Local control and collective action in forest management: The case of China

Submitted by Petra Hansson on
EfD Authors:

To encourage sustainable use of forests, in 2003 China allowed rural villages to choose among a range of options to manage forests, including individual user rights with joint management. We studied how this individual user rights-based joint management affected forests and households.

Both property rights and voluntary decisions encourage cooperation. This resulted in better forest conservation in these villages in China, with about 10% more forest cover. This is also important because forests store carbon.

Air Quality, Climate Change, Forestry

CO2 emissions, agricultural productivity and welfare in Ethiopia

Submitted by Petra Hansson on
EfD Authors:

Purpose – Climate change has become one of the most important development challenges worldwide. It affects various sectors, with agriculture the most vulnerable. In Ethiopia, climate change impacts are exacerbated due to the economy’s heavy dependence on agriculture. The Ethiopian Government has started to implement its climate-resilient green economy (CRGE) strategy and reduce CO2 emissions. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of CO2 emission on agricultural productivity and household welfare.

Agriculture, Climate Change, Land, Policy Design

Games as boundary objects: charting trade-offs in sustainable livestock transformation

Submitted by Petra Hansson on
EfD Authors:

Attempts to structurally transform segments of the agri-food system inevitably involve trade-offs between the priorities of actors with different incentives, perspectives and values. Trade-offs are context-specific, reflecting different socio-economic and political realities. We investigate the potential of structured boundary objects to facilitate exposing and reconciling these trade-offs within the context of multistakeholder social learning processes with pastoral and mixed crop-livestock communities in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Tanzania.

Agriculture, Land, Policy Design

Designing sustainable pathways for the livestock sector: the example of Atsbi, Ethiopia and Bama, Burkina Faso

Submitted by Petra Hansson on
EfD Authors:

Demand for animal sourced food is predicted to double in the upcoming 20 years in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is simultaneously a big opportunity in terms of poverty reduction and a significant threat to the environment. The objective of this paper is to present an approach to co-create a set of viable and acceptable development pathways for the livestock sector that maximizes benefits from increased production, exploits the synergies between livestock and the environment, while minimizing the negative effects.

Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land, Policy Design

Diversification in Indian agriculture towards high value crops: Multilevel determinants and policy implications

Submitted by Vidisha Chowdhury on

Employing a multilevel model, this paper demonstrates the importance of contextual effects, over and above the compositional effects, in shaping the geographical pattern of agricultural diversification towards high value crops. The results reveal that, besides household-level differences, the contextual effects of higher geographical levels, especially states and villages, explain significant variation in land-use under high value crops, but these do not apply to all types of crops and farm classes in a similar manner.

Agriculture, Land

A multilevel analysis of drought risk in Indian agriculture: implications for managing risk at different geographical levels

Submitted by Vidisha Chowdhury on
EfD Authors:

Drought is an important downside risk in Indian agriculture; and the spatial differences in its intensity and probability of occurrence are considerable. To develop strategies to manage the risk of drought, and to coordinate and implement these strategies, it is essential to understand the variation in drought risk across geographical or administrative levels. This paper, using a multilevel modeling approach, decomposes the variation in drought risk across states, regions, districts, villages and households, and finds it disproportionately distributed.

Agriculture, Climate Change

What Could Explain Low Uptake of Rural Electricity Programs in Africa? Empirical Evidence from Rural Tanzania

Submitted by Petra Hansson on

Despite the great strides by the government of Tanzania in bolstering access to electricity in rural areas under its Rural Energy Agency (REA), rural connection rates have remained low. A substantial fraction of households residing “under the grid” remains unconnected despite the considerable state subsidy of this program. This study investigates the reasons for low uptake of seemingly highly subsidized, productive and modern energy. Using both bivariate and multivariate logit, we find that the distance between the household and the nearest electric pole matters.

Energy

The Economic, Social and Ecological Performance of the Industrial Trawl Fishery in Ghana: Application of the FPI’s

Submitted by Petra Hansson on

To ensure that benefits from capture fisheries accrue to nationals, fisheries regulations and acts prioritize local access and harvest rights in near and distant waters within a nation’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The lack of local capital to finance industrial fishing, such as trawling, has compelled developing coastal countries’ fishermen to access foreign investment through contractual agreement such as hire-purchases.

Fisheries

Cash transfers for sustainable rural livelihoods? Examining the long-term productive effects of the Child Support Grant in South Africa

Submitted by Samuel Wakuma on

Cash transfers have received increased scholarly and policy attention, as a means of reducing poverty in theglobal South. While cash transfers are primarily intended to prevent impoverishment and deprivation, severalstudies suggest they can have 'productive' impacts, contributing to building sustainable livelihoods. However,pilot projects of unconditional cash transfers have often been too brief or too recent to determine how small, but regular, transfers can improve rural livelihoods over time.

Policy Design

Assessment of Factors Influencing Youth Involvement in Horticulture Agribusiness in Tanzania: A Case Study of Njombe Region

Submitted by Salvatory Macha on
EfD Authors:

Involvement of youth in horticulture agribusiness has become a vital approach to create employment opportunities among the youth in Tanzania.

Agriculture