Browsing by Subject "Environmental law"

According to IPCC estimates, sea levels will rise between .18 and .6 meters by 2100. More recent estimates indicate that actual amounts of sea level rise may be much more, and that 1 meter of sea level rise by 2100 is likely a conservative estimate. These rising sea levels will result not only in more flooding during storm events, but also increased erosion and gradual inundation of coastal property. At the same time, coastal populations in the United States continue to increase rapidly: over half of all Americans live in coastal counties, and at least 25 million more people are expected to move to the coast by 2015. The end result is that human populations, coastal infrastructure, and coastal ecosystems will become increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This study examines the political and legal constraints to and opportunities for adaptation to rising sea levels. Using legal and policy analysis and case studies from California, North Carolina and Texas, this study explores the ability of governments to use market tools, land use regulations, and property acquisition to promote adaptation to rising sea levels. Because of market dynamics and political factors including flaws in public risk perception, I conclude that governments who wish to avoid extensive coastal engineering, , can address coastal community vulnerability through a combination of regulations and incentives that spur state and local governments to engage in forward land use planning and other measures to reduce their exposure to sea level rise impacts.

This dissertation includes three articles. In different ways, each focuses on the way credible threats and credible commitments are used to moderate consumption of environmental and natural resources and commons resources more generally. The first of these three argues that the trend of states jockeying to hold presidential primaries and caucuses as early as possible is a classic tragedy of the commons. This article argues that recognizing the problem as a commons dilemma provides a powerful explanation for the trend towards earlier primaries and, more importantly, provides insights into how best to reform the nomination system. The second applies the work of Thomas Schelling--particularly that focuses on nuclear deterrence--to particularly large regulatory tools given to agencies. The article uses game theory to explain why Congress would give agencies unusually large sticks and how agencies use them. The last article reexamines the foundational literature devoted to overcoming the tragedy of the commons. Specifically, the article argues that institutions most able to solve the tragedy of the commons often cause a tragedy of another sort. The article ends by proposing a set of draft principles to help us overcome institutional rigidity.

Since the end of the Cold War, natural resources have assumed an increasingly prominent role in security, conflict, and peace studies. Scholars and development practitioners alike view the development of strong institutions, which aim to domesticate global regulatory regimes that foster neoliberal principles like privatization, transparency, and accountability, as necessary to mitigate natural resource conflict in resource-rich states, as well as enhance opportunities for peace and social justice. However, the application of environmental peacebuilding theory to resource-rich contexts has outpaced the ability of empirical research to substantiate its claims, and scholars remain unclear about the mechanisms by which institutional reforms minimize conflict risk or promote peace. This dissertation examines the extent to which the diffusion and uptake of global environmental governance standards has (re)shaped the politics of mineral extraction in Ghana and Sierra Leone. I explore claims that social and environmental outcomes have deteriorated amid efforts by Ghana and Sierra Leone to build regulatory capacity. Using interview, survey, and ethnographic data collected across multiple scales in Ghana and Sierra Leone between 2014 and 2016, I find that while governance reforms have produced strong environmental regulatory institutions in both contexts, these institutions have failed to drive wider social and environmental change within society. Rather, institutional reforms have contributed to patterns of development that undermine state-society relations, and reinforced conditions that promote institutional plurality on the ground. The state remains only one of several options for obtaining legitimate access to mineral resources, meaning that multiple and conflicting sets of “rules-in-use” govern extraction. This perpetuates what I term a “hollow state” in which formal state institutions are continually eroded by informal bottom-up processes. The resulting institutional terrain has produced conditions in which plural authoritative networks compete for social influence as well as access to and control of natural resources. This, in turn, has contributed to chronic, low-intensity conflict, environmental degradation, and the pursuit of elite interests and power at the expense of sustainable resource extraction and livelihood security. Overall, this research suggests a need for environmental peacebuilding theory to reconceptualize linkages between environment, development, and social stability in resource-rich states.

Hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) has been hailed by some as a perfectly safe process for reaching previously unreachable pockets of natural gas. Others, however, claim that it poses a significant threat to human health and the environment, and have strongly advocated for it to be banned. Amid this fierce debate over fracking’s safety, residents living in communities affected by it have had to make potentially life-altering decisions, such as whether to lease their land for the siting of a fracking well, or whether to file a lawsuit after discovering contamination of their well water. While prior research has investigated a number of factors that predict support or opposition to fracking, these studies have not explored the concrete ramifications of residents’ risk perceptions.

In this study, I examined both fracking-related lawsuits, and data on spills and water contamination incidents alleged to have occurred in Pennsylvania since the start of the fracking boom. I then conducted in-depth interviews with residents living in fracking-heavy communities in Pennsylvania in order to understand how their experiences with fracking shaped their perceptions of its risks, and of the legal and regulatory frameworks governing it. Applying the grounded theory method of analysis (Chapter 2), I found that the importance of feeling informed about various aspects of fracking featured prominently in the interview data. Participants expressed regret when they spoke of making decisions without sufficient information, they expressed frustration at striving in vain to get complete or comprehensible safety information, and they expressed that not having sufficient risk information made them more fearful of the threats posed by fracking.

Although the ways in which people form perceptions of risk have been studied for decades, I found that their manifestation in the real-world context of fracking supports the conclusions of previous studies, but also points towards some nuances that merit further exploration (Chapter 3). Policymakers, in particular, should be cognizant of how individuals draw conclusions about fracking safety, as this study demonstrates that the cognitive mechanisms governing risk perception can have tremendous consequences for residents’ lives. Risk perception goes beyond mere support or opposition, but can instead inform life-altering decisions. I found that the mental shortcuts residents employed when interpreting risk information in the face of uncertainty could be exploited by landmen seeking to procure leases from landowners.

Relatedly, I found that concerns about fracking risks were exacerbated by participants’ feeling that they had insufficient access to comprehensive and comprehensible information about fracking’s potential risks to their health and the environment (Chapter 4). Among those who expressed concerns about fracking safety, the lack of reliable risk information was a chief concern. The most commonly sought information related to fracking fluid composition, spill and violation data, comprehensible water and air monitoring results, and water well contamination data. Drawing from scholarship on the use of information disclosure as a regulatory tool, I discuss the need for increased information transparency in this context, and propose several policy interventions to ease the information asymmetry experienced by residents in these communities.

One of the ways in which safety-related information is concealed is through the use of nondisclosure agreements (“NDAs”) in settlements involving fracking-related claims. Residents who make such claims, whether formally or informally, find that in order to get any kind of financial restitution, they must sign an NDA as part of the settlement. I found that for other residents living in these communities, the systematic use of NDAs to settle claims obscured their ability to assess the frequency of water well contamination incidents, as affected landowners are forbidden by these NDAs to speak of their experiences. Using the interview data gathered in Pennsylvania, I compared the use of NDAs in the fracking context with their similarly systematic use in settling workplace sexual harassment claims (Chapter 5). I then analyzed the law governing these contracts of silence, and proposed ways to maintain the public policy benefits of NDAs, while minimizing the potential harm to third parties that comes from concealing harmful behavior.

But residents’ frustration with NDAs comprises only a small fraction of the dissatisfaction expressed about the legal system’s handling of fracking-related claims. Participants identified a number of ways in which the legal system disadvantaged plaintiffs who brought water contamination claims against gas companies (Chapter 6). Although not all participants perceived the legal system to be intrinsically favorable to defendant gas companies, those with a pessimistic view of the legal system are united by their belief that fracking is dangerous. The interview data strongly suggests that those who consider fracking to pose a threat to them personally, correspondingly perceive that the legal system would fail to adequately compensate them in the event of a fracking-related injury. The disconnect between what they expect the legal outcomes should be, and what they perceive the outcomes actually are, appears to fuel disillusionment with the legal system that diminishes its fairness and legitimacy in their eyes.