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This chapter discusses some issues of diversity in hazard mitigation when just recovery is considered or not. Justice in hazard mitigation becomes crucial considering unequal distribution of resources, systemic racism, and social vulnerability to hazards. While there has been research on just recovery, there is little or no evidence of research that examines the issue of equity and justice in hazard mitigation, This chapter discusses what hazard mitigation is, the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 focusing on the planning process, public involvement in the planning process, some planning theories on vulnerability, and building the case for achieving and striving for justice and equity in promoting diversity in hazard mitigation. The chapter makes some recommendation on how to achieve diversity in hazard mitigation.

Arsenic contamination in shallow groundwater aquifers in the lower Gangetic basin constitutes a major health hazard in the Bengal basin extended over Bangladesh and India. It has been estimated that at least 35 million people in Bangladesh and 6 million people in India are severely affected by arsenic-contaminated water. More so, about 57 and 9 million people in Bangladesh and West Bengal, respectively, are exposed to arsenic-contamination risk. The use of hazardous, arsenic-bearing groundwater for drinking, cooking, and irrigation in West Bengal and Bangladesh has led to what has been described by the WHO as the worst case of mass poisoning in human history. In case of West Bengal, the problem of arsenic contamination was discovered in the 1980s; since then several mitigation measures were adopted by the provincial and federal governments, community organizations, and NGOs. Yet, poor infrastructural arrangements, dire poverty, lack of awareness, and education increased the risk of arsenic exposure over the decades. In this chapter, an effort has been made to critically analyze the extent of mitigation measures adopted so far in the state of West Bengal. It discusses in detail the chronological responses of the provincial government in arsenic risk mitigation, implementation of adopted mitigation measures, and the consequent response and actions of arsenic-affected communities in West Bengal. The chapter also highlights the emerging challenges of arsenic risk mitigation in West Bengal and proposes a “system-based” framework for risk mitigation.

Market-based approaches to environmental management are increasingly common. In 1983 when Joeres and David published their pioneering collection, Buying a Better Environment, the concept was seen as at best novel, and at worst far-fetched. Yet today, conservation and water quality credits are for sale in many developed countries, and the idea of payment for ecosystem services is ubiquitous in environmental policy circles. This paper traces that shift from command-and-control to market-based environmental management through analysis of the evolving practice of stream mitigation banking (SMB) in the US. In the most common form of SMB today, a for-profit company buys land with a damaged stream on it and restores it to produce mitigation credits which can then be purchased by developers to fulfill their permit conditions under the Clean Water Act. Though decidedly noncommercial in origin, SMB was converted into for-profit tradable regulatory mechanism in 2000 and has since spread rapidly across the US with the strong support of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Using Bourdieu’s field concept as a framework, I argue that the neoliberal transformation of mitigation banking is a product of both relations within the regulatory field, of that field’s relations with the fields of science, and of power.

The very contextual nature of most mitigating evidence runs counter to America’s individualistic culture. Prior research has found that capital jurors are unreceptive to most mitigating circumstances, but no research has examined the capital sentencing decisions of trial judges. This study fills that gap through a content analysis of eight judicial sentencing opinions from Delaware. The findings indicate that judges typically dismiss contextualizing evidence in their sentencing opinions and instead focus predominately on the defendant’s culpability. This finding calls into question the ability of guided discretion statutes to ensure the consideration of mitigation and limit arbitrariness in the death penalty.

Over the last 30 years, despite immense and increasing expenditures by the federal government for disaster preparedness and relief, both catastrophic and chronic losses from natural hazards have continued to increase at an alarming pace. Although earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes account for the largest portion of these natural hazard losses, wildfire increasingly represents significant disaster losses of well over a billion dollars annually. There is considerable concern that losses from wildfires will only increase in the U.S. as some of the highest growth rates in the nation, both metropolitan and nonmetropolitan types of growth, are projected to continue in states with extensive wildland fire hazard areas. The land development patterns associated with that growth are problematic because so much of the development in the last 30 years (and that is still occurring) is not being steered away from the highest wildfire hazard settings, nor are adequate steps being taken to ensure that when development occurs in high wildfire hazard zones appropriate mitigation is used to reduce the vulnerability of people and property to loss. Fortunately, those anticipated future wildfire losses have a great potential to be reduced provided state and local governments take the initiative to create partnerships to ensure “safer” and “smarter” patterns of land development occur in and near wildland–urban interface areas. This chapter explores wildfire mitigation planning as an integral component of “safe smart growth” for wildland–urban interface communities.

During the last several years, a stream of research has evolved that investigates the influence of outcome information on evaluation judgments in an auditor legal liability context. These studies have included judges and jurors and have utilized different cases and scenarios. Our objective in this paper is to review and discuss insights from this stream of research. This research consists of three phases. Phase 1 focuses on the robust manifestation of outcome effects in an audit legal liability context, Phase 2 examines the effectiveness of selected mitigation strategies in moderating outcome effects, and Phase 3 begins the process of developing a preliminary theoretical framework. We also discuss future research that could be done to better understand outcome effects and to test operational responses and proposed remedies.

Due to the more pressing need, the majority of material in this book has dealt with mitigation; interventions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (IPCC, 2001) away from a scenario of ‘business as usual’. An early academic review on climate change mitigation and transport appeared in 2007 (Chapman, 2007), a year before the United Kingdom committed itself to the highly ambitious Climate Change Act 2008. The final act sought an ambitious 80% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Although criticised in this book as being unrealistic, this is the level of intervention required if ‘dangerous’ climate change is to be avoided (defined as greater than 2°C rise in global temperatures). As Chapter 8 (a policy perspective) explains, such targets, however unrealistic, are informed by considerable input from expert opinion (e.g. Delphi studies) and require a detailed knowledge of current emissions as well as accurate predictions/scenarios of future emissions. For this reason, scenarios and the control of uncertainty were discussed in Chapter 2 towards the start of this book. Indeed, the commonly quoted ‘business as usual’ scenario is in itself too simplistic and highly improbable, not only due to mitigation measures imposed by governments, but also because of the future scarcity of oil which will force change in the medium term regardless. Backcasting is the key tool used to model the continuum of socio-economic scenarios which exist between ‘business as usual’ and the equally unlikely case of all targets being met. However, the science is inherently difficult and the end result is a wide range of permutations and storylines, largely dependent on mitigation. Early progress towards the 80% target has not been promising, but the decarbonisation of the transport sector is still seen as key in meeting the demands of the Climate Change Act 2008. There is a need to tackle the three primary culprits of greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector: aviation, freight and car ownership (Chapman, 2007). This book has examined in detail how this could be achieved in all these sectors using a range of aspects relating to technological and behavioural change.

Climate control needs have reached momentum. While scientists call for stabilizing climate and regulators structure climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts around the globe, economists are concerned with finding proper and fair financing mechanisms. In an overlapping-generations framework, Sachs (2014) solves the climate change predicament that seems to pit today’s against future generations. Sachs (2014) proposes that the current generation mitigates climate change financed through bonds to remain financially as well-off as without mitigation while improving environmental well-being of future generations through ensured climate stability. This intergenerational tax-and-transfer policy turns climate change mitigation into a Pareto improving strategy. Sachs’ (2014) discrete model is integrated in contemporary growth and resource theories. The following article analyzes how climate bonds can be phased-in, in a model for a socially optimal solution and a laissez-faire economy. Optimal trajectories are derived partially analytically (e.g., by using the Pontryagin maximum principle to define the optimal equilibrium), partially data driven (e.g., by the use of modern big market data), and partially by using novel cutting-edge methods – for example, nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC), which solves complex dynamic optimization problems with different nonlinearities for infinite and finite decision horizons. NMPC will be programed with terminal condition in order to determine appropriate numeric solutions converging to some optimal equilibria. The analysis tests if the climate change debt adjusted growth model stays within the bounds of a sustainable fiscal policy by employing NMPC, which solves complex dynamic systems with different nonlinearities.