Assessing the Empirical Impact of Environmental Federalism

Many theoretical models analyze the effects of decentralized environmental policymaking. The predictions range from a race to the top, a race to the bottom, or no effect. However, little empirical evidence exists to resolve this ambiguity. This paper fills the void by examining the impact of decentralized environmental policymaking in the U.S. under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. For abatement expenditures, Reagan's decentralization had no discernible impact before the mid-1980s, but by the mid-1980s the data are consistent with decentralization leading to a race to the top. No statistically significant effect is found on nitrogen oxide or sulfur dioxide emissions. Copyright Blackwell Publishing, Inc. 2003

Environmental conflict between refugee and host communities

Much of the existing environmental security literature examines the causal linkages between environmental scarcity and violent conflict. Such research is clearly useful for exploring the causes of violence but less useful for exploring the causes of peace. This article adopts a theoretical approach to the environment-conflict nexus that considers a range of local variables that shape the ways in which actors socially construct resource use competition. The basic approach is to accept that any resource use competition can be constructed in ways that engender either cooperative solutions or unproductive forms of conflict, including violence. The local variables that shape actors’ constructions of conflicts are, therefore, viewed as the determinants of the kind of outcomes that result from a resource use conflict. This theoretical approach is developed with reference to environmental conflicts in areas hosting refugees. The variable of resource management regimes is explored in more detail, illustrated by a case study from an Ethiopian refugee camp. The article finds theoretical and empirical evidence to support the view that participatory and inclusive resource management regimes may enable communities to construct resource use conflicts in ways that help to prevent unproductive conflict. Such forms of governance can potentially be initiated in places where the state is failing to mitigate conflict through its own institutional resources. Thus, there may be an opportunity to respond to the ‘ingenuity gap’ that Homer-Dixon identifies as a key linkage between scarcity and conflict

Assessing the Accuracy of Self-Reported Data: an Evaluation of the Toxics Release Inventory

Self-reported regulatory data are hard to verify. This article compares air emissions reported by plants in the Toxics Release Inventory with chemical concentration levels measured by EPA pollution monitors. We find that the large drops in air emissions reported by firms in the TRI are not always matched by similar reductions in measured concentrations from EPA monitors. When the first digits of the monitored chemical concentrations follow a monotonically decreasing distribution, we expect (via Benford's Law) a similar distribution of first digits for the TRI data. For lead and nitric acid the self-reported data do not follow the expected first digit pattern. This suggests that for these two heavily regulated chemicals plants are not reporting accurate estimates of their air emissions. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2006Toxics release inventory, Benford's law, Reporting accuracy, Information provision,