While Professor Villa and I did not coordinate, there is good synergy between our talks.1 Mine is going to be focused on the ecological impacts of wildfire. The reality of the fire experience, as you just heard from Professor Villa, is that the ecological, the social, and the political are completely intertwined and inseparable. As a result, this talk will spill into arenas that are more than the basic ecology or the environmental impacts of large-scale wildfire.
Disaster Justice reflects the intersection of environmental justice and disaster law. The study of disaster justice is becoming increasingly essential as disasters become more frequent and devastating in the face of accelerating climate change. Disaster law is marked by statutes such as the federal Stafford Act and by theory such as the "disaster cycle" of readiness, response, and recovery. Environmental justice recognizes that the distribution of harms such as bad air or water quality may be distributed inequitably among groups such as low-income populations or racial minorities. In similar fashion, the adverse impacts of disasters may also be distributed inequitably among certain groups. Through a series of case studies, this article explores concerns for disaster justice in contexts including Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico (2017), the Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon Fires in New Mexico (2022), the Maui Wildfires in Hawai'i (2023), Hurricane Helene in North Carolina (2024), and the L.A. Fires in Southern California (2025). Through these case studies, the article attempts to distill lessons learned as the growing threat of disasters requires increasing preparation to keep all people safe from harm.
A heavily understated dimension of cosmopolitanism is the urban rural divide. This is particularly true in the context of modern economics, which emerged at the same time that the notion of cosmopolitanism was gaining renewed political significance. This paper examines how economic thought of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries directly influenced the socio-literary interactions of a "World Republic of Letters" and how writers such as Goethe used terms like "universal spiritual commerce" to valorize the role of the city in the making of a new modern world. The paper also describes how the rural was left behind in this global social project, including its special relationship to nature, which occurred at a time when scientific advancements were replacing the role nature played in everyday life. Using the example of the Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon Fire of 2022, the article suggests that natural disasters, such as wildfires, remain dominated by an urban cosmopolitanism logic and that an updated "rural cosmopolitanism" is required to address the return of nature into geopolitics.
In New Mexico, the water law of prior appropriation rules. As a result, no individual holds a complete right to ownership of water in New Mexico. Instead, New Mexico landowners hold only a right to put appropriated waters to beneficial use. Appropriation of waters requires diversion, a distinct feature that prevents landowners from claiming natural watercourses flowing through their property boundaries. The unappropriated waters of the state are then vested in the state via public trust, to be used and enjoyed by the public. This public right to use often abuts landowner property rights, as water flows over and through the boundaries of private property. The stage is set for two competing property interests-a public right to the reasonable enjoyment of the state's waters, and a private right of landowners to exclude others in the pursuit of the efficient use of their property. The right to exclude is a core stick in the bundle of rights possessed by landowners that can often be asserted without rhyme or reason. In 2018, the New Mexico State Game Commission promulgated N.M.A.C., Section 19.31.22, a regulation recognizing landowners' robust right to exclude the public from non-navigable streams within their property lines, creating a legal means to privatize sections of New Mexican water. This practice of privatizing New Mexico's streams was unequivocally rebuked by the 2022 New Mexico Supreme Court ("NMSC") decision in Adobe Whitewater Club of New Mexico v. New Mexico State Game Commission. The decision, relying on the 1945 case State ex rel. State Game Commission v. Red River Valley Co., reaffirmed the public's property rights in the unappropriated waters of the state. This Note summarizes the history of public use rights in the non-navigable streams of New Mexico and the consistent adoption of Spanish colonial surface water law by the successive sovereigns of the New Mexico territory. The Note then analyzes the stark contrast between the consistent substantive surface water law of New Mexico with the claimed historical practices of recognizing riparian water rights in the state. In furtherance of this analysis, the Note discusses Sanchez v. Torrez, a current federal case challenging the enforcement of the Adobe Whitewater decision and the federal trial court's opinion which reaffirmed New Mexico's state sovereign prerogative to dictate the surface water law within its territory.
Wildfire is a game-changer for both communities and ecosystems throughout the West, including in New Mexico. Building resilience to increasing numbers of wildfire events, especially when wildfires can shift communities, ecosystems, and combined social ecological systems ("SESs") past tipping points and into new regimes requires new approaches to governance. Focusing on the ongoing response, this Article examines post-fire needs before surveying new modes of governance that can help to address those needs in a climate change era. It ends with a summary of our engagement with the participants in the "Life After Fire" Symposium to assess whether and how these new modes of governance are emerging as responses to wildfire in New Mexico.
