How the Law Mattered to the Mono Lake Ecosystem

The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Board reportedunprecedented degradation of ecosystems and the services they provideto human well-being which, if allowed to continue, would adversely affecthuman health, security, and welfare. Our environmental legal authorities,however, are not designed to protect the health of our nation’s ecosystems,focusing instead on clean air, clean land, and clean water as asingle medium, often referred to as the silo approach to environmentalprotection. Protecting ecosystems requires a systemic approach to theenvironment in both policy and law; this in turn requires a change in ourapproach to environmental protection. How do we motivate such a changein our legal constructs and political systems?

This is a question posed bya number of communities and states struggling with the concept of ecosystemprotection. This article postulates that the strategic use of litigationby environmental social movements can destabilize established legalconstructs to protect ecosystems. Using the case study of Mono Lake, Iexamine the role law played in the struggle to change the political andsocial systems necessary to protect the Mono Lake Ecosystem—that is,how and if law mattered to the protection of the Mono Lake Ecosystem.I further hypothesize how other social movements might use law toprotect ecosystems.