Biofuels production has received increasing focus by developed and developing countries due to rising fossil fuel prices and the need to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The net economic and environmental impacts of biofuel programs have become an important question of public policy. In particular, the anticipation that biofuels may have a lower environmental footprint than fossil fuels is one of the important drivers. This study investigates the economy-wide impact of biofuel investment in Ethiopia with the focus on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the forest sector.

The main objective of the study was to assess the economic value of Zambia’s forest ecosystem services. The study estimates that, when ecosystem services provided by forests are accounted for, forests make a direct contribution to the national economy equivalent to about 4.7% of gross domestic product (GDP), which rises to 6.3% with the application of multiplier effects.

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This study examines the welfare effects of community plantations in Ethiopia via contingent valuation. Both single-bounded and double-bounded survey methods were considered, and, with respect to double-bounded methods, the potential for anomalous response behaviour was also taken into account. The results generally confirm that there are statistically significant welfare benefits to be derived from community forestry; however, the range of the estimated benefits is large.

Although developing countries have established scores of new protected areas over the past three decades, they often amount to little more than “paper parks” that are chronically short of the financial, human, and technical resources needed for effective management. It is not clear whether and how severely under-resourced parks affect deforestation. In principle, they could either stem it by, for example, creating an expectation of future enforcement, or they could spur it by, for example, creating open access regimes.

Biodiversity plays a key role in sustaining the functioning of ecosystems and thus in the provision of ecosystem services. A great deal of biodiversity is to be found in private forests, thus the way in which these forests are managed has major implications for biodiversity.

This paper uses the water-reallocation scheme created within the National Water Act (1998) to analyze the impacts of water policy on farm livelihoods in South Africa. Based on one of the most water stressed catchments in the country, the Olifants river basin, we provide an integrated modeling approach combining water and agricultural modules to investigate the impacts of compulsory licensing and water market on crop production and investment made to improve water use efficiency.