EGC Affiliates awarded new grants from Yale Planetary Solutions
Three EGC affiliates have received 2026 grants from Yale Planetary Solutions (YPS) to support research at the intersection of environmental sustainability and economic development.
EGC affiliates Costas Arkolakis and José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez were awarded funding for Deep Waters, a project developing a unified spatial economic framework that integrates the physics of water supply with economic demand models. The project aims to measure the welfare and economic impacts of water infrastructure investments and produce decision-support tools for policymakers working on water resource allocation worldwide.
EGC Director Rohini Pande, along with Lucy Page, Luke Sanford, and PhD student Maike Pfeiffer, received funding for Field-Validated Carbon Measurement in Meghalaya's Payments for Ecosystem Services Program. Building on a 2025 YPS-funded project that tested targeted payments to combat deforestation in Meghalaya, India, the new grant addresses a second challenge in carbon markets: measurement. The team will conduct field-based measurements of forest biomass and soil carbon to produce credible carbon estimates from the program's satellite-derived forest-cover data. The project’s goal is to inform how conservation programs are priced, verified, and scaled in biodiverse tropical regions.
Read more about the YPS grants and the full list of awardees here.