Geography Department > Faculty > Alison Rieser
Alison Rieser
Alison Rieser: Dai Ho Chun Distinguished Chair in Arts and Sciences, Professor
Research Interests: fisheries management law and policy; marine conservation law and policy; international law of the sea; marine area governance; use of science in ocean management; marine environmental history.
Phone: (808) 956-8467
Email: rieser@hawaii.edu
Website:
Education
B.S., Cornell University
J.D. cum laude, George Washington University
LL.M., Yale University
Research interests
I am delighted to have been appointed the Dai Ho Chun Distinguished Endowed Chair in the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, University of Hawai’i at Manoa. This position offers me a unique opportunity to build a set of programs in which all aspects of ocean and coastal policy, from the legal and political, to the ethical, historical, and scientific, can be used to educate students and to promote greater wisdom in humanity’s relationship to the oceans.
From 1988 to 2006, I was a professor at the University of Maine School of Law, where I taught courses in ocean and coastal law, environmental law, marine fisheries law, and legislation and the legislative process. Before joining the law faculty, I was a postdoctoral fellow in marine policy and ocean management at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and later, a research associate and director of the Marine Law Institute in Portland, Maine. In this latter capacity I oversaw an interdisciplinary research program with planners, economists, and lawyers in international and domestic ocean policy, focusing especially on coastal land use planning, fisheries and aquaculture, and marine wildlife conservation.
Though my training is in law, I take a multidisciplinary approach to environmental policy, drawing upon economics, political science, ecology, and law in my research and writing. I think of my field as the human ecology of marine resource management systems. Recently, my interest has been in the use of property and rights-based concepts in environmental management, particularly for marine fisheries, and in ecosystem-based management of marine areas and resources. I have written about various forms of marine tenure, including individual and community-based ownership of fishing rights, and how property-based systems interact with quantitative, science-based governance institutions.
One of my articles on this theme, “Prescriptions for the Commons: Environmental Scholarship and the Fishing Quotas Debate,” was written for a symposium at Harvard Law School and was published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review (HELR 23:393-421, 1999) and reprinted in the International Library of Essays in Law and Legal Theory, Environmental Law (Peter S. Menell, editor, 2002).
Current Research
I am currently working on an environmental history of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, which was created by Presidential proclamation on June 16, 2006, focusing on the history and contemporary challenges of governing one of the world’s largest marine protected areas.
To explore the role of science and scientists in marine conservation policy, I am currently working on a book on the history of sea turtle conservation in the United States, the working title of which is, “The Sea Turtles’ Trials: The Science, Law and Politics of Sea Turtle Conservation.” My target audience is the upper-level undergraduate student in environmental policy who is interested in how science, law and politics come together in the service of nature conservation. My overall goal is to explore how legal institutions and social groups interact, showing the forces, including scientific knowledge, that shape public attitudes and political action regarding conservation of species and the protection of ecosystems.
I am also working on an analysis of the use of science and application of the “best available science” standard in marine fisheries and conservation law through a series of case studies and an investigation of the institutional challenges of managing marine areas on an ecosystem basis when individual fishing quotas have been allocated on an species-by-species basis.
Plans
I hope to make environmental policy and ocean management the basis for a cross- and inter-disciplinary curriculum at the University of Hawai’i, one that will prepare UHM graduates to make significant contributions to the issues of sustainable development that are so important in the Pacific region and globally. I look forward to leading such an undertaking and to working with colleagues at UHM on such an important task.
Courses Taught
Political Geography of Oceans, GEOG 435
Research Seminar in Conservation, GEOG 758
Ocean Policy Seminar, OEST 735/SOCS 735
(The topic of the Seminar changes each semester. Recent topics are: Institutions of Ocean Governance (Fall 2006), Oceans & Human Health (Spring 2007, with H. Trapido-Rosenthal), Marine Mammals & Ocean Noise (Fall 2007), and Coral Reef Conservation (Spring 2008). The next topic will be Science, Ethics and Marine Environmental Politics.
For information on the Graduate Ocean Policy Certificate Program, please see www.geography.hawaii.edu/projects/GOPC/
Publications
“Saving Salmo: Federalism and the Conservation of Maine’s Atlantic Salmon,” in Federalism and the Endangered Species Act, K. Arha and B.H. Thompson, eds., Washington, DC: Resources for the Future Press (in press).
“Oysters, Ecosystems, and Persuasion,” Yale Journal of Law & Humanities 18:49-55(2006)(Special Issue: Properties of Carol Rose).
“Prescriptions for the Commons: Environmental Scholarship and the Fishing Quotas Debate,” Harvard Environmental Law Review 23:393-421 (1999).
“Property Rights and Ecosystem Management in U.S. Fisheries: ‘Contracting’ for the Commons?” Ecology Law Quarterly 24:813-832 (1997).
“International Fisheries Law, Overfishing, and Marine Biodiversity,” Georgetown International Environmental Law Review 9:251- 279 (1997).
“Defining the Federal Role in Offshore Aquaculture: Should It Feature Delegation to the States?,” Ocean and Coastal Law Journal 3:209-234 (1997).
"Ecological Preservation as a Public Property Right: An Emerging Doctrine in Search of a Theory," Harvard Env'l Law Review 15:393- 433 (1991), reprinted in Land Use and Environmental Law Review 1992:273- (a juried annual anthology of the best articles in environmental and land use law).
