University of Southern California Program for Environmental and Regional Equity
Established in 2007, the University of Southern California (USC) Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) is a research unit situated within the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences. PERE conducts research and facilitates discussions on issues of environmental justice, regional inclusion, and social movement building. PERE seeks to conduct research that is relevant to public policy concerns, that is rapidly responsive to the immediate needs of community partners, and that reaches directly-affected communities that most need to be engaged in the discussion.
In the area of climate change, PERE explores the environmental justice and health implications of policy strategies designed to achieve carbon reductions, including the market-based strategy embedded in California’s climate law. It has engaged the environmental justice community along with researchers and other experts to discuss the implications of different climate change policies and assess their potential outcomes.
PERE's research to support the Building Resilient Regions (BRR) project, while not focused explicitly on climate change, assesses a region’s resilience by analyzing its abilities to cope with future challenges. Additionally, the BBR Immigrant Challenge focuses on immigration and rapid population change to U.S. metropolitan regions. PERE measures resilience by how much regions integrate immigrants and build new social infrastructure to foster a shared regional identity.
Phone: (213) 740-3643
Sectors:
Related Resources: