My teaching and research interests focus on the dynamic tensions of environmental science and democratic politics in a variety of arenas including community-based environmental protection, environmental justice, and international conservation projects.  I hold an appointment with the faculty of Environmental Studies at Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment where I annually teach environmental policy, environmental regulation, environmental impact assessment, and environmental policy analysis. Service-learning is one of my central teaching philosophies and the core of my new Rainforest Immersion and Conservation Action (R.I.C.A.) study abroad program in Costa Rica.  Twenty-four students and two faculty joined me in July 2007 for our first collaboration with two Costa Rican national parks.

Beginning with the dissertation, one strand of my scholarship focused on why some communities achieve more environmental protection.  This research led to a National Science Foundation grant and publications in the American Behavioral Scientist and Public Works Management and Policy.  Some communities also endure higher pollution risks and my work also analyzes these patterns of environmental injustice and how social science frames the problem.  My paper titled “Uneven pollution and skewed riskscapes” is forthcoming in Environmental Management.  My past work in this field included a joint National Science Foundation and Environmental Protection Agency grant (9976483) and an essay in the American Political Science Association’s Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics (STEP) section 2005 newsletter.

Currently, Michael Kraft, Mark Stephan and I are writing a book focusing on why some businesses do more to protect the environment than others.  This project began in 2003 with a $299,712 NSF grant and led to a book contract with MIT Press for Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental Decision Making due in 2008, a nomination for the best paper in the Public Policy section at the 2004 APSA conference, a focused panel of papers at the 2003 American Political Science Association in Philadelphia, PA, and two papers for regional political science conferences in 2007.  Our first national information disclosure study appeared in Volume 39, Issue 3 of State and Local Government Review. 

Outside of the University, I serve as the American Editor for the International Journal of Environment and Pollution.  It is a refereed, international journal, published by Inderscience Enterprises Limited (Geneva, Switzerland) in eight issues per year, providing an international forum for scientific analyses and discussions in the field of environment and pollution.

Welcome to Professor Troy Abel's homepage.  I am an Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy in the Dept. of Environmental Studies and the Planning and Environmental Policy Program.