Do US air pollution offset markets disproportionately relocate pollution to or from low-income or minority communities? Concerns about an equal distribution of environmental quality across communities--environmental justice--have growing policy influence. We relate prices and quantities of offset transactions to the demographics of the communities surrounding polluting plants. We find little association of offset prices or offset-induced movements in pollution with the share of a community that is Black or Hispanic or with mean household income. This analysis of 12 prominent offset markets suggests that they do not substantially increase or decrease the equity of environmental outcomes.
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Aligning agri-environmental subsidies and environmental needs: a comparative analysis between the US and EU
- Award ID(s):
- 1828910
- PAR ID:
- 10284559
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Environmental Research Letters
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 1748-9326
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 054067
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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null (Ed.)Global agriculture consumes substantial resources and produces significant pollution. By shifting its production to new locations, and inducing changes in technology and input use, trade has a substantial impact on environmental sustainability of the world's food systems, but due to suboptimal environmental policy, the exact nature of these impacts is in dispute. We review the literature on agricultural trade and environmental sustainability, highlighting the different approaches taken in ecology versus economics. While useful in identifying environmental costs, much of the ecological literature does not compare these costs to a trade-free counterfactual and can therefore be misleading. Further, by moving production to places with more resources and increasing production efficiency, trade can reduce the environmental impact of food production. On the other hand, trade can also limit the effectiveness of domestic environmental policy because production can be shifted to countries with less stringent regulations. However, recently, consumers are leveraging trade policy to induce exporters to improve environmental sustainability. While such policies are gaining traction in wealthy countries, evidence suggests that such measures will not reach their potential without buy-in from decision makers in the countries where the environmental damages are occurring. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Resource Economics, Volume 13 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.more » « less
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