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Fuelwood scarcity, energy substitution, and rural livelihoods in Namibia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

CHARLES PALMER  and
JAMES MACGREGOR
CHARLES PALMER
Affiliation:
Senior Researcher, Chair of Environmental Policy and Economics, Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zürich, Universitätstrasse 22, CHN K 76.2, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland. Tel: +41 44 632 32 25. Email: charles.palmer@env.ethz.ch
JAMES MACGREGOR
Affiliation:
Senior Researcher, Environmental Economics Programme, Sustainable Markets Group, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, UK.
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Abstract

In Namibia, as in many parts of Africa, households are highly dependent on forest resources for their livelihoods, including energy needs. Using data originally collected for Namibia's forest resource accounts and insights from a non-separable household model, this paper estimates household fuelwood demand. Specifically, the factors underlying the substitution between fuelwood collected from open access forest resources, cow dung, and fuelwood purchased from the market are analysed. Heckman two-step estimates show that households respond to economic scarcity, as measured by the opportunity costs of collecting fuelwood, by reducing energy consumption slightly more than by increasing labour input to collection. There is limited evidence for substitution from fuelwood to other energy sources, particularly with declining availability of forest stocks. Market participants may be more sensitive to price changes than non-participants. All estimated elasticities are low, similar to those observed in previous studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 6 , December 2009 , pp. 693 - 715
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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