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Coming to the table: Early stakeholder engagement in marine spatial planning
April 2012
From 2009 to 2011, marine spatial planning (MSP) rapidly gained visibility in the United States as a promising ocean management tool. During that same time period, the authors engaged a variety of U.S ocean stakeholders in a series of dialogs with several goals: to share information about what MSP is or could be, to hear stakeholder views and concerns about MSP, and to foster better understanding between those who depend on ocean resources for their livelihood and ocean conservation advocates. The stakeholder meetings were supplemented with several rounds of in-depth interviews and a survey. Despite some predictable areas of conflict, project participants agreed on a number of issues related to stakeholder engagement in MSP: all felt strongly that government planners need to engage outsiders earlier, more often, more meaningfully, and through an open and transparent process. Equally important, the project affirmed the value of bringing unlike parties together at the earliest opportunity to learn, talk, and listen to others with whom they rarely engage.
Groundwater Quality and its Health Impact: An assessment of Dental Fluorosis in Rural Inhabitants of the Main Ethiopian Rift
April 2012
Increased intake of dietary calcium may be key to addressing widespread dental health problems faced by millions of rural residents in Ethiopia’s remote, poverty-stricken Main Rift Valley, according to a new Duke University-led study published in the journal Environment International. As many as 8 million people living in the valley are estimated to be at risk of dental and skeletal fluorosis as a result of their long-term exposure to high levels of naturally occurring fluoride in the region’s groundwater. Most efforts to combat fluorosis in the region have focused primarily on treating drinking water to reduce its fluoride content. Increasing the amount of calcium in villagers’ diets, or finding alternative sources of drinking water may be necessary in addition to these fluoride-reducing treatments, the study found. Support came from the Duke Global Health Institute and Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
Freshwater, Climate Change and Adaptation in the Ganges River Basin
April 2012
Climate change is one of the drivers of change in the Ganges river basin, together with population growth, economic development and water management practices. These changing circumstances have a significant impact on key social and economic sectors of the basin, largely through changes in water quantity, quality and timing of availability. This paper evaluates the impact of water on changing circumstances in three sectors of the Ganges basin: agriculture, ecosystems and energy. Given the inherent interconnectedness of these core sectors and the cross-cutting impact of changing circumstances on water resources, we argue that adaptation should not be viewed as a separate initiative, but rather as a goal and perspective incorporated into every level of planning and decision making. Adaptation to changing circumstances will need to be closely linked to water resource management and will require significant collaboration across the sectors.
Greenhouse Gas Mitigation with Agricultural Land Management Activities in the United States—A Side-by-Side Comparison of Biophysical Potential
March 2012
Responsible for 6% of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) production, agricultural land use has significant potential to reduce these emissions and capture additional carbon in the soil. Many different activities have been proposed for such mitigation, but assessments of the biophysical potential have been limited and have not provided direct comparison among the many options. We present an in-depth review of the scientific literature, with a side-by-side comparison of net biophysical GHG mitigation potential for 42 different agricultural land management activities in the United States, many of which are likely applicable in other regions. Twenty of these activities are likely to be beneficial for GHG mitigation and have sufficient research to support this conclusion. Limited research leads to uncertainty for 15 other activities that may have positive mitigation potential, and the remaining activities have small or negative GHG mitigation potential or life-cycle GHG concerns. While we have sufficient information to move forward in implementing a number of activities, there are some high-priority research needs that will help clarify problematic uncertainties.
Regulating Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Existing Sources: Section 111(d) and State Equivalency
March 2012
On December 9, 2011, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions convened a broad range of stakeholders to explore the legal and policy issues presented by the regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under 111(d) (existing source performance standards) of the Clean Air Act. The workshop focused primarily on the options for states to demonstrate that existing GHG policies are equivalent to the 111(d) requirements. The Nicholas Institute distributed this document to workshop participants prior to the event to provide a framework for the issues that would be discussed. Nothing in this document should be interpreted as expressing the Institute’s opinion of the path the EPA should take on any given issue.
Stacking Ecosystem Services Payments: Risks and Solutions
February 2012
Healthy ecosystems provide many services to society, including water filtration, biodiversity habitat protection, and carbon sequestration. A number of incentive programs and markets have arisen to pay landowners for these services, raising questions about how landowners can receive multiple payments for the ecosystem services they provide from the same parcel, a practice known as stacking. Stacking can provide multiple revenue streams for landowners and encourage them to manage their lands for multiple ecosystem services. However, if not well-managed, it may also lead to a net loss of services.
The Potential Role for Management of U.S. Public Lands in Greenhouse Gas Mitigation and Climate Policy
January 2012
Management of forests, rangelands, and wetlands on public lands, including the restoration of degraded lands, has the potential to increase carbon sequestration or reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions beyond what is occurring today. In this paper we discuss several policy options for increasing GHG mitigation on public lands. These range from an extension of current policy by generating supplemental mitigation on public lands in an effort to meet national emissions reduction goals, to full participation in an offsets market by allowing GHG mitigation on public lands to be sold as offsets either by the overseeing agency or by private contractors. To help place these policy options in context, we briefly review the literature on GHG mitigation and public lands to examine the potential for enhanced mitigation on federal and state public lands in the United States. This potential will be tempered by consideration of the tradeoffs with other uses of public lands, the needs for climate change adaptation, and the effects on other ecosystem services.
Reducing the Energy Penalty Costs of Postcombustion CCS Systems with Amine-Storage
January 2012
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) can significantly reduce the amount of CO2 emitted from coal-fired power plants, but its high capital and operating costs are an important barrier. In this paper we analyze one alternative to reduce operating costs of amine-based CCS systems.
Myths and Facts About Electricity in the U.S. South
December 2011
This paper identifies six myths about clean electricity in the southern United States. These myths are either propagated by the public at-large, shared within the environmental advocacy culture, or spread imperceptibly between policy makers. Using a widely accepted energy-economic modeling tool, the paper exposes these myths as half-truths and the kind of conventional wisdom that constrains productive debate. In doing so, it identifies new starting points for energy policy development.
Estimating the potential economic impacts of climate change on Southern California beaches
November 2011
Climate change could substantially alter the width of beaches in Southern California. Climate-driven sea level rise will have at least two important impacts on beaches: (1) higher sea level will cause all beaches to become more narrow, all things being held constant, and (2) sea level rise may affect patterns of beach erosion and accretion when severe storms combine with higher high tides. To understand the potential economic impacts of these two outcomes, this study examined the physical and economic effects of permanent beach loss caused by inundation due to sea level rise of one meter and of erosion and accretion caused by a single, extremely stormy year (using a model of beach change based on the wave climate conditions of the El Niño year of 1982/1983.)
The impact of climate change on California’s ecosystem services
November 2011
Ecosystem services play a crucial role in sustaining human well-being and economic viability. People benefit substantially from the delivery of ecosystem services, for which substitutes usually are costly or unavailable. Climate change will substantially alter or eliminate certain ecosystem services in the future. To better understand the consequences of climate change and to develop effective means of adapting to them, it is critical that we improve our understanding of the links between climate, ecosystem service production, and the economy. This study examines the impact of climate change on the terrestrial distribution and the subsequent production and value of two key ecosystem services in California: (1) carbon sequestration and (2) natural (i.e. non-irrigated) forage production for livestock.
C-AGG, T-AGG, and M-AGG: A model for building collaborative actions and common understanding on agricultural GHG mitigation
July 2011
A new Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security working paper, led by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions’ Lydia Olander, provides an overview of three interrelated initiatives for greenhouse gas mitigation: the Coalition on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (C-AGG), the Technical Working Group on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (T-AGG) and the Market Mechanisms for Agricultural Greenhouse Gases (M-AGG). Working together, all three have aided in engaging U.S. scientists, farmers and policy makers in sharing information and better communicating to advance agricultural greenhouse gas mitigation opportunities and efforts. Similar networking approaches may be effective for accelerating progress in developing countries.
Managing Dependencies in Forest Offset Projects: Toward a More Complete Evaluation of Reversal Risk
July 2011
Although forest carbon offsets can play an important role in the implementation of comprehensive climate policy, they also face an inherent risk of reversal. If such risks are positively correlated across projects, it can affect the integrity of larger project portfolios and potentially the entire offsets program. Here, we discuss three types of risks that could affect forest offsets—fat tails, micro-correlation, and tail dependence—and provide examples of how they could present themselves in a forest offset context. Given these potential dependencies, we suggest several new risk management approaches that take into account dependencies in reversal risk across projects and which could help guard the climate integrity of an offsets program. We also argue that data collection be included as an integral part of any offsets program so that disturbance-related dependencies may be identified and managed as early and to the greatest extent possible.
Environmental Management of Deep-Sea Chemosynthetic Ecosystems: Justification of and Considerations for a Spatially-Based Approach
June 2011
This report is the result of a June 2010 workshop sponsored by the International Seabed Authority in Dinard, France. Linwood Pendleton, director of ocean and coastal policy at the Nicholas Institute, along with deep sea biologists and policy makers attended and contributed to this report. It presents the first design principles for the comprehensive management of chemosynthetic environments in the global ocean and serves to introduce chemosynthetic ecosystems into the discourse of systematic marine spatial planning.
Carbon Offsets and Environmental Impacts: NEPA, the Endangered Species Act, and Federal Climate Policy
April 2011
Carbon offsets have been an integral part of recent climate policy proposals, but there are questions about how a carbon offsets program would interact with existing environmental laws. Laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA) require federal agencies to assess the potential impacts their actions would have on the environment. Such assessments can be lengthy and time consuming, and they could delay the establishment of an offsets program or the approval of individual projects. This paper examines how the type of offsets program proposed in recent climate legislation would be affected by the requirements of NEPA and the ESA. The authors suggest a range of policy options that would allow an offsets program to address any potential conflicts with these laws, while still meeting their requirements.
Size Matters: The Economic Value of Beach Erosion and Nourishment in Southern California
March 2011
Despite the widespread use of nourishment in California, few studies estimate the welfare benefits of increased beach width. This paper relies on panel data funded by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies. Beach choices of respondents were combined with beach attribute data to reveal how changes in width affect choice and the economic value of beach visits. We use a random-utility approach to show that the value of beach width varies for different types of beach uses: water contact, sand-, and pavement-based activities. We also find that the marginal value of beach width depends on initial beach width.
An Output-based Intensity Approach for Crediting Greenhouse Gas Mitigation in Agriculture: Explanation and Policy Implications
February 2011
Recent climate legislative proposals place a significant emphasis on greenhouse gas (GHG) offsets in uncapped sectors (e.g., agriculture and forestry) to reduce compliance costs of an economy‐wide cap‐and‐trade system, while incentivizing more environmentally friendly production. The most recent bill to be proposed is the Kerry‐Lieberman American Power Act. Section 734 of this bill establishes a comprehensive list of potentially eligible domestic offset activities. Among those included are “projects that reduce the greenhouse gas intensity per unit of agricultural production.” This output‐based intensity approach is a distinct departure from standard offset mechanisms for agriculture, which focus on absolute GHG reductions that are determined on a per unit area (acre or hectare) to which the practices are applied. While the focus of this discussion is offset mechanisms in regulatory or voluntary markets, insights can also be gained for low‐carbon fuel standards, supply chain requirements, and other low‐carbon strategies.
Measuring and Monitoring the Economic Effects of Restoration: Recommendations from a Blue Ribbon Panel
December 2010
The recent oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has highlighted how important the region's coasts are to the economy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has long been measuring the ecological successes of its marine and coastal restoration efforts, but a new panel offers ideas on how to also measure the economic impact of restoration.
Institutions and Policies to Protect Rural Livelihoods in REDD+ Regimes
November 2010
Published in the November 2010 issue of Global Environmental Politics
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