The importance of forest conservation in the fight against emissions from deforestation and forest degradation has led to reexamination of the deforestation and economic development relationship. For this purpose, we use the recent method of long-term growth rate developed by Stern et al. (2017) on 85 tropical developing countries over the period 1990–2010. Results show that the EKC is not significant. However, we find a beta convergence across developing countries in terms of deforestation per capita. In other words, these countries converge in terms of policies that prevent deforestation and forest degradation. This implies that, just as with growth effects, beta convergence effects are also important in explaining changes in forest cover in tropical developing countries. The convergence effect in forest cover change may be consistent with the forest transition hypothesis.

This paper estimates maximum sustainable yield and maximum economic yield from Schaefer and Fox surplus production bioeconomic models to find evidence of biological and economic overfishing, and their consequences in Gulf of Thailand demersal fisheries. The paper examines alternative policy instruments to reduce overfishing. The discussion emphasizes strengthening fishery management for implementing limited access, and a combination of co-management, and decentralization of fisheries management. The use of license fees that serves as a double dividend tax to reduce fishing effort and fund monitoring and enforcement has been proposed as one of the possible economic instruments.

The debate on the land–poverty nexus is inconclusive, with past research unable to identify the causal dynamics. We use a unique global panel dataset that links survey and census derived poverty data with measures of land ecosystems at the subnational level. Rainfall is used to overcome the endogeneity in the land–poverty relationship in an instrumental variable approach. This is the first global study using quasi-experimental methods to uncover the degree to which land improvements matter for poverty reduction. We draw three main conclusions. First, land improvements are important for poverty reduction in rural areas and particularly so for Sub-Saharan Africa. Second, land improvements are pro-poor: poorer areas see larger poverty alleviation effects due to improvements in land. Finally, irrigation plays a major role in breaking the link between bad weather and negative impacts on the poor through reduced vegetation growth and soil fertility.

Economic impacts that entry regulations have within the fishery industry are well documented in the economics literature. This study looks at how fishery regulations will impact other sectors of a regional economy. By developing integrated models of fishery bioeconomics and dynamic, inter-industry economic linkages, the paper estimates sector-wise economic gains and losses over time from an entry regulation. A case study from India shows that primary fishing and processing sectors realize significant wage and profit gains after a period of transition. Sizable losses in wage and industry profits are incurred by non-fishery sectors but are smaller than the profit gains in the primary sectors. The paper makes policy recommendations on how to ease the adverse regional impacts of fishery policies.

As countries develop, they are likely to face challenges in meeting growing energy demand and in ensuring energy security. Given this, and the problem of climate change, improving demand-side energy efficiency is pivotal to ensuring sustainable development. However, agents often underinvest in energy-efficient technologies due to behavioral failures such as low levels of energy-related financial literacy, defined as the combination of energy knowledge and cognitive abilities needed to evaluate the lifetime costs of durables. Using novel data, we analyze the levels and determinants of energy-related financial literacy of households in urban areas in the eastern lowlands of Nepal, and whether it is correlated with their attitudes towards replacement of energy-inefficient appliances. We find that respondents have low levels of energy-related financial literacy, and higher levels of literacy are associated with more rational attitudes towards appliance replacement. The findings of this study are relevant to addressing the energy-efficiency gap in developing countries.

Where joint forest management has been introduced into Tanzania, ‘volunteer’ patrollers take responsibility for enforcing restrictions over the harvesting of forest resources, often receiving as an incentive a share of the collected fine revenue. Using an optimal enforcement model, we explore how that share, and whether villagers have alternative sources of forest products, determines the effort patrollers put into enforcement and whether they choose to take a bribe rather than honestly reporting the illegal collection of forest resources. Without funds for paying and monitoring patrollers, policy makers face tradeoffs over illegal extraction, forest protection and revenue generation through fine collection.

It is often claimed that pollution reductions can be achieved at lower cost in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, because more possibilities exist to update production processes and reduce waste. To date, however, there has been little or no systematic evaluation of what the costs actually are in these countries. The main purpose of this paper is to partially fill this research gap using firm-level data from Lithuania. Abatement cost estimates for key air pollutants are presented based on investments made in Lithuania during 1993–4. The paper also attempts to estimate the demand for pollution directly using data on pollution charges from 1994. Using both methods, it is shown that for at least some key pollutants marginal and average abatement costs are probably substantially lower in Lithuania than in western countries.

There is growing evidence that early life conditions are important for outcomes during adolescence, including cognitive development and education. Economic conditions at the time children enter school are also important. We examine these relationships for young adolescents living in a low-income drought-prone pastoral setting in Kenya using historical rainfall patterns captured by remote sensing as exogenous shocks. Past rainfall shocks measured as deviations from local long-term averages have substantial negative effects on the cognitive development and educational achievement of girls. Results for the effects of rainfall shocks on grades attained, available for both girls and boys, support that finding. Consideration of additional outcomes suggests the effects of rainfall shocks on education are due to multiple underlying mechanisms including persistent effects on the health of children and the wealth of their households, underscoring the potential value of contemporaneous program and policy responses to such shocks.

In this paper, we use a computable general equilibrium model to simulate the effects of drought and a decrease in agricultural productivity caused by climate change in Guatemala. A reduction in agricultural productivity would mean a considerable drop in crop and livestock production, and the resulting higher prices and lower household income would mean a significant reduction in the consumption of agricultural goods and food. The most negative effects of a drought would be concentrated in agriculture, given its intensive use of water. Because agricultural production is essential to ensuring food availability, these results suggest that Guatemala needs a proper water-distribution regulatory framework.

We present the results of a framed field experiment with Ethiopian farmers that use the mountain rain forest as a common pool resource. Harvesting honey causes damage to the forest, and open access leads to over-harvesting. We test different mechanisms for mitigating excessive harvesting: a collective tax with low and high tax rates, and a tax/subsidy system. We find that the high-tax scheme works best in inducing the desired level of harvesting, while the tax-subsidy scheme may trigger tacit collusion. Via a panel data analysis we further investigate which variables influence the subjects' decisions during the treatments.

To protect the elephant, trade in ivory has been banned since 1990. In this paper, we demonstrate that this ban's effect on elephant populations is ambiguous. Depending on the discount rate, among other things, the trade ban can either increase or decrease optimal population size. If the decision-maker's discount rate exceeds a certain threshold, the optimum stock of elephants is greater with a trade ban. Since the threshold is in the range of possible social discount rates, the success of the trade ban in promoting elephant conservation will vary spatially and temporally, depending on the characteristics and level of development of countries with significant elephant populations.

We consider new developments in coalition theory for the design of international environmental agreements (IEAs). Applying an empirical model on climate change that comprises benefit and cost estimates from abatement for 12 world regions, we analyze how the design of an agreement affects the success of self-enforcing IEAs. We analyze single versus multiple coalitions, open versus exclusive membership with majority and unanimity voting, and no transfers versus transfers with four different transfer schemes.

This paper examines the impact of climate shocks, measured as temperature and precipitation variability, on real monthly per capita consumption expenditure of Indian households over the 1988–2012 period, utilising data from the National Sample Survey Organisation's Consumer Expenditure Surveys. The regression results show an increase in consumption by 1.2 per cent on average, in response to a one standard deviation rise in temperature, with heterogeneous impacts across economic sectors. While agricultural and industrial households experience consumption declines of 1.7 per cent and 8.3 per cent on average, service sector households exhibit consumption increases by 2.4–9.6 per cent on average across rural and urban regions, in response to a one standard deviation rise in temperature. The analysis suggests an increase in inequality of consumption across sectors due to climatic shocks, with implications for climate policy and sustainable development in India.

Collective action can play a significant role in sustainable management of common grazing lands through restricting access and regulating use. However, it is not clear why there are often violations of grazing restrictions in equilibrium. This paper first presents a theoretical framework of collective action in community management of grazing lands that explicitly models individual violations behaviour. Then data from the highlands of Amhara region of Ethiopia are used to test the model predictions to examine the impact of policy-relevant factors on collective establishment of grazing restrictions and violations of grazing restrictions. Econometric results show that collective action in community grazing land management is likely to be more beneficial and effective in communities with better market access or higher populations. Collective action, on the other hand, is less likely to be successful in communities with greater social, economic, or cultural heterogeneity or more affluent members. Factors related to greater livestock profitability, such as rainfall, or fixed costs of negotiating agreements, such as total land area of the community, have ambiguous effects, as they are associated with establishment of grazing restrictions as well as violating the restrictions.

This paper investigates the effectiveness of different market-based instruments (MBIs), such as eco-certification premiums, carbon payments, Pigovian taxes and their combination, to address the conversion of agroforests to monoculture systems and subsequent effects on incomes of risk-averse farmers under income uncertainty in Indonesia. For these, the authors develop a farm-level dynamic mean-variance model combined with a real options approach. Findings show that the conservation of agroforest is responsive to the risk-aversion level of farmers: the greater the level of risk aversion, the greater is the conserved area of agroforest. However, for all risk-averse farmers, additional incentives in the form of MBIs are still needed to prevent conversion of agroforest over the years, and only the combination of MBIs can achieve this target. Implementing fixed MBIs also contributes to stabilizing farmers’ incomes and reducing income risks. Consequently, the combined MBIs increase incomes and reduce income inequality between hardly and extremely risk-averse farmers.

Environmental conservation requires society to consider the trade-off between allocating resources to productive activities and pollution control activities. Therefore, it is informative to measure the effect of environmental regulations on firms' productivity. This paper attempts to estimate the impact of environmental regulations on Korean manufacturing industries. Despite being key inputs in the manufacturing process, raw materials have often been excluded from the cost function due to the lack of price data. A restricted cost function is used to improve the reliability of parameter estimates. Empirical results indicate that environmental regulations caused a 12 percent decline in the average annual rate of productivity growth over the period 1982–93.

Development projects that are potentially eligible for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) funding under the Kyoto Protocol, require final approval from the host countries where the projects are to be implemented. The approval requires an evaluation of the positive contribution of the CDM project to sustainable development in the host country. A prototype set of sustainable development criteria is introduced using an evaluation process conducted in South Africa. Weighting values that reflect societal priorities in South Africa are required for these criteria. The paper shows how judgements of industry decision makers and the expenditure trends of the national government (on environmental sub-criteria) can be used to generate a first approximation of such weighting values. The industry judgements are obtained from an Analytical Hierarch Process (AHP) survey. They reflect the perceptions of the automotive supply chain and process industry only, and not other parts of the South African society. A more comprehensive study is required to determine the political and social acceptability of the AHP approach, which should be initiated and managed by the Designated National Authority (DNA) of South Africa.

The expansion of private production erodes the quality of commonly owned assets, thereby forcing individuals to rely increasingly on private goods to satisfy their needs. In the face of this deterioration, households increase their work effort and accumulate more capital in order to buy more consumer goods both in the present and in the future. By so doing, each household contributes to an increase in production and thus has a detrimental—though negligible—impact on commonly owned assets. Hence, the economy converges to a long-run equilibrium level of production that is higher than the level associated with the Pareto-efficient path.

Recently, there has been significant research interest in the empirical formulations of the environment-income relationship using both global and disaggregated data. Advances in methods and availability of better and more extensive data make the old topic of growth and environment a unique field for Environment and Development Economics, among other journals. Conventionally, the environmental Kuznets curve has been important in testing for emissions of many pollutants in many different countries. Now, policy and institutional data including transparency variables are available, making many social and economic factors interesting for policy analysts. In light of these advances, and the existing associated empirical problems in analyzing the income-environment relationship, the key findings of each paper in this special issue are discussed and connected to the related areas of research interest.

This study investigates the relationship between property rights, resource degradation, and productivity among herders in semi-arid regions of Kenya using survey data. Binary and conditional logit models are used to explain migration, while ordinary least squares and fixed effects models are used to explain productivity. The main findings of the study are that private property right regimes discourage migration with livestock, while private property right regimes and migration increase productivity. The study recommends that if privatization is not feasible, then the existing common rights system should be strengthened through promotion of collective action and limiting of group sizes.