As environmental goods such as fuelwood and fodder become more scarce, rural households in developing countries spend more time in their collection. It has been suggested that as a result households may reallocate labor away from own-farm agricultural production. This paper examines whether this is the case for a sample of agricultural households from rural Nepal. Cross-sectional estimates of agricultural labor demand equations give some indication that reallocation away from farm work may occur as environmental products become more scarce. However, these results disappear in random-effects estimation suggesting that time is instead reallocated from other activities or leisure. What little evidence there is for a labor reallocation from agriculture suggests that policies to relieve environmental good collection labor burdens should focus on leaf fodder and grass used as livestock feed rather than on fuelwood.

The article analyzes the links between poverty, forest use and dependence, and forest degradation by combining household and forest resource data from two sites in the Zagros Mountains, Iran: Ghamishale and Tange Tamoradi. At both sites, traditional forms of forest management are practised; in Ghamishale management is mainly family based, whereas in Tange Tamoradi it is village based. The poverty–forest dependence link is strongly influenced by population density, carrying capacity and institutions for forest management. In addition, the study revealed the tradeoff between equity and sustainable resource use as outputs of different institutional arrangements. We do not find any evidence that poor households or households with high forest dependence contribute more to forest degradation than others. The results therefore raise concerns about the potential consequences of policies globally that address forest degradation only through poverty alleviation and forest-dependence reduction.

This paper examines factors that affect the trade of recyclable waste in both exporting and importing countries. To this end, we employ two important elements: first, we adopt a gravity model in our empirical methodology; second, we select five waste and scrap commodities and undertake estimations using commodity-level trade data. We demonstrate that, the higher the wage/per capita GDP/population of an importing country, the more recyclable wastes it imports. This result suggests that the demand for final goods and, accordingly, the demand for materials including recycled material, have strong effects on the import volume of recyclable waste. Moreover, this implies that the imports of a developing country from developed countries increase with expanding industrial activity and economic growth. We find no evidence for a pollution haven for wastes and recycling.

This paper develops a simple model to investigate linkages between trade and environmental policy. In the case of purely local pollution, trade liberalization without constraints on environmental policy induces a non-cooperative game between countries in pollution policy. Without any agreement on environmental policy, trade negotiations are unlikely to lead to a point on the Pareto frontier. When pollution is global, countries may be expected to disagree on linkages between trade agreements and environmental agreements. Countries importing pollution-intensive goods have an incentive to try to link trade agreements with environmental agreements, while countries exporting pollution-intensive goods have an incentive to try to obtain a binding commitment to free trade prior to negotiations over global pollution.

We analyze the impact of development on flood fatalities using a new data set of 2,171 large floods in 92 countries between 1985 and 2008. Our results challenge the conventional wisdom that development results in fewer fatalities during natural disasters. Results indicating that higher income and better governance reduce fatalities during flood events do not hold up when unobserved country heterogeneity and within-country correlation of standard errors are taken into account. We find that income does have a significant, indirect effect on flood fatalities by affecting flood frequency and flood magnitude, but this effect is nonmonotonic, with net reductions in fatalities occurring only in lower income countries. We find little evidence that improved governance affects flood fatalities either directly or indirectly.

This paper while attempting to estimate the social benefits of cleaning the Ganges river in India highlights some of the emerging environmental and development issues in the river cleaning programmes. Methods involving the market and non-market valuation of environmental goods are used to estimate the benefits. The benefits estimated include user and non-user benefits, health benefits to the poor households living along the river, and agricultural benefits to farmers among other benefits. However, the benefits from fisheries, one of the important components of benefits from the river cleaning, could not be quantified in this paper. With the benefits that could be quantified, the program of cleaning the Ganges has positive net present social benefits at a 10 per cent social rate of discount and an internal rate of return as high as 15 per cent. Furthermore the estimates of benefits of river cleaning obtained in this paper provide guidance for designing the policy instruments to raise revenue for sustaining the river cleaning processes in India. A number of different mechanisms are considered to raise the resources for sustaining the cleaning of Ganges. They are a polluter-pays principle, a user-pays principle (with government involvement), a user-pays principle (without government involvement), and funding from the general tax system.

Using eight rounds of household survey data that span two decades, this paper analyzes the determinants of household fuel choice in urban China. Using the correlated random effects generalized ordered probit model, the authors find that household fuel choice in urban China is related to fuel prices, households’ economic status and size and household head's gender and education. The results suggest that policies and interventions that increase households’ income, reduce the price advantage of dirty fuels (e.g., taxing coal) and empower women in the household are of great significance in encouraging the use of clean energy sources.

At the community level, bylaws and other regulations are commonly used to manage natural resources. However, there is limited research on how communities enact these regulations and what determines awareness and compliance with these regulations. A survey of 273 communities was conducted in Uganda with an objective of analyzing the determinants of enactment, awareness and compliance with community Natural Resource Management (NRM) regulations. Presence in the community of programs and organizations with focus on agriculture and the environment increases the probability to enact and to be aware of NRM regulations. The probability to comply with regulations enacted by village councils was greater than the case with such regulations passed by higher legislative bodies, suggesting the important role played by decentralization in NRM. Poverty is associated with lower compliance with NRM regulations. This supports the poverty-natural resource degradation trap hypothesis, and suggests that measures to reduce poverty can also improve NRM.

Biodiversity ‘hotspot’ areas, which are characterized by concentrations of endemic species and severe anthropogenic loss of natural habitat, might be thought to present steep opportunity costs for maintaining forest cover against pressures of agricultural conversion. We examine this proposition for the southern part of the state of Bahia, a center of endemism within the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, which has less than 8 per cent of its original primary forest cover remaining. Using data from a survey of property values, we relate land price to land characteristics, including land cover, soil quality, slope, climate, and road proximity. We find median land values of R$725/hectare, or about US$400/hectare at recently prevailing exchange rates. Remaining land under forest has a market value 70 per cent below comparable cleared land.

The degree to which prevailing land tenure arrangements constrain agricultural productivity, and the sources of inefficiency associated with land tenure systems in sub-Saharan Africa are unresolved. Using a stochastic frontier production function, this paper examines the economic efficiency and the determinants of inefficiency of alternative land tenure arrangements in Ethiopia. The results show that sharecropping and borrowing are less technically efficient than owner-cultivation or fixed rentals due to restrictions imposed on them by landowners and the interactions of the land market with other imperfect and absent input markets. Thus, a policy to facilitate more efficient transactions of land between farmers and functioning of input markets are expected to reduce inefficiencies associated with these tenure systems.

There have been few applications of the contingent valuation method (CVM) to forests in developing countries. When applied, the method is seldom utilized to improve the implementation of development projects. In this paper an application of CVM to the Orissa Social Forestry Project is reported. The results show considerable variation between villages and the analysis of the bid function shows underlying factors to project success that can be used in project planning. The policy implications are to plant new VWL where natural forests are inaccessible, where people have prior experience of VWL, and where fuel consumption relies heavily on market purchases. Such plantations are expected to give greatest benefit to families with few men and many women. An analysis of the reliability of the study concludes that many of the observed biases originate from the enumerators. The study also recommends that one should be careful with the use of a discrete design in a cultural context such as this that is prone to yea-saying, and that strategic bias can arise from an open ended question that follows up the start bid in a culture characterized by bargaining.

This paper is concerned with the theory of resilience pricing and sustainability measurement in the presence of risk for regime shift in a dynamic economy–environment system. Following Holling (Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, vol. 4, 1973, pp. 1–23), we consider resilience as the maximal perturbation that the system can absorb without flipping into a qualitatively different state. Using a multisector growth model under uncertainty, we derive the shadow price of resilience that affects the probabilities of the system to flip in the future. We also analyze the role of resilience on sustainability with both ex-ante and ex-post welfare measures.

Resilience is turning out to be a resilient concept. First proposed way back in the 1970s in the context of ecosystem dynamics, it was then dissected and elaborated–spawning terms such as malleability, elasticity, hysterisis, inertia, resistance, amplitude–as ecologists struggled to make it into something measurable, usable, and distinct from its notoriously slippery predecessor ‘stability’.

The extensive use of plastic bags in Nepal has led to growing concern in recent years. We investigate the impact of a municipal plastic bags ban on bags use behavior, based on a field survey carried out among consumers and retailers across selected municipalities. Our results indicate that the effectiveness of the ban critically depends on its enforcement and sanctioning system. In particular, our results suggest that the perceived sanction is a critical determinant of plastic bags use, as a doubling of the perceived sanction could reduce plastic bags use by two-thirds for retailers and by one-half for consumers. While the nominal amount of the fine does not seem to play a role, the probability of being detected appears to play a key role in the perceived sanction. This implies that effective monitoring of the ban by the municipal authorities is critical for the success of the policy.

Daily and Ehrlich have described the current state of our epidemiological environment in chilling detail. While their point is that human beings interact and affect the epidemiological environment in a variety of ways, the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria strikes us as one aspect that we can begin to analyse immediately. The evolution of resistance to antibiotics is a function of their use by humans. The more we use, the more selective pressure is placed upon bacteria to develop resistance. This is further complicated by how they are used. Both the duration and the amounts used affect the change in the level of resistance. Finally, the primary feature driving the concern over the use of these drugs is that the evolution of resistance makes these ‘miracle’ drugs exhaustible. We can try to develop new and better antibiotics, but it is uncertain how successful we will be and how expensive they will be if we are successful.

This paper draws on a number of recent studies to shed light on several policy issues raised by the impact of environmental policies on technological innovation. First, to what extent does induced innovation raise the overall net benefits to society from environmental policies? Second, how does induced innovation affect the appropriate choice among alternative environmental policy instruments? Third, how does it affect the optimal stringency of environmental regulations? Fourth, should environmental policies be supplemented with additional policies to promote innovation, such as research contracts or prizes for new technologies?

In this paper we study a group of policies aimed at discouraging the use of private transportation during peak hours, both directly and indirectly, by increasing the attractiveness of the only available substitute, the bus. This is done using a choice experiment constructed to find the answer to the following basic question: Given fixed house-to work structures and no working hour flexibility, by how much is the choice of travel mode for commuters to work sensitive to changes in travel time, changes in costs for each mode and other service attributes? This information is then used to identify the most suitable combination of policies dealing with air pollution and congestion in the typical developing country context of metropolitan Costa Rica. We also provide estimates of the value of travel time as a measure of the potential benefits gained from reduced congestion.

The Hartwick–Solow rule for sustainability requires that depletion of natural capital be offset by a compensating increase in other forms of capital capable of generating as much income as the natural capital they replace. Many countries have not been successful in transforming natural capital into other forms of wealth. This paper investigates the process of wealth transformation for Botswana, one of the most successful resource-rich countries. Using an expanded measure of wealth that includes manufactured capital, natural capital and net foreign financial assets, Botswana's per capita wealth has increased over the past 20 years. Government has recovered and reinvested rent. However, examination of the public sector capital budget reveals considerable unproductive investment. While correction for unproductive investments still indicates sustainable development, results suggest that aggregate indicators such as national wealth or genuine savings may be misleading without further attention to the process by which natural capital is transformed into other forms of wealth.

Although improvements in human health represent a crucial aspect of development worldwide, many trends associated with development and global change appear to be reducing health security. In this article, we define the human epidemiological environment and describe key biophysical, economic, sociocultural, and political factors that shape it. The potential impact upon the epidemiological environment of aspects of both development and global change are then examined: the influences of human population size, mobility, geographic distribution, and nutritional status; modernization; loss of indigenous medicinal knowledge; microbial evolution of antibiotic resistance; land conversion and biodiversity loss; agricultural intensification; stratospheric ozone depletion; and climate change. Human vulnerability to infectious disease is often strongly and deleteriously influenced by ongoing, intensifying changes in these factors. An unprecedented level of communication and cooperation between experts, institutions, and nations is required to respond to the increasing threat of epidemic disease, which points to a promising area for enhanced interdisciplinary collaboration.

The following paper is concerned with water sharing of the Ganges River between India and Bangladesh, with possible augmentation through water transfers from Nepal. We analyzed the case when water from Nepal can be transferred to Bangladesh through the upstream country, India, as the local geography only permits such water transfer. A game theoretic model is formulated to determine the optimal share of water diverted to Bangladesh by India, and the optimal amount of water transfer from Nepal. India may gain positive externalities from such water transfer. The positive externalities generated from water transfer from Nepal may influence the water share of both India and Bangladesh. In the absence of altruism, India would allow less water flow to Bangladesh than in the case when there is no provision to buy water from Nepal. We also explored whether positive externalities could induce India to buy water jointly with Bangladesh, and such a case will only occur if the countries possess altruistic concerns and share water according to an agreement.