Highlights

• Consumption of firewood decreases while charcoal and LPG increases with land-use change/intensity The factors that determine the choice of energy included Land-use change/intensity and the livelihood activities.

• Sustainable energy policy should embrace energy stacking and strongly encourage reforestation.

Highlights

• A new spatial pattern of soil organic carbon and soil pH for the cocoa districts and agroecological zones of Ghana.

• Unsuitably low cocoa soil organic and strong acidity.

• A loss of soil organic carbon in a pattern that reflects historic boom-bust cycle of cocoa hot and cold spots transitions.

• Homogeneity of soil organic carbon is moderate within a longer range than soil pH.

The growth-induced effects of financial development have been well-established in the empirical literature, as well as the significance of financial development to energy demand behavior. However, the empirical evidence on the relationship between financial development and energy intensity remains sparse in the literature. Given the multifaceted nature of the effects of financial development, the proposed relationship seems a complex one and warrants an empirical investigation.

Highlights

Both in the United States and in Europe there is ongoing work on reversing habitat fragmentation and the attendant loss in biodiversity in river systems caused by hydropower and other developments. Fish ladders and other measures are being introduced to restore the connectivity in river systems. In this paper, we set up a theoretical model to investigate what the conditions are for such an investment to be socially profitable.

Highlights

• Studies assessing households' vulnerability to floods significantly ignore the element of underestimation.

• The concept of “Perceived Vulnerability” enhances the value of assessing flood risks.

• Gender differences of household heads exist in Perceived Vulnerability to urban floods.

• Age among male household heads determined underestimation of floods although non-linear.

Implications for Participatory Forest Management and Payments to Communities for Ecosystem Services

• Communities living near Kenya’s forests place a monetary value on conservation.
• Mountain forests are the source of rivers that provide water for agriculture and other “ecosystem services” such as flood control and water purification.
• It is possible for downstream communities that benefit from these ecosystem services to pay the upstream communities to conserve the forests.