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I don't have a feel for what tier you should aim for. As you seem to be someone who already has an idea what they want to research, you might put your emphasis on places that are a good fit for that topic, rather than aiming for a high ranking on a ranking table that is supposed to capture all topics.
The UC-Santa Barbara department has entire economics department graduate courses in environmental issues and natural resources. They have numerous professors, both in economics and the natural sciences, who research about environmental issues and natural resources. Some of the econ graduate students focus on that stuff, so you won't be the only one who is interested in it. I think there was a case where a graduate student there taught their undergraduate course about environmental economics. They have the Economics and Environmental Science program, and the Bren school. "Environmental and Natural Resources" is one of the fields offered in the econ Ph.D. program. UCSB would be worth a closer look.
At the risk of sounding like a brochure for UC-Santa Barbara:
Should you at some point decide that a Ph.D. in economics is too mathematical/theoretical, or in some other way, not your cup of tea, UC-Santa Barbara also has Ph.D. and master's programs in Environmental Science and Management. Their mathematical requirements are lower. That program has economics courses within it that are less theoretical than what the econ department does, and specifically designed for environmental regulation and policy issues. People in that program don't have to do the Ph.D. sequence in macro, micro or econometrics. They just cut straight to the environmental and natural resource stuff.
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