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Environmental Regulation

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Environmental regulations attempt to protect public health and the environment from pollution by industry and development. RAND research has sought to develop methods for collecting interpretable, quantitative information about the costs and benefits of environmental regulations in areas where compliance imposes a financial burden, awareness of the health risks of noncompliance is lower, and officials are less trusting of the data on which regulations are based.

Project
Environmental Racism: Mapping the Legacy of Historic Redlining on Urban Environments
Past housing policies have an enduring legacy on urban neighborhoods today and have contributed to which communities enjoy more trees, less traffic, and better air quality, and which face hazards such as pollution, toxic waste sites, and flooding risk.
Mar 31, 2022
Project
The Risks of Geoengineering
Geoengineering—the intentional manipulation of the climate—could help curb global warming, but it could also have world-altering consequences. In a new animated video, RAND artists-in-residence Juan Delcan and Valentina Izaguirre take a lighthearted look at this serious issue.
Apr 27, 2022

Explore Environmental Regulation

Commentary
One More Chance for COP Reform
The 28th U.N.-sponsored Conference of the Parties (COP) on climate change looks set to be a replay of earlier COPs. The consistent shortfall in achieving climate goals has meant that the parties to COP discuss the same items year after year. Perhaps it is time for COP to take a new look at its own decisionmaking process?
Nov 30, 2023
Multimedia
Supporting More-Effective Stormwater Management in the Mid-Atlantic Region
RAND researchers Krista Romita Grocholski and Michelle Miro present key information needs for stormwater practitioners in the Mid-Atlantic region and provide recommendations that would support more-effective stormwater planning, design, and management in the face of climate change.
Aug 30, 2023
Commentary
Stormwater Management in the Mid-Atlantic Region
In the Mid-Atlantic region, flooding caused by extreme precipitation has occurred nearly every season since 2018—and the problem is only getting worse. How can stormwater management agencies use information about climate change to better mitigate flood risk and damage?
Aug 30, 2023
Commentary
The Arctic Is Our Last Global Commons—Let's Manage Its Fisheries Properly
It is time to create a multilateral Arctic fisheries management plan before a moratorium on fishing in Arctic high seas sunsets in 2037. Agreements can lead to economic and food security for partners; a lack of coordination will lead to conflict, environmental degradation, and overfishing. The clock is ticking.
Jun 30, 2023
Commentary
California's Ambitious Decarbonization Plan Hasn't Been Future-Proofed
California has an ambitious blueprint to make the state carbon-neutral by 2045. But there's been no integrated stress test of the whole plan. The state needs and deserves a future-proofed, stress-tested plan that all Californians can trust to achieve its climate goals.
Dec 15, 2022
News Release
Disadvantaged Groups Could Fall Further Behind in the Emerging Green Economy
A new report from RAND Europe shows that disadvantaged groups risk being left behind in the growing movement across Europe to increase job opportunities that benefit the environment—or “green the economy”—unless local leaders take concerted action to make sure such job opportunities are more inclusive.
Oct 27, 2022
Report
Green jobs and skills development for disadvantaged groups
This report explored green jobs and skills development for people from disadvantaged groups in 10 European cities.
Oct 26, 2022
Commentary
Why Not Space Mirrors?
Space mirrors can reflect solar radiation away from Earth, potentially helping to address the effects of climate change. But decisionmakers need more information about this technology to determine if it's a viable option.
Oct 19, 2022
Multimedia
Update on Findings of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
In this webinar, contributors to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and experts from the RAND Climate Resilience Center discuss findings from the report of the IPCC Working Group II.
Aug 3, 2022
Commentary
How Could the United States Incentivize Investors to Decarbonize the Economy?
While mandatory climate-related disclosure may improve information and decisionmaking for investors, it alone is unlikely to accelerate investment in decarbonization at the rate needed. To motivate private investment in climate mitigation, policymakers could explore additional policies.
May 12, 2022
Commentary
How We Might Better Live with Oil in California
As California grapples with the question of balancing environmental stewardship with the recent renewed focus on “local oil,” lawmakers could look to local communities for the best answers to avoid future petro-disasters.
Apr 1, 2022
Essay
Manipulating the Climate: What Are the Geopolitical Risks?
Geoengineering technologies that could block the sun's rays or siphon huge amounts of carbon from the air are not that far out of reach. Yet the international community has not established the kinds of guardrails you might expect for potentially world-changing technologies.
Dec 29, 2021
Commentary
Achieving Decarbonization and Energy Equity Through Reconciliation
The past two years have witnessed increasingly vocal calls for rapid decarbonization of the global economy through a clean energy transition. How can Congress ensure that new costs associated with a clean energy transition do not fall disproportionately on lower-income ratepayers?
Sep 9, 2021
Commentary
Arming the Department of Defense's Environmental Liabilities Program
A new U.S. emphasis on sustainable environmental conditions is emerging just as budget pressures are increasing. The DoD could use this as an opportunity to develop a systematic approach to addressing its environmental liabilities.
Jun 23, 2021
Commentary
What Are the Geopolitical Risks of Geoengineering?
Geoengineering is the intentional manipulation of an environmental process on Earth to counteract the effects of climate change. Geoengineering implementation could introduce geopolitical risks. This raises the question of whether existing international governance mechanisms can manage these risks.
May 25, 2021
Commentary
California Needs a More Flexible Approach to Sea Level Rise Planning
Rising seas create significant risk to the health, safety, and economic vitality of California's coast communities, and we must prepare. A contingency-planning approach would provide flexible action over time and would build capacity that California and the nation need to respond to the many other serious and growing climate-related risks.
Feb 18, 2021
Commentary
Local Communities Need a Voice in How to 'Build Back Better'
Long before it was popularized and made its way into political slogans and economic recovery battle cries, the phrase “building back better” was a central tenet of disaster recovery and community resilience. How should community voices be incorporated into “building back better” processes?
Jan 12, 2021
Commentary
Ammonia – Why the Big Stink?
Ammonia pollution harms human health and reduces the richness and diversity of the environment. As new policy frameworks are implemented in the UK, there is an opportunity to support farmers to make the changes necessary to reduce ammonia pollution.
Sep 18, 2018

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Research conducted by

Researcher Spotlight

David DeSmet

Ph.D. Candidate, Pardee RAND Graduate School, and Assistant Policy Researcher, RAND

David DeSmet (he/him/his) is an assistant policy researcher at RAND and a Ph.D candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His research at RAND has spanned the resilience of civil infrastructure, cascading disasters in the context of "green swan" events and energy grids, logistics optimization…
Noreen Clancy

Senior Policy Researcher

Noreen Clancy is associate research department director, Global Research Talent Operations, and a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. She has two primary areas of research: resilience from natural disasters and issues facing the financial services sector.

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