We analyze and compare the impact of different adaptation strategies on crop net revenues in the Nile Basin of Ethiopia.

This article analyzes two cases of environmental advocacy initiatives in China: institutionalizing environmental information transparency and sanctioning environmental violations.

In this article, the likely effects of an environmental fiscal reform in Namibia are examined using a Computable General Equilibrium model. We find that a triple dividend—improving the environment, increasing employment, and reducing poverty at the same time—remains elusive.

According to proponents, voluntary agreements (VAs) negotiated with polluters sidestep weak institutions and other barriers to conventional environmental regulation in developing countries. Yet little is known about their effectiveness.

Much of the improvement in living standards in developed and developing countries alike is attributable to the exploitation of nonrenewable and renewable resources. The problem is to know when the exploitation occurs at rates and with technologies that are sustainable.

Social-ecological systems exhibit patterns across multiple levels along spatial, temporal, and functional scales. The outcomes that are produced in these systems result from complex, non-additive interactions between different types of social and biophysical components, some of which are common to many systems, and some of which are relatively unique to a particular system. These properties, along with the mostly non-experimental nature of the analysis, make it difficult to construct theories regarding the sustainability of social-ecological systems.

Lack of access to energy services is one of the main constraints to economic development in Africa. Only about 31% of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa has access to electricity, with 14% access rate in rural areas. Compounding the challenge, traditional biomass supplies up to 85% of primary energy supply, and accounts for 80% of energy consumption. With limited energy efficiency, installed generation capacity and weak institutions and energy sector governance, energy security in Africa has become a critical concern.

This book by Thomas Sterner and Jessica Coria is an attempt to encourage more widespread and careful use of economic policy instruments. The book compares the accumulated experiences of the use of economic policy instruments in the U.S. and Europe, as well as in rich and poor countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Ambitious in scope, it discusses the design of instruments that can be employed in any country in a wide range of contexts, including transportation, industrial pollution, water pricing, waste, fisheries, forests, and agriculture.

We study the cost-effectiveness of inducing compliance in a program that caps aggregate emissions of a given pollutant from a set of heterogeneous firms based on emissions standards and the relative cost-effectiveness of such a program with respect to an optimally designed program based on tradable discharge permits. Our analysis considers abatement, monitoring and sanctioning costs, as well as perfect and imperfect information on the part of the regulator with regard to the polluters’ abatement costs.

The Costa Rican experience: extreme weather events partially explain permanent internal migration as an adaptive measure.