Energy consumption patterns and supply problems in underdeveloped areas in South Africa

Energy usage provides one striking example of processes and conditions of development and underdevelopment in South Africa and the concomitant inequalities in fulfilment of basic needs. Access to affordable and convenient fuels increases as households shift from underdeveloped rural and peri‐urban areas to the developed metropolitan centres. The form and quantity of fuels used by households is constrained by levels of urbanization, the availability and cost of fuels, and household income.

The energy supply problems in developing areas centre on two critical and immediate issues. Firstly, in rural areas the demand for fuelwood is exceeding supply with quite devastating social, economic and environmental consequences. A fuelwood supply and demand model has been developed which indicates the urgency for implementing afforestation programmes, although lack of sufficient suitable land implies that other energy supply strategies will also have to be considered. The second major problem is that the standard, most convenient and affordable domestic energy supply option, electricity, has still not been made available to many black townships and most peri‐urban areas. With increases in population and urbanization, the problem of adequate household energy supply is shifting to peri‐urban areas, which experience major social and economic costs as a result of dependence on costly and inconvenient fossil fuels and batteries. Electricity has been shown to be the most economical and preferred option.     

The role of off-farm employment in the rural energy consumption transition — A village-level analysis in Jiangxi Province, China

Energy consumption in rural areas in China is characterized by high consumption of fuelwood, straw and other biomass. Off-farm employment can play an important role in the transition towards more sustainable sources of energy by increasing rural household incomes and reducing the amount of labor available for biomass collection. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of off-farm employment on rural household energy consumption choices, and to disentangle the various causal relationships that play a role in this respect. To this end, a hybrid farm household/village computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is used that has been calibrated for a remote village in Northeast Jiangxi Province where fuelwood is the main source of energy. The model takes into account nonseparability of farm household production and consumption decisions as well as linkages within the village between households involved in off-farm employment and households with no members working off-farm. Contrary to previous research for a richer region in rural China, we find that fuelwood is not an inferior good. The positive impact of more food consumption on fuelwood collection more than compensates the higher leisure demand associated with higher incomes. Shifts in production activities and in prices on village factor markets caused by increased labour scarcity (the lost-labour effect of off-farm employment), on the other hand, cause a reduction in fuelwood collection and consumption. This lost-labour effect is much stronger for migration than for local off-farm employment, because the latter can more easily be combined with on-farm work and fuelwood collection. For local off-farm employment the income effect dominates the lost-labour effect, resulting in a positive overall impact of higher off-farm participation on fuelwood consumption. For migration, on the other hand, the income effect and the lost-labour effect are almost equal in size. Hence, the amount of fuelwood collected and consumed does not change much when households participate in migration. The final conclusion is therefore that increased off-farm employment opportunities do not promote the transition of rural energy use in the poorer regions of rural China.     

The effects of fuelwood on children’s schooling in rural Vietnam

Gathering fuelwood for cooking and heating represents a considerable time burden for households in rural Vietnam. In this paper we examine the effects of fuelwood use on children’s school attendance using a panel of households from the Vietnam Living Standards Survey. We match individual households to satellite imagery measuring leaf coverage at the time and location of each survey, providing a robust instrument to examine the impacts of resource collection on schooling. We find that using fuelwood as the primary energy source is associated with an 84 percentage point decrease in the likelihood of school enrollment. We also find mixed evidence that girls may be affected more severely than boys, but we are unable to rule out equal impacts across genders. Our results suggest that household energy choices and diminishing resource availability can have a lasting impact on childhood schooling and long-run poverty.     

Escaping the rural energy dilemma: A process for matching technologies to local needs and resources

This paper provides a five-step process for matching decentralized energy systems with energy needs and local resources in rural areas for developing countries. This process is designed to assist planners in selecting technologies for those locations where economic development and personal survival are threatened by the rising costs and growing scarcity of traditional and fossil fuels. Analytic tools are given for each of the five steps of the process, as well as the information needed in each phase of a project. Twelve criteria are presented to characterize both the energy need and the technologies. Three of these criteria are used to facilitate preliminary technology screening, while the others address site-specific temporal, climatic, economic, social, cultural and environmental considerations of the energy need and the technological alternatives. To illustrate the process, eight decentralized energy options are characterized and examined for their fit with a set of four basic human needs.     

Basic needs: The case of Sri Lanka

This article has two related objectives: to judge Sri Lanka's success in meeting its ‘basic needs’ and growth objectives, and to use Sri Lanka's experience to cast light on general hypotheses regarding basic needs. The analysis suggests that Sri Lanka's social expenditures had a substantial cost in growth and unemployment. However, largely because of these social programmes, it has the best social indicators, compared to its income, of any country for which data are available. Its growth has, surprisingly, been above average for low-income countries. Implications for basic-needs programmes include the need to ‘target’ social programmes, the high priority of primary education and the potential high impact, but also high costs, of assuring minimum caloric intakes.     

Growing more trees for fuelwood in the Northern Transvaal or redistribution after sustainable harvesting?

A model of the supply and demand for fuelwood within Region G is considered against the background of the plant nursery programme of the Biomass Initiative. Despite severe deficit in fuelwood supply in the homeland areas, the region as a whole could be self‐sufficient in sustainably harvested fuelwood from natural vegetation given redistribution of fuelwood from areas in the region where sustainable supply is in excess of demand (mainly conservation areas and commercial grazing areas and to a lesser extent commercial forestry plantations); an appropriate transport and distribution system; and multi‐purpose land‐use management. Redistribution would provide jobs within the neglected rural sector and the stimulus for additional industries around other natural resources. It would obviate the need for nurseries aimed primarily at encouraging rural communities to plant trees to alleviate the fuelwood shortage.     

农村公共品供给困境与投入体制改革——基于安徽省部分地区的调查

目前,农村公共品严重匮乏,农村基础设施落后,教育和社会保障满足不了广大农民的需求,农业生产技术和农业发展资金也严重缺乏。而现行的投入体制却解决不了农村公共品匮乏问题,因而必须改革农村公共品投入体制。     

Long‐term Determinants of Deforestation in Ghana: The Role of Structural Adjustment Policies

Abstract: Prior to the 1980s, Ghana witnessed an alternating cycle of boom and scarcity, culminating in the introduction of structural adjustment policies in the early 1980s. This paper uses data from the Ghana Forestry Services, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, FAO Yearbook of Forestry Products, Ghana Timber Marketing Board, Quarterly Digest of the Ghana Statistical Service, World Debt Tables, Bank of Ghana, IMF, COCOBOD and Ministry of Finance to examine the impact of SAP on deforestation in Ghana. The paper reveals a negative impact of structural adjustment on deforestation in Ghana through both direct and indirect channels. The most important channel of the effect of SAP on deforestation resulted from the conversion of forestland to crop farming, particularly cocoa farming, during the post‐adjustment period. Even though wood extraction exhibited a negative impact on deforestation, the impact seemed relatively weaker than that of agricultural land use. In addition, while in the long run, deforestation tended to be more responsive to logging than agriculture, in the short run the elasticity of deforestation with respect to agriculture tended to be greater than that with respect to logging. Finally, agriculture was relatively more important in causing deforestation.     

Distributive justice in Korean politics after the IMF Bailout∗

The Korean reform policy in the aftermath of the 1997 economic crisis has been confronted with the problem of distributive justice. In relation to distributive justice in the reform process, this paper addresses the communitarian‐liberal solution of ‘more burden on the better‐off, less burden on the worse‐off,’ which accords with the ‘difference principle’ of Rawls. This solution may be reasonably supported by all sectors of society for two reasons. One reason lies in the fact that the current social stratification in Korea has been largely affected by the economic policies of the past developmental state rather than individual choices, and that each individual sector, especially the advantaged group, has a weak legitimate claim over its social position. Thus, it seems fair to share the social burden in the extensive reform process according to the principle of capability. The other reason is based on the principle of minimizing social cost accruing from social economic conflict Indeed, this solution reflects a blend of liberal values and the good of the community.     

Fuel,food or forest? Dilemmas in a Nepali village

Field data from a village Panchayat in the East Nepal Hill Region demonstrate that deforestation is caused not so much by fuelwood demand as by the need to clear forest areas for food supply. The method of analysis uses questionnaire survey, participant observation and direct measurements in a micro set-up to assess the demand, as well as the supply systems of food and fuel, and to analyse the impact on deforestation. Policy implications suggest that to control deforestation, food production and distribution practices need to be improved, existing forests need to be managed better to increase sustainable fuelwood supply, and the direct participation of local people is indispensable to implement desired improvements.     

Collective forest tenure reform and household energy consumption: A case study in Yunnan Province,China

The recent Collective Forest Tenure Reform in China has started the process of devolving forest management rights from village collectives to households since 2003. In this paper, we study the impact of the reform on rural energy consumption. Devolving forest tenure improves farmers' access to forest products on their newly acquired forestland, and is therefore expected to increase farmers' fuelwood consumption. The reform also allows farmers to adopt some revenue-enhancing forest technologies which may lead to energy switching in farmer households. Our empirical study finds that the devolution significantly increases household fuelwood consumption for both lower and higher income households; the lower income households benefit more. This is welfare-improving in places where alternative fuels are still too costly. We find limited evidence that higher income households in Yunnan begin to substitute alternative commercial fuels for fuelwood when those are available. Our findings suggest further devolution of forest rights, especially in the poor, forest-rich regions.     

Some aspects of China's agricultural development experience: Implications for developing countries in Asia

China's rather ‘unorthodox’ rural development strategies have attracted growing interest from developing countries in search of more effective development alternatives. The Chinese experiment is characterized by: (1) heavy emphasis on the institutional precondition for agricultural development; (2) rejection of urban-biased policies for more balanced strategies comprising many distinctly pro-agrarian measures; and (3) an integrated approach, centred primarily on the communes, which closely links production to distribution, rural capital formation, rural industrialization, and a wide range of non-farm activities. The Chinese experience should be instructive to many developing countries, even though its direct transfer-ability to different political and social contexts is often called into question.     

Constraints to biofuel feedstock production expansion in Zambia

ABSTRACT

World biofuel production has been increasing to improve energy security and mitigate global warming. Southern Africa’s bioenergy demand could increase with South Africa’s planned fuel blending mandates, triggering increased demand for feedstocks and agricultural land. Ensuring sustained production will require a full understanding of the constraints to production expansion, considering the tradeoffs that may be generated in rural areas, as has been observed for large-scale land acquisitions. We analyse the social and biophysical constraints to biofuel production expansion in Zambia. Previously social constraints have received limited attention even though they may prove more problematic. Results indicate that Zambia is at least moderately suitable for bioenergy investments with biophysically suitable areas largely coinciding with the socially suitable areas. However, existing gaps in compensatory procedures may inhibit large-scale projects’ access to development finance if not aligned with internationally acceptable practices, and generate negative outcomes if safeguards are not in place.     

Migration from rural areas of poor countries: The impact on rural productivity and income distribution

Evidence is presented elsewhere²⁶ that intra-rural inequality is a major cause of rural-urban migration: that better-off villagers tend to be ‘pulled’, and worse-off villagers ‘pushed’, from the same subset of relatively ‘unequal’ villages. This paper argues that townward emigration, and its after-effects (remittances, return migration), in turn increases interpersonal and inter-household inequality within and between villages. As for rural labour productivity, the neoclassical expectation (that townward migration increases it) rests on special definitions and doubtful assumptions. Fortunately, in most of the poorer developing countries, rural-urban migration is much smaller, less permanent and more likely to set up countervailing economic-demographic pressures restoring the rural population share, than received opinion about ‘the urban crisis’ suggests. Migration does not equilibriate between urban and rural sectors, largely because of externalities and compositional factors; but it does smoothe itself, largely because individuals behave rationally and learn quickly. As so often, the lesson for development studies is not that ‘markets fail’. It is that, under conditions of both poverty and structural inequality, they function — but with generally unacceptable, misery-preserving consequences.     

What can Indonesia learn from China's industrial energy saving programs?

Even though Indonesia's CO₂ emissions are dominated by deforestation while China's are dominated by industry, Indonesia has much to learn from China's industrial energy saving programs. To begin with, it is only a matter of time before Indonesia's emissions from fossil fuels overtake those from deforestation. Given the long technological lock-in effects of energy systems and industries, Indonesia needs to think now about how it will tackle this problem. There are other reasons for believing that Indonesia might learn something from China – the CO₂ intensities of GDP, of industry and of cement production have been rising in Indonesia, while they are falling in China. China's better intensity performance is due to policies that Indonesia would do well to follow – adopting a technological catch-up industrial development strategy; raising energy prices to scarcity values; liberalising domestic markets and opening the economy to trade and investment; and mounting a massive energy saving program.     

From Linear Fuel Switching to Multiple Cooking Strategies: A Critique and Alternative to the Energy Ladder Model

Promoting sustainable development requires evaluating the technical and policy options that will facilitate the adoption and use of energy efficient and less polluting cooking stoves and practices. The transition from traditional to modern fuels and devices has been explained by the “energy ladder” model that suggests that with increasing affluence, a progression is expected from traditional biomass fuels to more advanced and less polluting fuels. In this paper we evaluate the energy ladder model utilizing data from a four-year (1992–96) case study of a village in Mexico and from a large-scale survey from four states of Mexico. We show that an alternate “multiple fuel” model of stove and fuel management based on the observed pattern of household accumulation of energy options, rather than the simple progression depicted in the traditional energy ladder scenario, more accurately depicts cooking fuel use patterns in rural households. The “multiple fuel” model integrates four factors demonstrated to be essential in household decision making under conditions of resource scarcity or uncertainty: (a) economics of fuel and stove type and access conditions to fuels, (b) technical characteristics of cookstoves and cooking practices; (c) cultural preferences; and (d) health impacts. This model also allows better estimates of the expected fuelwood demand and indoor air pollution in rural households.     

Integrating Alternative Data (Also Known as ESG Data) in Investment Decision Making

ABSTRACT

What is environmental, social, and governance (ESG) data and how do we evaluate its quality and effectiveness? This form of evaluation is important, as it is a precondition for investors trying to integrate ESG in investment decisions. Previous literature describes intrinsic properties of ESG data (e.g. multifaceted-ness and context dependence) and highlights a trade-off between the validity and reliability of ESG data, which is often tied to the lack of theoretical foundations and scarcity of high-quality ESG data. Encouragingly, new data technologies have improved the accessibility, availability, and transparency of ESG data, but an agreed theoretical framework to evaluate ESG data quality is still lacking. This paper seeks to fill that theoretical gap by proposing a ‘user-oriented’ approach to evaluate ESG data. In this framework, we consider ESG data to be a ‘continuous concept with limitless boundaries’ and characterise it in terms of its width and depth. The bearing of width and depth on ESG data quality is ultimately a function of the investment decisions in which such data is used: the approach we endorse is therefore user-centric. This study then shows how ESG data, when it is of high quality, maps onto the investment decision-making processes.     

Some arguments for (moderately) capital-intensive development,even in labour-abundant nations

This essay suggests that there may be good reasons why some labour-abundant developing nations prefer capital-intensive economic activities. In developing nations where large amounts of time and investment would be required to achieve full employment of their labour, policy-makers may do better to seek a capital-intensive development programme that increases labour productivity, inspires technological change, and, through rapidly increasing national income, increases the demand for labour in the long run by more than a labour-intensive approach would. A diagrammatic representation is presented. The suggestion is offered that a ‘moderate’ capital-intensive strategy, in which factor prices are maintained ‘just’ — rather than ‘much’ — different from their scarcity values, should encourage labour-augmenting technological change.     

Towards adequate and equitable energy provision for farmworker families

Consumption patterns of farmworker households are constrained by limited access and choice. Few households use electricity to any significant extent, most rely on fuelwood for power‐intensive energy applications, and the use of commercial hydrocarbon fuels is generally lower than in other rural communities. An evaluation of energy supply reveals opportunities for improvement, particularly for households on farms with a grid electricity supply and with the potential for fuelwood production. First, problems must be overcome, most of which result from the socio‐economic status of farmworkers and their dependence on their employers.     

Guaranteeing employment to the rural poor: Social functions and class interests in the employment guarantee scheme in Western India

Numerous observers rightly term the landless rural population the ‘most intractable development problem’ in poor societies. Given the extraordinary political and administrative obstacles to redistrubution of rural assets in India (the widely-recognized failture land reforms), attention and finances have recently been focused on public rural employment programmes to alleviate rural distribution. Within India, the State of Maharashtra, with a size and population of a large European nation, has instituted a striking departure from traditional rural works programmes: a guarantee of employment to rural adults on demand. The Employment Guarantee Scheme in one state has since become a significant policy model, and the experience in that state provides something like a laboratory for its analysis. Based on analysis of previous studies and original field work in rural Maharashtra, the article argues that the scheme is something of a rare bird: a programme which seems to be in the objective and subjective interests of the rural poor, as well as consistent with the interests of the rural landed elite, despite their early political objections. The fiscal structure of the scheme is a direct contradiction of Lipton's (1977) model of ‘urban bias’ in Third World development strategies; the Employment Guarantee Scheme is rather more a manifestation of ‘kulak power’. Though promulgated as an alternative to policies entailing redistribution of rural assets, and clearly superior to doing nothing about rural distribution, the scheme is inferior to genuine redistribution in terms of altering the rural political economy. The functions, if not the motivations, of the scheme are profoundly conservative in a structural sense, politically and economically; the philosophical underpinnings, and perhaps, potentially, the consequences for mobilization of the rural poor, are quite the opposite.