One festive component of the EfD Annual Meeting is the Awards Dinner. The different committees had a tough job selecting winners among the nominees. In fact, so hard that one of them had to be shared. New awards were also introduced this year, the Gender Analysis Award and Thomas Sterner’s Best PhD Thesis Paper Award. In addition, the center administrators had completed training and received diplomas and warm recognition from their colleagues as well as the first cohort of Early Career Fellows who have now finished their two-year program.
The first award was presented by Menale Kassie, ICIPE, the Peter Berck’s Best Discussion Paper Award, and is based on the following criteria:
Involve researchers in Global South in an EfD-funded project, have policy relevance, and have excellent research design and analysis. The winner is selected by EfD’s Research Committee.
The finalists were:
- Tensay Hadush Meles, Razack Lokina, Erica Louis Mtenga, Julieth Julius Tibanywana: Stated preferences with survey consequentiality and outcome uncertainty: A split sample discrete choice experiment
- Bing Zhang and Mengdi Liu: The Costs of Blue Sky: The Distributional Effects of Environmental Regulation on Labor Demand in China
- Shivani Wadehra, Zihan Nie, and Francisco Alpízar: Disentangling the chicken or egg causality dilemma of household waste sorting and segregated waste collection: A randomized controlled trial in India
This year two teams won Peter Berck’s Best Discussion Paper Award - Bing Zhang and Mengdi Liu plus Shivani Wadehra, Zihan Nie, and Francisco Alpízar.
The Gunnar Köhlin Best Masters Thesis Award recognizes work satisfying the following criteria: Rigor in the application of environmental and resource economics, relevance in affecting policy to reduce poverty and increase sustainability, and clarity in writing that makes the text easily accessible and fun to read. The EfD Capacity Development Committee selects this winner.
The finalists were:
- Doris Edmund Macha, EfD Tanzania: The effect of gender differences in production decision-making on food security in Tanzania
- Ashmita Mehra, EfD India: Impact of clean fuel use on working hours and workforce participation decisions of women in India
- Gabriela Mejía, EfD Colombia: Does extractivism erode our trust? Evaluation of oil and gas exploration on public trust.
And the winner was Gabriela Mejía.
To win the new Thomas Sterner’s Best PhD Thesis Paper Award the paper should address significant and relevant problems in the field of study, have clear and actionable policy conclusions or implications, reflect the real-world impact of the research, and demonstrate high academic standards, including robust methodology, thorough analysis, and clear presentation of findings.
The top nominations were:
Chalmers K. Mulwa, EfD South Africa: Farm Diversification as an Adaptation Strategy to Climatic Shocks and Implications for Food Security in Northern Namibia
Published in: World Development
Lilian Arthur, EfD Ghana: Superstition and Attitudes Towards Restoration of a Mining-Degraded Forest Reserve: Evidence from Ghana
Published in: Forest Policy and Economics
Khushboo Aggarwal, EfD India: Still Waters Run Deep: Groundwater Contamination and Education Outcomes in India
Published in: Economics of Education Review
And the winner was Chalmers K. Mulwa.
The EfD Gender Analysis Award was also presented for the first time in Nairobi. It acknowledges papers that, among others, apply gender analysis to environmental topics in LMICs, apply a robust methodological approach, show originality, contribute to existing literature, and have policy implications.
Winner of the EfD Gender Analysis Award were Hoa Le Dang, Thuyen Thi Pham, Nhung Thi Pam, and Nam Khanh Pham for their paper Gender differences in adaptation strategies to salinity intrusion in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam.
Finally, the EfD Policy Impact Award was presented by Dr. Precious Zikhali, Senior Economist at the World Bank, to two runners-up who received a certificate of excellence and one winner. The criteria for this award are: The research project and/or policy engagement activities should have a documented impact in terms of change in legislation/policy or other drivers that deliver reduced poverty and/or more sustainable management of the environment and natural resources
Recipients of the certificates of excellence were:
- EfD researchers Kevin Coldrey and Jane Turpie in collaboration with Wendy Foden, SANParks for their Framework for assessing climate change vulnerability in protected areas.
- EfD researchers Edward Bbaale, Peter Babyenda, Nicholas Kilimani and John Sseruyange in collaboration with Tony Mwesigwa and Simon Peter Ssekitoleko, Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development for their Policy options for clean cooking and reduced biomass dependency.
The winners of the EfD Policy Impact Award were:
EfD researchers Richard Mulwa, Jane Mariara, Peter Kimuyu, Jackson Otieno, David Fuente, and Joe Cook, in collaboration with Mbutu Mwaura and Josiah Gitu, Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company for Financing the transition to safe, affordable, and resilient water and sanitation services in Nairobi.
Congratulations to all the winners and a warm thank you to all the evaluation committees!