnipseed, say the time is right to reinvigorate the public trust doctrine, a centuries-old legal concept, now sadly underused, that may hold the key to promoting sustainable development for generations to come.

The experts make their case in a Q&A-style article that appears on the cover of the September/October issue of Environment magazine.

The public trust doctrine is “a simple but powerful legal concept,” Turnipseed explains, that obliges governments to manage certain natural resources in the best interests of their citizens, without sacrificing the needs of future generations.

The doctrine already is well established in the United States at the state level, where natural resource agencies are legally bound to seek legal action against private parties who are infringing on the public trust.

Extending the use of the doctrine to federal and international environmental law would help agencies better manage conflicting demands on public lands and waters, including conservation, energy development, recreation, ecosystem services, mining, logging and fishing, Turnipseed and her fellow experts argue.  It would be particularly useful as a management tool for the 3.6 million nautical square miles of water included in the United States’ territorial sea and Exclusive Economic Zone.

“That the doctrine exists only at the state level seems illogical, given the enormous expanse of ocean waters outside of coastal states’ jurisdictions, the large area of terrestrial lands under the jurisdiction of the federal government, and the unequivocal evidence that ecosystem functions and connections cross the artificial boundaries set,” they write.

Turnipseed’s co-authors are Raphael Sagarin of the University of Arizona’s Institute of the Environment; Peter Barnes of Point Reyes Station, Calif.; Michael C. Blumm of Lewis & Clark Law School; Patrick Parenteau of Vermont Law School; and Peter H. Sand of the University of Munich, Germany.

In the article, they explain numerous potential uses of the doctrine; how it fits into, and helps fill gaps in, the body of U.S. and international environmental law; how it legally differs from other seemingly interchangeable concepts such as stewardship and custodianship; and how it already is protecting rights at the state level that many citizens take for granted.

For instance, in North Carolina, Turnipseed notes, the legislature and the courts have extended the doctrine’s use to protect the public’s right to “navigate, swim, hunt, fish and enjoy all recreational activities in the watercourses of the state, and the right to freely use and enjoy the state’s ocean and estuarine beaches and public access to the beaches.”

Turnipseed and Sagarin, formerly a faculty member at the Nicholas School and senior staff member at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, have written numerous peer-reviewed articles on the public trust doctrine, including a policy paper in the April 10, 2009, issue of Science.  Turnipseed was invited to present their research at the February 2010 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.