N E W S F E AT U R E
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
F
STUDYING
THE PUBLIC
TRUST
A Moroccan legal scholar
comes to Eugene
SAMIRA IDLLALÈNE WILL BE ON THE
PIELC PANEL ‘BALANCING COASTAL
DEVELOPMENT AND PROTECTION:
INTERNATIONAL LESSONS’ FROM
10:35-11:50 AM SATURDAY, MARCH 5,
IN LAW 281 WITH DR. HEIDI WEISKEL,
A STAFF SCIENTIST AT ELAW.
OCT’S CLIMATE LITIGATION HEARING
BEGINS 10 AM WEDNESDAY, MARCH
9, AT THE WAYNE L. MORSE U.S.
COURTHOUSE, 405 EAST 8TH
AVENUE. THE ATMOSPHERIC TRUST
ISSUE APPEARS ON SEVERAL
PIELC PANELS. THE CONFERENCE
SCHEDULE IS AT PIELC.ORG.
PHOTO BY TODD COOPER
racking is coming to Morocco. Americans might associate
the North African country on the shores of the Atlantic
Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea with the black-and-white
romance of Casablanca, but Morocco faces some of the
same modern environmental issues as we do in the U.S.
Samira Idllalène is visiting Eugene for 10 days via the
Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide to study how to make
environmental laws in Morocco more effective and to give a pre-
sentation at this weekend’s Public Interest Environmental Law
Conference.
Idllalène, a law professor at Cadi Ayyad University in Morocco,
consults with a number of NGOs (nongovernmental organizations)
on environmental issues and will bring what she gleans from her
Oregon trip back to Morocco. She works not only on the newer threat
of fracking for energy but also on overdevelopment along the coun-
try’s coast, the effects of climate change and coastal flooding, and
preserving sub-aquatic cultural heritage such as shipwrecks.
“There are a lot of legal texts” in Morocco, Idllalène says in her
carefully accented English, “but they are not really effective.”
Idllalène, who teaches classes such as comparative law, law of the
sea and international law in Arabic and French at Cadi Ayyad, also
speaks her native Amazigh (Berber) in addition to English.
She cites an example of a coastal development that took place
despite being protected by the Ramsar Convention of Wetlands, an
international agreement that seeks to protect wetlands through
wise-use planning for conservation and sustainable use of wet-
lands and their resources.
Idllalène’s trip to Oregon came about as a result of fortuitous
Googling. She had been painstakingly researching possible
research fellowships for herself, university by university, when
she found herself telling one of her law school classes they should
pursue fellowships in international law. Realizing she should do
that herself, she typed “fellowship” and “environmental law” into
the search engine. ELAW and its international network of public
interest attorneys, scientists and advocates popped up.
Maggie Keenan of ELAW says that in the 10 days Idllalène is
here, she will go to the coast, meet with lawyers and scientists and
check out the wastewater treatment plant. As part of the ELAW
network, Idllalène can interact with people in countries around the
world facing similar environmental challenges, ranging from
places like Jamaica to the Dominican Republic. The ELAW fel-
lows “share tactics, strategies and models,” Keenan says.
The goals of Idllalène’s trip include bringing back strategies to get
the Moroccan government to take the work of the NGOs seriously and
giving the groups more tools. The environmental advocates in Morocco
use Facebook and the internet to network and exchange ideas.
While the NGOs tend to focus broadly, Idllalène says several of
them are specifically examining fracking and looking to the U.S. for
examples of what the drilling and use of high-pressure water, sand
and chemicals have done to the environment. A desert country,
Morocco already faces challenges to maintaining its water supply.
Idllalène has a number of irons in the fire, as Keenan points
out. She is also working on how the public trust doctrine and the
Moroccan Muslim law habous (also known as waqf), which deals
with land property legislation and has a public interest aspect,
overlap.
It’s also fortuitous that Idllalène is coming to Oregon because,
thanks to law scholars such as Mary Wood at the University of
Oregon as well as the nonprofit Our Children’s Trust (OCT), Eugene
is a locus for discussion of the trust doctrine in environmental law.
Wood writes that the public trust doctrine is the “civic and
judicial understanding that some natural resources remain so vital
to public welfare and human survival that they should not fall
exclusively to private property ownership and control.”
According to Wood, “Public trust law demands that government
act as a trustee in controlling and managing critical natural assets.”
In her work in comparative law, Idllalène studies how the pub-
lic trust doctrine and Muslim law share characteristics and how
using the environmental features of habous could mitigate the
ineffectiveness of modern laws.
A hearing for oral arguments in a constitutional climate change
case brought by OCT against the federal government using the
public trust doctrine begins March 9 here in Eugene in the federal
District Court in Oregon. Idllalène leaves Eugene on the 9th; how-
ever, some of the youth plaintiffs and others who have worked
with the issue will be at the environmental law conference. ■
eugeneweekly.com • March 3, 2016
13