Taking Back Eden: Eight Environmental Cases that Changed the World

Taking Back Eden is the saga of an idea - that ordinary people can go to court to defend their environment - told through lawsuits brought in eight countries around the world. Starting in the United States, this idea has traveled the planet at warp speed, carrying protections for threatened environments and new notions of justice and democracy as well. Author Oliver Houck describes the sites at issue in their place and time, the project promoters, the people who rose up against them, their lawyers, strategies, obstacles, setbacks, and victories.

Taking Back Eden is a set of case studies of environmental lawsuits.

Choice

"This modest volume poisnantly reminds the reader that environmental policy change is achieved not merely by amassing scientific evidence or lobbying for new laws, but by protest that eventually finds its way into courts of law...very useful and readable volume... recommended."

Oliver Houck is professor of law at Tulane University, where he has received several teaching awards. In 2005, he received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Environmental Section of the American Bar Association. He is author of a book on the Clean Water Act, editor of Environmental Law Stories, and wrote the foreword to Biodiversity and the Law.