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.

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.

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.

Developing countries are known to exploit their resource frontier to achieve growth objectives and reduce poverty. This can lead to long-term positive outcomes or – if resource exploitation is unsustainable – lose–lose outcomes that leave populations and ecosystems worse off. This paper introduces a dynamic model of resource exploitation to explain how regions may succumb to, avoid or escape this negative outcome. The theoretical model characterizes a frontier community that uses soil as an input into agricultural production. The model shows that there may be a critical point in the soil stock that determines whether agricultural activities lead to sustainable development or a collapse in local income. This suggests that, in the event of a resource collapse, temporary adjustments to the system may permanently rehabilitate the resource base and change a community's development pattern. Calibration of the model to several frontier states of the Brazilian Amazon points toward an overall outcome of steady development.

The existing fisheries economics literature analyzes compliance problems by treating the fishing firm as one cohesive unit, but in many cases violations are committed by agents acting on behalf of a firm. To account for this, we analyze the principal–agent relationship within the fishing firm. In the case where the firm directly benefits from illegal fishing, the firm must induce its crew to violate regulations through the incentive scheme. Within this framework, we analyze how the allocation of liability between fishing firms and crew affects quota violations and the ability to design a socially efficient fisheries policy. We show that without wage frictions, it does not matter who is held liable. However, under the commonly used share systems of remuneration, crew liability generally yields a more efficient outcome than firm liability. Furthermore, asset restrictions may affect the outcome under various liability rules.

In July 2014 a group of 14 countries (the ‘Davos Group’) launched negotiations on liberalizing trade in ‘green goods’ (also known as environmental goods – EGs), focusing on the elimination of tariffs for a list of 54 products. With an average tariff of 1.8 per cent, this group has little to offer even if the list were extended to the 411 products on the ‘WTO list’. Taking into account tariff dispersion, their tariff structure on EGs would be equivalent to a uniform tariff of 3.4 per cent, about half the uniform tariff-equivalent for non EGs products. Enlarging the number of participants to low-income countries might be possible as, on average, their imports would not increase by more than 8 per cent. Because of the strong complementarities between trade in EGs and trade in environmental services, these should also be brought into the negotiation in spite of the likely difficulties in reaching agreement on their scope.