Environmental Policy Commons^™

Multi-Risk Governance Of Solar Radiation Modification, Jonathan B. Wiener, Tyler Felgenhauer, Mark E. Borsuk

Faculty Scholarship

Solar radiation modification (SRM) presents important challenges to risk regulation and governance, arising from the array of multiple risks that SRM may influence. SRM would not simply reverse climate change, but could pose further ancillary impacts, depending on the method of SRM, such as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), marine cloud brightening (MCB), or a space-based planetary sunshade system (PSS). We identify multiple risks that SRM may influence, both biophysical and sociopolitical, to be compared to the multiple risks that may be affected by greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation and climate adaptation. This multi-risk framework helps analysts and decision makers identify, evaluate, …

A Blueprint To Greener Shorelines: Advancing The Effectiveness, Sustainability, And Widespread Adoption Of Coastal Nature-Based Solutions Through Transdisciplinary Research, Taylor M. Sloey, Sierra Hildebrandt, Rebecca L. Morris, Matthew V. Bilskie, Aaron Bland, David Bushek, Gabriella Dipetto, Daniel Elefant, Vincent Encomio, Ramin Familkhalili, Christine Hladik, Danielle Kreeger, Avery B. Paxton, Cindy M. Palinkas, Latina Steele, Andrew Scheld, Daisuke Taira, Jason D. Toft, Armando J. Ubeda, Christine Whitcraft, Donna Marie Bilkovic

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Coastal nature-based solutions (NbS) have emerged as powerful tools to enhance sustainable development and ecological restoration goals. As a rapidly growing field spanning across social, political, ecological, economic, and engineering disciplines, it is critical that researchers working in coastal NbS regularly attempt to identify emerging focal areas for scientific inquiry. Following the 27th Biennial meeting of the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation, we provide a transdisciplinary perspective (including biologists, engineers, oceanographers, geoscientists, economists, and facilitators of workforce training programs) of pertinent research questions that, if answered, will advance the effectiveness, sustainability, and widespread adoption of coastal NbS. These suggestions for …

Conceptual Critical Success Factors Model On Infrastructure Sustainability Rating System For California Construction Projects, Joseph J. Kim, Jose A. Arroyo-Turcios

Mineta Transportation Institute

This report addresses the sensitivity and reliability of the sustainability rating systems by comparing each category’s verified scores with its respective submitted scores to evaluate how points are awarded for infrastructure projects, examine which categories present the most challenges for verification, and identify the best category for verification in the sustainability rating system. The authors conducted three analyses using credit score data obtained from fourteen actual civil infrastructure projects certified under Envision. First, the Natural World category had the highest average score from the submitted and verified data. Pairwise comparisons using t-tests indicate that the mean value of one category …

Fire History, Ecological History, And Historical Human-Environment Interactions In The Northern Great Plains, James Victor Benes

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This dissertation explores the spatiotemporal signatures of fire in North American grassland ecosystems. In three chapters, I explore different aspects of fire history in the northern Great Plains. Chapter 1 is an introduction. Chapter 2 focuses on the Euro-American Settlement Period (ca. 1850–1950 C.E.). Fire histories from six different lakes in the Nebraska Sandhills are compared with two periods of historic drought and the establishment of United States Post Offices. Five of the six records show increased levels of biomass burning during the initial phases of Euro-American Settlement. Chapter 3 is a long-term (ca. 15,000 years), high-resolution fire history and …

Three Essays On Sustainability Economics, Hélène Flore Nguemgaing

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

As global economies face increasing resource dependencies and supply chain challenges, it becomes essential to understand the vulnerabilities that threaten economic stability. This dissertation investigates three empirical issues in agribusiness and critical minerals using econometric models to estimate the following: 1) the impact of supply chain disruptions on stock market returns during COVID-19; 2) the extraction of rare earth elements from acid mine drainage treatment by investigating the impacts of ownership and legislation in West Virginia and Pennsylvania; 3) China-to�FOBb (Free-on-Board) price transmission in rare earth elements markets: a copula-based dynamic tail dependence analysis.

The first essay evaluates how events …

Complexity, Polycentricity, And Climate Change: An Embedded, Multi-Level Case Study Of A Climate Meta-Network, Timothy Staub

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The earth is in crisis, and without urgent, systemic, and collective global action to address the emerging threat of climate change, we will continue to see catastrophic events impacting humanity, threatening our very survival in many regions of the world. Temperatures will rise, ice shelves will melt, seas will rise, crops will fail, water scarcity from drought and new weather patterns will increase and spread, wildfires will accelerate, and food and water insecurity, violence, and the largest human migration in history will ensue. These climate crises will displace over 1.2 billion people by 2050 at a rate currently exceeding 21.5 …

Integrated Valuation Of The Ecological, Social And Economic Benefits Provided By A Multifunctional Nature-Based Solution, Laura Costadone, Shan Zhang

ODU Articles

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) offer multifunctional approaches to address climate change and environmental challenges, providing a sustainable alternative to traditional gray infrastructure. Despite their promise, widespread adoption remains limited, in part due to an incomplete understanding of their full costs and benefits relative to conventional infrastructure. Traditional benefit–cost analyses often overlook non-monetized benefits and the interconnected ecosystem services provided by NbS. This study introduces a methodological approach to quantify both the physical and monetary value of ecosystem services and co-benefits delivered by an NbS project. We applied an integrated valuation framework to a case study in Virginia Beach, VA, USA, where …

Effects Of Round-Up On The Environment, Sandra J. Marcu

Journal of Earth and Life Science

Many people around the world have used and still currently use Roundup but are unaware of the effects it has on the environment. Roundup is a spray on application weedkiller that is widely used around the world today both residentially and commercially. It enables its user to grow a garden or a field of crops with a no-tilling approach to eliminate weeds. It is a well-known and popular choice for killing weeds that has been around since the mid 1970’s (Oca, 2017). John Franz, a Monsanto scientist discovered that glyphosate (main ingredient in Roundup) was an herbicide or weedkiller, and …

The Effectiveness Of The Minnesota Buffer Law And Its Impacts On People, Ellen P. Isakson

Journal of Earth and Life Science

In January 2015, the then-governor of Minnesota Mark Dayton announced new legislation that would require 50-foot vegetation buffers along all waterways in Minnesota; this legislation would come to be known as the Minnesota buffer law, exact requirements being “perennial vegetative buffers of up to 50 feet along lakes, rivers, and streams and buffers of 16.5 feet along ditches” (Albert, 2017; MN Board of Water and Soil Resources [MN BWSR] 4 ). A buffer in the context of vegetation and natural resource management is a strip of vegetation around a body of water “designed to intercept stormwater runoff and minimize soil …

Effectiveness, Coherence, And Justice Implications Of Clean Energy Policies In The United States, Josephine Amponsem

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Public policies have been adopted and implemented at various government levels in the United States, aiming to facilitate the clean energy transition process. This dissertation examines three distinct but related dimensions of clean energy policies: policy effectiveness, policy coherence, and distributional policy impact. First, I evaluate the impact of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) on clean energy adoption at the utility level using a quasi-experimental design: the Difference-in-Difference estimation. Secondly, I use the state of California as a case study to investigate the role of policy coherence in public policy success. Thirdly, I investigate whether communities with different …

The Climate-Biodiversity-Pollution Nexus: The Pricing Of Environmental Credit Risks For European Industrial Polluters, Dominik Hirschbühl, Andrej Ceglar, Theodor Cojoianu, Tina Emambakhsh, Yifan Qi, Caterina Rho, Elsie Hu, Marco Petracco, Fabrizio Biganzoli, Alfred De Jager, Laura Garcia Herrero, Andrea Mandrici, Carlo Pasqua

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This study examines how euro area banks factor pollution-induced biodiversity risks into lending decisions, using data from 832 banks and 5,000 major polluters. Our results show that banks are increasingly pricing these risks by adjusting loan-to-value ratios and interest rates. Banks adjust lending conditions in line with EU pollution and biodiversity protection legislation, particularly for companies with large pollution footprints near biodiversity-protected areas or those contributing to Environmental Quality Standards failures of downstream surface waters. The former is driven primarily by banks’ adoption of biodiversity policies and public commitments to the Equator Principles, while the latter is a result of …

The Law Of Energy Abundance, Alexandra B. Klass, Matthew Appel

Articles

For the first time in decades, electricity demand in the United States is increasing due to the growth of data centers to power artificial intelligence, new manufacturing hubs, and transportation electrification. At the same time, coalfired power plants have been closing in response to competition from lower cost natural gas and renewable energy. Clean energy is being rapidly deployed to replace fossil fuels but not quickly enough to address concerns about demand growth and grid reliability. Accordingly, there is a growing imbalance between electricity supply and demand in many regions of the country that threatens to increase electricity prices and …

Three Essays On Environmental Regulation And Economic Revitalization In Energy Rich Regions, Young Gwan Lee

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation consists of three essays that investigate the environmental and regulatory dimensions of unconventional oil and gas (UOG) development and place-based policy in the United States. The research examines how energy production activities interact with water resource management, regulatory compliance behavior, and regional economic resilience. By integrating empirical modeling, quasi-experimental methods, and policy evaluation, the dissertation provides new insights into how environmental risks and economic tradeoffs are shaped by regulatory constraints, strategic behavior of regulated entities, and government interventions in extractive regions. Managing produced water from unconventional oil and gas (UOG) production is a growing environmental challenge, particularly as …

Off The Grid: Rural Identity, Environmentalism, And Renewable Energy Policy In Rural New England, Joseph A. Grassi

Honors Theses

This thesis investigates how rural identity, environmental values, and place-based resentment interact to shape support for land use regulation in rural New England. Despite their vulnerability to climate change, rural communities often resist renewable energy development—a pattern commonly attributed to economic concerns or NIMBYism. Using an original survey of over 1,400 New England residents, this study tests six hypotheses through multivariate regression and subgroup analysis. Findings confirm that environmental identity is a strong predictor of support for land use regulation; however, this effect diminishes significantly among rural respondents. Place identity alone is associated with greater policy support, but when combined …

Reckoning With Social Policy In Utility Regulation, Alexandra B. Klass, Gabriel Chan

Articles

State public utility regulation in the energy sector is undergoing a rapid transformation driven by public and private investment in clean energy deployment, the corresponding threat to incumbent fossil fuel interests, and growing demands for energy justice. This transformation will impact many aspects of societal well-being—from energy insecurity in disadvantaged communities to dramatic shifts in energy-sector employment—so it is unsurprising that public utility commissions would engage with social policy concerns. However, for decades, state courts and utility stakeholders have admonished commissions that they are economic regulators and that their jurisdiction does not include social policy. This Article shows that state …

Co-Creation, Interpretations And Engagement With A Movement-Based Symbol For Climate Justice: A Qualitative Inquiry, Kai Reimer-Watts

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The climate crisis demonstrates with complete clarity the need for massive systems-level changes towards far more sustainable societies. Global and local emissions need to decline rapidly to mitigate intensifying climate breakdown, accompanied by climate and sustainability solutions, to secure a far more stable, safe, and just future for all people and all life. Within these changes, engaging in our communities is essential to support and co-create broader solutions to help advance more sustainable societies, reduce negative impacts of a changing climate, and to move towards cultures and systems that recognize natural limits and centre care for people and planet.

‘Climate …

Sustainable Management Of Erosive Shores: An Interdisciplinary Approach Integrating Engineering And Social Sciences At A Tide-Dominant Beach Area, Jun Ik Sohn, Hyun Dong Kim, Kiran Adhithya Ramakrishnan

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This study investigates the causes and consequences of shoreline erosion at Kkotji Beach, a prominent tourist destination on the west coast of South Korea, where the degradation of the coastal environment has increasingly threatened the local tourism industry and economy, by employing a mixed-methods approach that combines field observations with MIKE 21 hydrodynamic simulations and by integrating perspectives from coastal engineering and the social sciences to develop practical, site-specific strategies for mitigating erosion, enhancing public awareness, and promoting sustainable coastal planning and development that support long-term environmental resilience and economic stability. The results show that dominant ebb currents drive southward …

Adaptation For Whom? Understanding The Impacts Of Dyke Policies On Small-Scale Farmers In Ca Mau Province Of Vietnam, Nguyen Minh Quang, Nguyen Van Minh, Nguyen Vo Chau Ngan, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Low-lying deltas worldwide are extremely vulnerable to sea-level rise. As the risks of climate-induced flooding become increasingly clear, the thirst for infrastructure-driven adaptation increases. This highlights a patent need to understand the impacts of engineering adaptation solutions, especially those targeting built structures such as dykes and sluices, on farmers from a bottom-up, farmer-centred perspective. The study addresses this call by examining cases where dyke policies, while successful in some dimensions, have undermined small-scale farmer livelihoods in Ca Mau ― Vietnam’s southernmost rural province. It identifies areas in need of attention and adds empirical data related to this group of farmers. …

Identifying Intangible And Biocultural Heritage Elements Toward Environmental Understanding: Engaging Stakeholders Through Art, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Grounded in a case study in Barbuda in the Caribbean, this research examines sustainability from the perspective of what arts and heritage can contribute to community engagement and local and broader understandings about the environment. This article documents a growing body of literature recognizing the role of arts and culture, including local knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), in climate change endeavors. Art and TEK present expansive world views. Contextual information situates research done on the island of Barbuda pre- and post-Hurricane Irma. Visual arts workshops engaged community members in mixed methods research. Results documented cultural elements, particularly intangible and …

Ineligible Partners: Tribal Nations And Cooperative Federalism In The Historical Development Of National Forest Law And Policy, James H. Baker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Lands within the National Forest System (NFS), like all federal public lands, are rooted in Aboriginal Title and were once exclusively inhabited by Indigenous peoples and communities. Through the process of treaty-making, the federal government amassed millions of acres of ceded Tribal lands, many of which are now managed by federal public land agencies, including 194 million acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Several Tribes reserved various use and property rights on these lands that are protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Treaty and Supremacy Clauses. The federal government also has an overarching trust obligation to Tribes – a …