This paper empirically examines the factors that determine the incidence and extent of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in developing countries. Estimation results show that the incidence and extent of the CDM is greater for the developing countries with larger mitigation potential and greater capacity to manage the projects. Developing countries with faster economic growth and past experience with activities implemented jointly (AIJ) projects are more likely to host renewable energy projects, although this is not the case for other project types. The incidence and extent of foreign investment projects in energy efficiency, CO2 reduction and non-CO2 gas reduction projects are higher for the countries with lower per capita GDP, most likely due to capital constraints. There is no evidence that the number of sub-regional projects impinged on investment flows. Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa appear to face special obstacles under the CDM even after the strength of institutions and energy-related mitigation opportunities are accounted for.

This study estimates and analyzes the incidence and determinants of energy poverty in Nigeria based on a simple multidimensional energy poverty index that it constructed. It also highlights the implications of energy poverty for sustainable development in Nigeria. The headcount ratio and the logistic regression technique are used. The study utilizes the Nigeria Living Standard Survey data set of 2004, obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics. The estimates show that energy poverty is pervasive in the country; it afflicts over 75 per cent of the population. The determinants of energy poverty in Nigeria include household size; educational level, gender and age of household head; general poverty; region of residence; and proportion of working members in the household. Efforts should be made to adequately tackle the problem of energy poverty in Nigeria. This is a major way to put the country on the path to rapid and sustainable development.

It is often argued that, ethically, resource rents should accrue to all citizens. Yet, in reality, the rents from exploiting national resources are often concentrated in the hands of a few. If resource rents were to be taxed, on the other hand, substantial amounts of public money could be raised and used to cover the population's infrastructure needs, such as access to electricity, water, sanitation, communication technology and roads, which all play important roles in a nation's economic development process. Here, the authors examine to what extent existing resource rents could be used to provide universal access to these infrastructures.

Using individual travel diary data collected before and after a rail transit expansion in urban Beijing, the impact of urban rail accessibility improvement on the usage of rail transit, automobiles, buses, walking and bicycling, as well as the cross-area externality induced by congestion alleviation, is estimated. The results show that rail transit usage significantly increased for commuters residing in the affected areas and that the additional rail passengers were previously auto users, rather than bus passengers. The cross-area externality is estimated as small, which implies that the congestion alleviation was not large enough (yet) to change the travel mode choices of commuters residing in areas that did not experience the improvement. Furthermore, the results show that neither the number of commute work trips nor their length increased, indicating that the quantity of travel was not increased by the rail transit expansion.

In this paper, we empirically investigate the impact of the Kyoto Protocol on CO2 emissions using a sample of 170 countries over the period 1992–2009. We propose the use of a difference-in-differences estimator with matching to address the endogeneity of the policy variable, namely Kyoto commitments. Countries are matched according to observable characteristics to create a suitable counterfactual. We correspondingly estimate a panel data model for the whole sample and the matched sample and compare the results to those obtained using an instrumental variable approach. The main results indicate that Kyoto Protocol commitments have a measurable reducing effect on CO2 emissions, indicating that a treaty often deemed a ‘failure’ may in fact be producing some non-negligible effects for those who signed it.

To improve wildlife conservation incentives in community-based natural resource management programs, a better understanding of rural communities' willingness to engage in wildlife conservation jobs is needed. We implement a discrete choice model explaining reservation wages for nine conservation jobs using contingent behavior data from rural Botswana residents. We present a model in which the conditional indirect utility function incorporates a more general value of time than has previously been used, and this specification outperforms the standard model. Sample estimates indicate that reservation wages are modestly higher for women than for men, and that residents have higher reservation wages for jobs requiring more exertion or involving more danger.

We estimate the impact of large, catastrophic floods on internal armed conflict using global data on large floods between 1985 and 2009. The results suggest that while large floods did not ignite new conflict, they fueled existing armed conflicts. Floods and armed conflict are endogenously determined, and we show that empirically addressing this endogeneity is important. The estimated effects of floods on conflict prevalence are substantially larger in specifications that control for the endogeneity of floods, suggesting that treating natural disasters as exogenous phenomena may underestimate their impacts on sociopolitical outcomes.

This paper estimates a theory-based regression model which studies the macro-economic impact of environmental and consumption risks on consumption growth in the Mediterranean region. The analysis is carried out using time series aggregate data for 13 Mediterranean countries over the period 1965–2008. The results indicate that both risks and their interaction significantly influence consumption dynamics. The estimates of the indices of relative risk aversion and relative prudence, as well as the relative preference for the quality of environment, suggest marked cross-country heterogeneity.

This paper evaluates the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity. Cross-sectional variation in climate among Brazilian municipalities is used to estimate an equation in which geographical attributes determine agricultural productivity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions based on atmosphere–ocean, coupled with general circulation models (for 2030–2049), are used to simulate the impacts of climate change. Our estimates suggest that global warming under the current technological standards is expected to decrease the agricultural output per hectare in Brazil by 18 per cent, with the effects on municipalities ranging from−40 to+15 per cent.

Low demand for safe water may partly result from a perceived distaste towards or the inconvenience of treatment methods. This paper analyzes preferences for water quality improvements in peri-urban Phnom Penh. The authors first analyze data from a discrete choice experiment in which respondents selected their preferred alternative from generic options varying in cost, taste acceptability, effectiveness against diarrhea and quantity of water treated. The choice patterns suggest that demand for water treatment is highly dependent on taste acceptability. The authors also use double-blinded taste tests to show that respondents are sensitive to one common taste in treated drinking water, that stemming from chlorine disinfection. While many compounds (natural and anthropogenic) may contribute to taste problems in drinking water, the lack of alignment between household preferences for taste and water safety may play a role in the low use of household water treatment methods in many settings.

Using data from the period 1996–2010, this paper identifies the nature of constraints that make India, which is one of the emerging environmental goods and services (EGS) exporters, unable to realize its export potential of environmental goods (EG). The empirical results show that the growth of India's exports of EG was negatively affected by ‘behind the border’ constraints such as weak infrastructure and institutions, while the effect of ‘explicit beyond the border’ constraints such as partner countries' tariffs and exchange rates on the exports of EG was relatively small. The reduction of India's trading partners' ‘implicit beyond the border’ constraints such as weak infrastructure and institutions significantly contributed toward India's exports of EG, especially during the period 2005–2010.

The small-scale fisheries sector in many Pacific islands is facing increasing challenges in relation to resource availability, economic opportunity, and demographic and social pressure. In particular, intensifying cash-oriented livelihood strategies can exacerbate existing vulnerabilities and threaten food security and resource conservation. In this paper the authors develop a bio-economic model and a quantitative measure of resilience in order to explore the interaction between socio-economic and ecological dynamics, and to analyze the potential role that cooperation and collective arrangements can play in this interaction to maintain the viability of the system. Based on the case of the system known as wantok typically found in the Solomon Islands, numerical examples are used to explore the potential gain that cooperation between fishers can bring in terms of subsistence, profitability and ecological performances, as well as the resilience of the whole system to shocks.

This paper examines whether and how experiencing climate-related disasters can improve the rural poor's adaptation to climate change through community-based resource management. Original household survey data in Fiji capture the establishment of community-based marine protected areas following a tropical cyclone. Controlling for the endogeneity of household-level cyclone damage reveals that a household's exposure to the disaster increases its support for establishing marine protected areas, presumably for future safety nets. Evidence suggests that community members' social learning from disaster experience might facilitate their consensual decision making.

We consider firms facing the risk of natural disasters and study their problem of investing in mitigation if financial insurance is not available. The firms' problem is to choose the optimal timing and size of the investment. The timing problem leads to a critical productivity size where firms above it invest in mitigation while firms below the threshold decide to not invest. We investigate how cash aid such as emergency response, and in-kind aid such as reconstruction, rehabilitation or disaster risk reduction investments, affect the critical productivity threshold and the optimal investment size and characterize the international donor's optimal charity strategy.

This paper investigates whether inherited colonial legacies influence deforestation rates in 60 former colonized developing countries. It is hypothesized that differences in deforestation among countries can be attributed to their colonial legacies shaping the current impact of the institutional background on deforestation. Overall, the author finds that institutions defined as the extent of democracy, the quality of property rights and the quality of government functioning (e.g., corruption), have a differential impact on deforestation rates according to colonial legacies as defined by the identity of the colonizer. More precisely, it is found that: (1) in countries characterized by ‘bad’ governance, former French colonies deforest relatively less than former British and Spanish colonies; whereas (2) in countries characterized by ‘good’ governance, the result is reversed. These results are robust when geography features are controlled for since the process of colonization was not random and depended on initial geographic and climatic conditions.

On 2 April 2013 a major flood struck the City of La Plata, Argentina, killing 89 people and displacing thousands of others. That event, the worst flood the city has suffered in the past 100 years, prompted plans for a new hydraulic infrastructure. Although such an investment is necessary, little is known about its benefits. This paper intends to shed some light on this issue by estimating the willingness to pay to avoid the risk of experiencing a flooding event. For this purpose, we have taken thousands of real estate prices in the La Plata Metropolitan Area and combined them with a high-resolution flood risks map to estimate spatial hedonic price models. The results show significant price discounting for properties in flood-prone areas.

The introduction and adoption of new technologies is an important component of development projects. Many technologies that could spur considerable increase in welfare, however, are often adopted at low rates even when donors and NGOs have invested their effort in them heavily. This paper develops a framework to analyze inefficiencies caused by fit-risk (potential users are not certain whether the technology will fit their needs, lifestyles, social feedback or capabilities), and the role of marketing tools, such as demonstration, in reducing fit-risk and enhancing the efficiency of development projects. We find that, in the presence of fit-risk, there is always unrealized demand and resource waste. Donors who ignore fit-risk always overestimate the project value and over-subsidize the products they are promoting. We identify conditions under which introducing demonstration may help alleviate fit-risk and improve the overall project values. The impact of eliminating fit-risk on the project uptake depends on the probability of fit.

In this study we model the preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) of downstream farmers in one of the largest irrigation schemes worldwide in Sudan for improved irrigation water supply through transboundary collaboration with farmers upstream in Ethiopia. In a choice experiment, Sudanese farmers are asked to pay an increase in existing irrigation fees to secure future irrigation water availability by either enhancing the removal of sediments in their local irrigation channels or compensating farmers in the Ethiopian highlands for taking soil conservation measures to prevent land degradation and soil erosion. Although Sudanese farmers downstream do not feel very connected to farmers upstream in Ethiopia, we find a high degree of trust in international cooperation and a positive WTP for improved irrigation water supply and water use efficiency through transboundary collaboration.

This paper introduces a household model of private investment in storm protection under an endogenous risk framework to determine how defensive self-protection and self-insurance expenditures by coastal households to mitigate storm-inflicted damages are affected by the availability of public programs and the presence of a mangrove forest. The theoretical results show that publicly constructed physical barriers and mangroves encourage self-protection but discourage self-insurance expenditures. However, public disaster relief and rehabilitation programs lead to the crowding-out of self-protection but the crowding-in of self-insurance. Our empirical analysis of coastal households in Bangladesh impacted by Cyclone Sidr reveals partial support for the crowding-out and crowding-in effects of public investments and programs. Households located in a mangrove-protected area invest more in self-protection and less in self-insurance. Other controls, such as household socio-economic characteristics, also influence and add a degree of complexity to the relationship.

In Rwanda, rural water supply is not uniformly distributed. Rural areas are characterized by differences in the distance to the nearest water point and in water quality for domestic water, by watering frequency and water availability for irrigation water, and by the price for both. A household's perception of further improvements in water supply will, therefore, depend heavily on the situation it currently faces. The authors used a choice experiment to model how the individual status quo (SQ) affects preferences. Accounting for individual SQ information improves model significance relative to simply using the generic SQ parameter in the model, and the willingness to pay increases. Not using this information leads to a downward bias – and, in some cases, statistical insignificance – in estimates of households’ valuation of health improvements linked to improved domestic water availability, as well as of increased watering frequency linked to the improved availability of irrigation water.