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PERI's program in Development, Peacebuilding, and the Environment breaks from the conventional framework of economic well-being measured in Gross National Product (GNP). In each of its components, DPE explores how democratization in the distribution of power - at the international, national, and local levels - can advance sustainable and secure livelihoods for all. The Toxic 100 and Environmental JusticeJustice in the Air: Tracking Toxic Pollution from America's Industries and Companies to Our States, Cities, and Neighborhoods uses the EPA's Toxic Release Inventory and Risk Screening Environmental Indicators to explore the demographics of those who are most affected by toxic pollution, and then establishes the corporate ownership of the plants responsible. Justice in the Air enhances the data available in PERI’s Toxic 100 Report with an environmental justice scorecard, ranking the Toxic 100 companies by the share of their health impacts from toxic air pollution that falls upon minority and low-income communities. >> Read more about Justice in the Air Employment, Growth and Poverty Reduction in Developing Countries: A Conference in Honor of Professor Azizur KhanMarch 2009 -- In conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme, PERI recently had the privilege of hosting a conference in honor of Aziz Khan, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Riverside. For forty years Professor Khan has made path-breaking contributions to development economics, particularly through his original approaches to the analysis of labor conditions and poverty reduction. Green Economic Policy Research at PERIJanuary 2009 -- Over the past year, PERI has contributed significantly to the growing field of 'green' economics. In collaboration with a range of environmental and labor organizations, we have created a model which projects the employment and macroeconomic impacts of investment in a range of strategies for a national transition to a clean energy economy. PERI's model has been applied to a national economic stimulus program, state and local investments, and sector-specific policy choices. The link below will take you to a page which describes this work and the media attention it has garnered. >> Go to the Green Economics page Updated and Expanded Toxic 100 IndexIndustrial facilities in the United States release some 1.5 billion pounds of industrial toxics into the air each year. The latest version of PERI's Toxic 100 uses the most recent available data from the Risk Screening Environmental Indicators project of the Environmental Protection Agency to rank the largest corporations in the United States by the human health risk from their airborne toxic releases. The rankings take into account not only the quantity of releases, but also the relative toxicity of chemicals, the exposure of nearby populations, and transport factors such as prevailing winds and height of smokestacks. PERI's Toxic 100 builds on the achievements of the right-to-know movement. The goal is to engender public participation in environmental decision-making, and to help stakeholders translate the right to know into the right to clean air. Cap and Dividend: How to Curb Global Warming while Protecting the Incomes of American FamiliesDecember 2007 -- While there is an active debate about the use of carbon permits to combat global warming, it is generally assumed that corporate emitters—in particular the power industry—would pass these costs on to consumers. Since fuel costs represent a larger fraction of income for lower-income households than for upper-income households, this would amount to a regressive tax. This PERI Working Paper, by James Boyce and Matthew Riddle, presents a variation that reduces U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide while at the same time protecting the incomes of middle- and lower-income American families. Peace and the Public Purse: Economic Policies for Postwar StatebuildingIn the aftermath of violent conflict, how do the economic challenges of statebuilding intersect with the political challenges of peacebuilding? How can the international community help lay the fiscal foundations for a sustainable state and a durable peace? In this edited volume, James Boyce, (Director of PERI’s Development, Peacebuilding, & the Environment Program), and Madalene O’Donnell (United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations) lift the curtain that often has separated economic policy from peace implementation. Drawing on recent experiences in war-torn societies such as Uganda, Cambodia, Bosnia, Guatemala, Timor-Leste, Afghanistan, and Palestine, this book brings to life a key dimension of how peace and states are built. >> Order Peace & the Public Purse from Lynne Rienner Publishers Reclaiming Nature: Environmental Justice and Ecological RestorationReclaiming Nature, edited by James Boyce (Director of PERI's Development, Peacebuilding & the Environment program) along with Sunita Narain and Elizabeth A. Stanton, offers a hopeful new vision of the relationship between people and nature. The contributors to this volume chart a course between denial and despair over world’s mounting environmental problems. They realize that human activities can have positive impacts on nature’s wealth as well as negative ones. The crucial question is how we can tip the balance in favor of the positive. In the form of essays by well-known economists, environmentalists, and activists, this book offers readers hope for a better tomorrow, inspired by examples of people across the world who are building natural assets by adding value, democratizing access, capturing benefits, and defending the commons. >>Link to the Natural Assets project homepage In the Wake of the Storm: Environment, Disaster, and Race after KatrinaHurricane Katrina opened a window on a world often ignored by media, policy makers, and the public. Facing enhanced environmental vulnerability and stranded by a lack of public transit, residents of the poorest and blackest neighborhoods of New Orleans quickly educated America that disasters and rescues are not equal opportunity affairs. James K. Boyce, Director of PERI'S Environment Program, joins authors Manuel Pastor, Robert Bullard, Alice Fothergill, Rachel Morello-Frosh and Beverly Wright in this groundbreaking analysis of the complex repercussions of natural disaster, examining, in the context of Katrina, the ways in which environmental disparities by race and class operate in the United States. |
