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.

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.

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.

We analyze the impact of earthquakes on nighttime lights at a sub-national level, i.e., on grids of different size. We argue that existing studies on the impact of natural disasters on economic development have several important limitations, both at the level of the outcome variable as well as at the level of the independent variable, e.g., the timing of an event and the measuring of its intensity. We aim to overcome these limitations by using geophysical event data on earthquakes together with satellite nighttime lights. Using panel fixed effects regressions covering the entire world for the period 1992–2013, we find that earthquakes reduce both light growth rates and light levels significantly. The effects persist for approximately 5 years, but we find no long-run effects. Effects are stronger the smaller the area of a unit of observation. National institutions and economic conditions are relevant moderating factors.

We propose an ‘allocate-and-trade’ institution to manage the eastern Nile River Basin for Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt as the basin faces a new reality of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). We find that a social planner could increase the region's economic welfare by assigning water rights to the riparian states. An alternative intrabasin water rights arrangement and trade could achieve more than 95 per cent of the welfare created by the social planner. GERD will change both the economic benefits and hydrological positions of the riparian countries. Economic benefits from alternative water use would be sufficient to make riparian countries better off compared with the status quo. Furthermore, riparian countries could raise more than US$680 m annually for protecting and conserving the natural resources of the region.

Recently, in their 2019 paper, Poyago-Theotoky and Yong consider a managerial Cournot duopoly with pollution externalities and emission taxes and propose an explicit environmental incentive in a managerial compensation contract. The authors compare several exogenous equilibria emerging in the symmetric sub-games in which the owner offers either the environmental delegation contract or the standard sales delegation contract: abatement and social welfare (resp. emission taxes) under environmental delegation are higher (resp. lower) than under sales delegation. The present work extends their model using a game-theoretic approach to analyse the asymmetric sub-games, in which only one firm adopts the environmental contract, and adds the contract decision stage. Results show that the environmental contract never emerges as the unique sub-game perfect Nash equilibrium of this non-cooperative managerial decision game. Indeed, if the green R&D technology is efficient, the sales contract emerges as the unique Pareto-inefficient Nash equilibrium. Otherwise, if the green R&D technology is inefficient, multiple Nash equilibria in pure strategies exist (coordination game). Our findings offer direct policy implications.

This study examines, with a focus on regional environmental states in China, whether regional latecomers suffer the domestically created ‘pollution haven’ effect through the interjurisdictional competition for polluted industries within China, or enjoy the spillover effect of nationwide progress in environmental management and technology, using the analytical framework of the environmental Kuznets curve. The study found that the regional latecomer's advantage was verified in the case of wastewater, while its disadvantage was identified in waste gas and solid waste. We speculate that the contrasting result on regional latecomer's effects between wastewater, waste gas, and solid waste comes from the difference in policy performances: the well-designed water pollution control may have regional latecomer's enjoy the spillover effect of nationwide progress, while the ineffective control of air and solid waste pollution may cause a ‘pollution haven’ effect through the interjurisdictional competition for polluted industries on regional latecomers.

Presented in this paper are the results of two contingent valuation analyses, one undertaken in Ecuador and the other in Guatemala, of potential payments for environmental services (PES) directed toward rural households. We find that minimum compensation demanded by these households is far from uniform, depending in particular on individual strategies for raising incomes and dealing with risks. Our findings strengthen the case for allowing conservation payments to vary among recipients, which would be a departure from the current norm for PES initiatives in Latin America.

This paper investigates the effects of pollution taxation for a dual developing economy with a separate abatement sector. Due to the real rigidity of the urban wage, pollution taxes raise the cost of the urban good and hence its relative price. This suggests that because of flexible rural wages, the developing economy tends to have a comparative advantage in the rural good which may be less polluting. Moreover, the higher price of the urban good worsens the urban unemployment ratio. The optimal tax on pollution is thus lower than the marginal environmental damage to the economy.

This special issue is concerned with environmental Kuznets curves (EKC) - the hypothesis that there is an ‘inverted-U’ relationship between various indicators of environmental degradation and levels of per capita income. Explanations as to why environmental degradation should first increase then decline with income have focused on a number of underlying relationships, including:

the effects of structural economic change on the use of the environment for resource inputs and to assimilate waste;

the link between the demand for environmental quality and income;

types of environmental degradation and ecological processes.

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.

We develop a bioeconomic model to gain insight into the challenges of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) as applied to protect endangered species given wildlife-livestock disease risks and habitat fragmentation. We show how greater connectivity of habitat creates an endogenous trade-off. More connectedness both (i) ups the chance that populations of endangered species will grow more rapidly, while (ii) simultaneously increasing the likelihood diseases will spread more quickly. We examine subsidies for habitat connectedness, livestock vaccination, and reduced movement of infected livestock. We find the cost-effective policy is to first subsidize habitat connectivity rather than vaccinations – this serves to increase habitat contiguousness. Once habitat is sufficiently connected, disease risks increase to a level to make disease-related subsidies worthwhile. Highly connected habitat requires nearly all the government budget be devoted to disease prevention and control. The result of the conservation payments is significantly increased wildlife abundance, increased livestock health and abundance, and increased development opportunities.

Among the tools of the economic trade, cost-benefit analysis is the most widely used in policy circles. Asking whether there is a role for cost-benefit analysis is like asking whether there is a role for the weatherman. Of course there is.

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.

We estimate annualized values of access to home tap water in three cities in El Salvador, and marginal ‘barrios’ in four Guatemalan cities, using a hedonic price method for studying changes in capitalized home values from obtaining a water connection. A tap water connection is found to add from 10 per cent to 52 per cent to sales values of homes in our sample. The estimated mean values of gaining tap water access represent 1–5 per cent of real household income, differing by city and with generally higher values in El Salvador. On average this gain eliminates between 1 per cent and 3 per cent of the initial difference in real incomes between the groups of connected and unconnected households. We also find large differences in the value of a tap connection depending on the main source of non-tap water, with lowest values when the source is a private well in El Salvador.

We analyze the spatio-temporal dynamics of a simple model of macroeconomic geography in which demography and pollution dynamics mutually affect each other. Pollution, by reducing the carrying capacity of the natural environment – which determines the maximum amount of people a given location can effectively bear – crucially affects labor force dynamics which in turn alter the amount of resources available for abatement activities aiming to reduce pollution. Such mutual links determine the eventual sustainability of the development process in different locations and economies, and spatial interactions further complicate the picture. We show that neglecting the existence of mutual feedback between population and pollution leads to misleading conclusions about the eventual sustainability of a specific location. We also show that even neglecting the existence of spatial externalities can lead to misleading conclusions about the sustainability of different regions in the spatial economy. This suggests thus that both the nature of the population and pollution relationship and geographical factors may play a critical role in the process of sustainable development.

This paper offers a theory of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) based on the scarcity of capital relative to environmental quality. In a unified treatment of both market and transition economies of the former Soviet Bloc, we characterize a dynamic economy subject to two sources of market failure: a pollution externality and a pure public good ‘environmental quality’. We derive a policy rule to implement the social optimum in market and transition economies and show how, in general, a pollution tax or tradable permits can only implement the social optimum if accompanied by other taxes on consumption or profits.

This paper aims at assessing the determinants of Amazon deforestation, emphasizing the role played by off-farm income. Initially an economic model is provided which relates off-farm income to deforestation patterns. Subsequently, empirical implications are tested using data from the 2006 Brazilian Agricultural Census. Estimation results suggest that higher off-farm incomes are associated with reduced deforestation rates. In fact, higher off-farm incomes might increase the opportunity cost associated with agricultural activities. The latter option becomes less attractive and farmers dedicate less time to farm activities, thereby reducing deforestation pressure. Results also show that smallholders respond less to the increase in the returns from off-farm activities when compared to largeholders, which matches our hypothesis of labor market imperfections regarding off-farm activities.

Advances in biotechnology have made available gene-manipulation techniques that enable the protection of genetic material from unauthorized use and the prevention of self-supply of commercial seeds by farmers—in order to allow enhanced appropriation of the values of innovation in agricultural R&D. These techniques have become known as Genetic Use Restriction Technologies (GURTs).

This paper forecasts the potential impact of wide-spread adoption of GURTs by the providers of HYV seeds on the yield development in developing countries. To do so, it assesses (1) the effects of enhanced appropriation through GURTs on the technological expansion at the yield frontier and (2) the effects of technological protection of value-adding traits through GURTS on the diffusion of yield gains from the frontier to developing countries. These assessments are based on a particular hypothesis, which is that GURTs will replicate across most staple crops the experiences that were made with a previous use restriction technology (hybridization) in only a few crops. The estimation of impacts is carried out as a simulation and is based on expansion and diffusion parameters estimated for hybrid seeds over a 38-year period. It shows that the impact of GURTs on developing countries' yields will vary considerably. Specifically, those countries that currently have the lowest yields would be most adversely affected in their future yield development by the wide-spread use of GURTs.

Institutions and organizations are regarded as being important in determining the efficiency of economic agents and public units. This study first reviews the economic reforms in silvicultural activities in China's state-owned forestry bureaux, then empirically examines the impact of economic reforms. Panel data from 40 forestry bureaux in Heilongjiang Province, and two different economic regimes: from the pre-reform and economic transition periods, are analyzed by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The technical efficiency has been decomposed into pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency and then examined. Our results show that the economic reforms have increased efficiency on average by about 25 per cent. Moreover, the study qualitatively analyses the sources of improvement and argues that the efficiency gain is a result of reductions in labour shirking and administration costs.