This project thrives to determine how the Kgalagadi Transfrontier park can serve as a drive in tourism that generates economic and social benefits to land claimants and as a result maximize the positive spill over effects on the Khomani San people.
The objectives of this study are to provide a spatial analysis of the total economic value of the SA coast, focusing on the values generated by different types of protected areas versus other stretches of coast.
Renewable natural resources such as forests, fisheries, grazing lands, soils, groundwater, etc, most of which fall under the category of common pool resources, constitute a significant part of our planet. Common property resources constitute important sources of livelihoods to many people in developing countries including timber, fuelwood, grazing, irrigation water, and domestic water.
This research will examine the impact of adaptation strategies on farmers’ food production. We will investigate whether there are differences in the food production functions of farm households that adopted adaptation strategies and those that did not adopt.
Given the volatility of world oil prices and the recent all time high, which increased their popularity, bio-fuels have received a great deal of attention globally. The central question in here is whether this will have a positive or a negative impact on smallholder farmers and people living in rural areas, as more agricultural land will be used for biofuels production? While some designate it as a crime against humanity, some others have argued that a greater production of biofuels will not necessarily be harmful for the poor and that they can become more food secure with the adoption of proper production technology.
The proposed project seeks to contribute substantively to climate change and community forest management policies and advance the literature by analyzing the relationship between common property forest management (CPFM) in Ethiopia and climate policy within the context of the UN Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) and proposing instruments for channeling REDD benefits to households.
This project addresses whether increasing uncertainty about the beneficial consequences of collected waste or other aspects of the collection-recycling process affect contribution levels and in turn prosocial attitudes.
To understand under which conditions a co-management alternative (a shared effort between the central government and the local community) might work to guarantee the sustainable use of a complex mobile common pool resource such as marine turtles.
This project explores the effects and the role of safety nets in adaptation to climate change in Central America.
The objective of this project is to estimate to what extent migration movements within a country are explained by occurrence of extreme weather events in general and more specifically by floods.
Beijing’s rapid economic growth in recent years has induced enormous transportation demand. Nowadays, congestion and air pollution caused by increasing use of cars are perceived as some of the most pressing problems in Beijing.
Park pricing has been one of the major impediment to growth of the tourism sector in Kenya. Like other environmental resources and public goods, national parks benefit society in many different ways. They perform not only ecological functions but also provide recreational facilities and earn foreign exchange to the country.
The goal of the proposed project is to improve environmental sustainability and reduce rural poverty in Tanzania. The project seeks to achieve this goal by focusing on PFM, which has its main goal to increase forest stocks. The proposed project looks at the linkage between forest policies and standard on-farm economic effects. The project is therefore expected to increase understanding about how better forest managment impacts critical, standard economic objectives like investments and labor market development
Tanzania’s seven Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are governed by the same set of national laws and regulations, but face different opportunities and pressuresthat depend in part on location, the number of local communities dependent on the marine resources, and tourism opportunities.
EfD-CA at CATIE began study sponsored by The Tinker Foundation
Methodology based on environmental economics principles, to be replicated in wildlife protected areas
Metodología del EfD-CA en CATIE basada en principios de economía ambiental por replicarse en áreas silvestres protegidas // Methodology based on environmental economics principles created by EfD-CA at CATIE soon to be replicated in other protected areas.
As marine protected areas (MPAs) are applied in poor countries, and in particular in Mnazi Bay, Tanzania, managers recognize that the success of the MPA in protecting fish, biodiversity, and reefs stems from the response of local people – whether that response comes from direct enforcement activities or from incentives to cooperate with new restrictions. In Mnazi Bay, managers are combining enforcement of new regulations on fishing locations and technology with investments in community-based projects and resource management councils and widespread education efforts. In the terrestrial setting, integrated development-conservation projects (ICDPs) typically failed due to a lack of linkage between the development projects and conservation incentives and goals, leaving the development projects as compensation for losses associated with enforcement of access restrictions. MPA implementation seeks to avoid such failures and induce cooperation by focusing on projects that rely on healthy oceans and mangrove forests in addition to providing new technologies like larger mesh nets.
Sustained agricultural growth is important for poverty reduction in Africa due to the significant role of the sector in the continent. The performance of agriculture depends, among others, on appropriate investment in the sector and the latter is constrained by a multitude of factors including land tenure insecurity. In the presence of tenure insecurity, the risk of losing land will create a disincentive to undertake investments when the present value of the productivity benefits from such investments would, under full tenure security, be higher than their cost.
Given the volatility of world oil prices and the recent all time high, which increased their popularity, bio-fuels have received a great deal of attention globally. The central question in here is whether this will have a positive or a negative impact on smallholder farmers and people living in rural areas, as more agricultural land will be used for biofuels production?
An applied economics survey among South African subsistence farmers
A tool to shape public policies?
In this research project EfD aims to draw lessons from land reforms in several Asian and African countries. The findings will be presented in a book edited by Professors Stein Holden and Keijiro Otsuka and titled "Land Reforms in Asia and Africa - Impacts on Poverty and Natural Resource Management".
Most of the studies so far/literature on rural fuel demand and supply, in general, and those on Ethiopia, in particular, are apparently static, with no time dimension.
Deforestation in Ethiopia has resulted in growing fuel scarcity and higher firewood prices in urban centers. Urban centers have long been dependent on the rural hinterlands for their fuel. The use of biofuels of rural origin covers about 90% of the urban fuel use. The dependence of urban centers on their rural hinterlands has aggravated the deforestation. One response to reducing the pressure of urban centers on their rural hinterlands could be through substitutions between or switching from one fuel to another, i.e., through energy transition. For example, through substituting away or switching from fuelwood to electricity. Electricity as cooking fuel is cleaner and do not cause deforestation.
Production risk is one of the quintessential features of agriculture in Ethiopia. Unpredictable weather can expose farm households to significant production uncertainty and serious hardship. Under harsh climatic and agro-ecological conditions, this can result in food insecurity and famine. During the last 40 years, Ethiopia has experienced many severe droughts leading to production levels that fell short of basic subsistence levels for many farm households (REST and NORAGRIC 1995, p. 137). Harvest failure due to drought is the most important cause of risk-related hardship of Ethiopian rural households, with adverse effects on farm household consumption and welfare (Dercon 2004, 2005). When facing prospects of harvest failure, ex ante farm production decisions, such as crop or varietal choice, remain a part of risk-management strategies (Just and Candler 1985; Fafchamps 1992; Chavas and Holt 1996; Dercon 1996; Smale et al. 1998). In dry environments, farmers’ reliance on crop biodiversity is an essential part of ex ante risk management strategies. Thus, the conservation of relevant germplasms is instrumental to hedge against weather related uncertainty.
The parks’ entrance location and the possibility of agricultural workers to switch to service activities can be important tools to take advantage of the economic benefits of parks.
Ethiopia’s forest cover is estimated at less than 4% of the total land area of about 1 million km2. The consequences of deforestation and forest degradation include reduced agricultural production and decreased household welfare. The Ethiopian government promulgated a forest proclamation and approved the first forest policy in 2007. In its recent comprehensive plan referred to as Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP), the government also indicated its plan to increase forest cover from about 4% to 9% over a period of five years. The reality on the ground suggests that there is continuing deforestation and mismanagement of existing forests. The government has acknowledged in its forestry laws and regulations that depletion of these resources have resulted in reduced agricultural productivity and subsequently reduced quality of life of the rural people. Moreover, frequent restructuring of the main government body responsible for natural resources in general and forestry in particular meant different levels of attention paid to the sector with its implications for staffing and continuity of programs.
Wetlands are considered to perform a number of ecosystem services, including the improvement of water quality. However, few empirical studies have been carried out on the capacity of wetlands to perform a water treatment function, or on the demand for this function, with the result that most estimates of the value of this service are based on a weak foundation. Furthermore, the measurement of this function is confounded by the complications in trying to assess water quality entering and leaving wetlands because of surface to groundwater interactions.
Scepticism with respect to the consequences of climate change is declining worldwide as this issue takes a prominent place on global political agenda. However, the overall extent and magnitude of climate change consequences are still extremely uncertain. As such, any economic analysis of climate change must take cognisance of the economics of risk and uncertainty.
Tropical deforestation, degradation and forest clearing are important contributors to green house emissions. Some studies approximate that as much as 25% of all carbon dioxide arise from deforestation and degradation.
In recent times many developing countries have experienced degradation of their natural resource base namely forests, water, fisheries etc. The resource degradation has largely been blamed on the management regime of these resources. In this study we investigate the local evolution and current status of forest management regimes in Kenya.
Nature based tourism is a popular and rapidly growing industry in South Africa. Developing nations are finding it useful to use their natural resources in order to create competitive advantage over the developed world.
In this project we are investigate the trade off between countries’ investments in adaptation and mitigation. We study how the investment behaviour in these two types of investments differs between types of countries (where countries differ in terms of vulnerability).
This study seeks to explore the relationship between abalone poaching, use of methamphetamine and crime activity in the coastal communities of South Africa; and the associated implications for the management of the resource.
The broad objective of this project is to examine the role of forests/trees in the livelihoods of households at varying forest management regimes.
Using what amounts to a field experiment we analyse whether the electricity consumption patterns of consumers are altered by the experience of blackouts and the exposure to Eskom’s communication. Secondly; we analyse bargaining experiments focussed on disputes concerning conservation-land owned by the South African National Defence Force and the conservation agencies.
The research project led by Dr Stephanie Giamporcaro focuses on Environmental Finance and Environmental Investment. The research program aims thus to explore how environmentally responsible investment approaches are implemented currently in South Africa and how the implementation of these strategies in the country’s financial and investment sector can be facilitated in order to promote a sustainable growth in South Africa and a sustainable use of natural resources .
Implementation and management of an ITQ fishery involves significant and costly administrative activities. These activities include formulating and implementing policy rules, monitoring and enforcement to deter illegal behavior, and economic and marine research. In this project we construct a model of a competitive ITQ system to analyze how the distribution of administrative costs b
The agriculture sector in Ethiopia is characterized by low external input use and low productivity. It is also characterized by high nutrient depletion and soil erosion that limit farmers’ ability to increase agricultural production and reduce poverty and food insecurity.
Food insecurity is a common problem in Ethiopia because of natural (e.g. drought, flood) and idiosyncratic risks (e.g. illness). To reduce the welfare impact of risks, households use different risk coping strategies such as diversification of crops, different crop management practices, and informal risk sharing mechanisms.
The objective is to evaluate the performance of Costa Rica’s voluntary Blue Flag certification program, focusing on beach communities.
Our research aims to develop a conceptual and empirical framework for analyzing the benefits and costs of various options for reforming pricing transportation in San José, and to use it to develop concrete policy recommendations.
The objective is to identify the drivers of the adoption of sustainable land management practices by coffee farmers in Costa Rica
This research project analyze the incidence of a fuel taxes in four Central American and Caribbean countries—Costa Rica, Jamaica, Nicaragua, and Panama—using household-level expenditure data.
What would have been the deforestation rate within and around protected areas if these protected areas had not been established? This project will allow to determine the impact of land conservation policies on deforestation and, with expenditure figures, the costs of saving an additional hectare of forest.
This project is an initiative by TerrAfrica at the World Bank to provide analytical contributions to the mobilization of additional financial resources for Sustainable Land Management in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Poverty and Land Degradation in Ethiopia: How to Reverse the Spiral?
The project aims at assessing the welfare implication of the booming fish export at the household level around Lake Victoria. With the experience of the pilot study conducted successfully last September by Andrea Mannberg –a Ph.D candidate who is also working in the project. Adolf Mkenda and John Mduma coordinate the project and other logistics for the final field work to be carried out in March-April 2008. They are in charge of organizing the term of interviewers from the Lake Victoria regions and also organizing the interviewee.
This paper aims at assessing the scope and the desirability of increasing tax on fossil fuel in Tanzania in the context of environmental fiscal reforms. A.F Mkenda, J.K Mduma and W.M Ngasamiaku are the lead authors in this paper. The paper will attempt to tackle three critical issues namely; (i) the extent that tax on fuel can boost government revenue in line with the quest for fiscal reform, (ii) the extent that tax on fuel can lead to reduction in fuel consumption, taking into account the existing substitution possibilities and (iii) the distributional impact of taxation on fuel, particularly its impact on the poor.