Ethiopia has ambitious plans to transition towards a green economy. Meet Dawit Woubishet Mulatu, a researcher at the Environment and Climate Research Center (ECRC), EfD Ethiopia. He spoke with us
National park agencies in Africa often lack incentives to maximize revenue, despite the decline in conservation subsidies from the State. We explore the potential of pricing policy to generate funds for extensive conservation. We estimate recreation demand by international tourists for a popular South African park, calculate the consumer surplus and find the revenue-maximizing entrance fee. Our results suggest substantial underpricing and therefore significant forgone income.
Behavioral economist Prof Martine Visser is pioneering the use of ‘green nudging’ methods to encourage people in a developing world context to adopt pro-environmental behavior in the interest of the
The collective participation of local communities in the management and utilization of forest resources is now widely accepted as a possible solution to the failure of centralized, top-down approaches to forest conservation.Under such initiatives, communities in Kenya have organized themselves into Community Forest Associations
This paper examines whether offering landless forest-adjacent communities options to grow appropriate food crops inside forest reserves during early stages of reforestation programmes increases incomes of low-income households and conserve forests. We consider the forest cover and household welfare impacts of a unique incentive scheme in Kenya known as the Plantation Establishment and Livelihood Improvement Scheme (PELIS). PELIS seeks to deepen community participation in forestry, and improve the livelihoods of adjacent communities.
Wildlife is widely becoming an important vehicle for rural development in most third-world countries across the globe. With wildlife, as with other conservation and development policies, policymakers are usually not informed about the needs and wants of poor rural households and roll out programmes that are not tailor made to suit their desires, which often results in policy failure. We use a survey-based choice experiment in this paper to investigate household preferences for various attributes of a wildlife management scheme. The survey was administered in
Energy prices (for fuel and electricity) and energy price volatility impact wine prices. In the long run, we find a clear link between fuel and wine prices, implying that the two markets positively influence each other to the extent that a change in fuel prices influences wine prices. In the short run, we find that past volatility from wine prices as well as shocks from other markets, i.e., fuel and electricity, influence the current wine prices.