Environmental Justice
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025 2:30 PM - 4:30 PM (PST)
- Chair: Becka Brolinson, Federal Housing Finance Agency
The Environmental Justice Implications of Industry Consolidation: Evidence from US Waste Disposal
Abstract
Since the 1990s, the number of waste facilities in the United States has fallen by 20\%, while the average size of remaining facilities has increased by 40%. This paper examines the environmental justice implications of that trend. We find that the relationship between county demographic characteristics and waste processing volume is changing over time. We see an increasing correlation between the share of black residents and waste processed and a decreasing correlation between household income and waste processing, meaning that these larger facilities are more likely to be in poorer, blacker counties. We conduct several exploratory analyses to understand the mechanisms driving these trends, and find suggestive evidence that disproportionate impacts of RCRA regulations, increasing privatization of facilities, and residential sorting all play a role.Political Representation, Forest Cover, and Development in Rural India
Abstract
The reservation of certain political posts for members of historically marginalized groups is an approach used in many settings to address ongoing inequities in outcomes. This study investigates the impacts of caste-based political reservations for local leadership position on development and environmental outcomes in rural India. In 1992, India mandated that village council leadership positions be periodically reserved for members of historically oppressed caste groups on a rotational basis. These reservations result in quasi-random changes in local leadership, which I leverage to estimate the effect of marginalized groups in local leadership on measures of natural resource utilization and economic development across 4,500 villages in Karnataka for the elections from 1994-2010.Using forest cover as a measure of environmental outcomes and nighttime lights as a proxy for economic activity, I find that leadership reservations are associated with statistically significant reductions in forest cover and increases in local economic activity.
Specifically, councils with reservations for Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) leadership experience a 1\% increase in night lights intensity and a decrease in forest cover by 0.189 percentage point (3\% at baseline forest cover) relative to villages without such reservations in the same period. These findings suggest that leaders from historically marginalized groups may rely more heavily on local environmental resources for economic advancement, allowing greater resource utilization to facilitate development within their communities. Disaggregating these effects reveals larger impacts for ST-led councils compared to SC-led councils. This result is consistent with the idea that ST communities are more dependent on local natural resources, but challenges the notion that indigenous leadership might prioritize environmental conservation.
Taken together, my results show that reservations for local leadership positions can provide access to meaningful political power for marginalized groups, which can lead to important community outcomes. However, my findings also serve as a
Government and Nature: Evidence from the Distribution of Flood Damages in China
Abstract
With increasing disaster risks, it is increasingly important to understand the impact of government interventions that reallocate environmental damages. In 2000, the Chinese government designated 96 Flood Detention Basin (FDB) counties, allocating lower-elevation areas within these counties for temporary floodwater storage. During severe flood events, floodwater may be diverted to these FDB counties to protect downstream urban centers. We evaluate the aggregate and distributional impacts of the FDB policy. Difference-in-differences results show that if a county is selected to the FDB list, county-level firm entry and firm-level fixed asset investments would decrease by 15.9% and 19.7%, respectively. Overall, FDB designation results in a 10.7% reduction in county-level nighttime light intensity. We then develop a spatial general equilibrium model that captures trade linkages among FDB counties, protected cities, and other regions. By comparing the actual output to a counterfactual scenario without FDBs, we find that as FDBs absorb more floodwater, the policy’s output gains increase; however, this comes at the cost of growing inequality between FDB counties and others. In summary, FDBs may improve economic resilience against floods, but the economic cost is taken disproportionately by rural counties.Discussant(s)
Spencer Banzhaf
,
North Carolina State University
Becka Brolinson
,
Federal Housing Finance Agency
Xinde James Ji
,
University of Florida
Shaoda Wang
,
University of Chicago
JEL Classifications
- Q5 - Environmental Economics
- D6 - Welfare Economics