One of the United Republic of Tanzania’s most prized resources, forest land, is being threatened by the industry of charcoal.  Deforestation caused by the charcoal industry is a problem that developing countries around the world and particularly in Africa are facing.  This study will focus on this problem as it affects the city of Dar es Salaam, the countries largest consumer of charcoal.  A large number of citizens, 69% (Malimbwi 2001), use charcoal to cook with, increasing deforestation, adding to their health problems and emitting detrimental greenhouse gases.
 
The process of producing and using charcoal is not sustainable and many organizations are looking into ways of making the charcoal chain more sustainable.  Many options exist; however, this study will focus on decreasing charcoal consumption in the city of Dar es Salaam.  Using the results of a survey of 235 targeted households in the city, this report seeks to explain what kinds of people use certain fuels, why they use those fuels, their way of cooking with the fuel, and their willingness to switch to other fuels.

The results of the survey are used in two cost-benefit analyses (CBAs).  A household CBA will determine which fuel is the most cost effective, taking daily cost, initial investment cost, health risk avoided and time savings into account.  The results of the household CBA will be used in a social planner CBA to determine if investing in a fuel substitution campaign will benefit the society as a whole.  The social planner CBA will consider environmental benefits as well as the costs and benefits used in the household CBA.

Finally, we conclude that investing in an extensive LPG marketing campaign to target 30% of charcoal users is not only feasible but beneficial to society.  This measure will decrease consumption of charcoal and make the industry more sustainable.  Forestland, a precious resource, will have a better chance of surviving and being of continued use to the citizens of Tanzania.

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PREM

Over the years, policy makers have explored various mechanisms, which address environmental management and poverty alleviation.  Payments for environmental services (PES) is a relatively new concept which is now recognized as a way to address both of these goals. In a PES system, those who benefit from the environmental services (ES) compensate those who provide these services in order to secure ES provision. This paper investigates the value that domestic water users in Tuguegarao City place on watershed protection. Using the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), this study established the willingness to pay of domestic water users in Tuguegarao City. Payments would contribute to a fund that would provide for the watershed protection of the Penablanca Protected Landscape and Seascape (PPLS). This would help to ensure the provision of a reliable water supply for their households. This local fund may lead to funding for a possible watershed management program. This would generate solutions to forest problems by directing funding support to upstream communities to implement measures protecting the PPLS.

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PREM

The aims of the study presented in this paper are to assess the demand for and test the commercial viability of a crop insurance scheme in different natural disaster-prone areas in Bangladesh, as an alternative poverty alleviation and natural disaster mitigation strategy. In a large scale household survey carried out at the end of 2006, 3600  riverine and coastal floodplain residents in Bangladesh were asked for their preferences for crop insurance schemes using the double bounded contingent valuation (CV) method.  For example, asking them for their willingness to pay (WTP) for crop insurance schemes to eliminate future catastrophe risks. We find crop insurance demand to be positively correlated with household head’s primary occupation, land ownership and size of agricultural farm land. Our study further reveals that crop damage cost and households’ willingness to pay to reduce damage vary significantly across the nature of the disaster risk. Using the data collected through household survey, we tested our simple analytical model of commercial viability of a crop insurance scheme by comparing the future value of expected premium receivable by insurer, with the expected indemnity payable to the insured. Assuming zero administrative cost and 10% interest rate per annum, we find crop insurance schemes are marginally viable in riverine flood plain areas (both embanked and unembanked). The difference between the average expected indemnity payment and the future value of expected insurance premium is way too high for the nature of risk and amount of damage cost faced by households living in haor basin and coastal floodplain areas.

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PREM

The objective of the study is to support Norwegian partner countries in strengthening the economic case for investing in the environment to reduce poverty by:

• Undertaking a comprehensive review of completed and on-going studies on making the case for investing in environment in Norwegian partner countries as an instrument to galvanize national and international support for increasing investments in environmental management;
• Identifying key knowledge gaps; and
• Suggesting ways forward to increase knowledge and making the case for investments and proposing how Norway can assist key partner countries.

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http://www.norad.no

This report highlights some of the challenges of adapting to climate change in eastern and southern Africa. In addition to large changes in temperatures, there is a need to adapt to uncertainty regarding the magnitude and direction of precipitation changes, as well as changing climate variability. Social vulnerability is increasing in some areas of eastern and southern Africa, such that very small meteorological events (such as a minor drought) may have severe impacts on households, social groups, and regions. Multiple stressors interact with climate change to generate vulnerability, which is highly differentiated among places and groups.

Although a rich set of indigenous responses exist for coping with climate variability, these strategies are not sufficient in the face of societal transformations and climatic changes. Consequently, there may be some unexpected outcomes of climate change, which generate new vulnerable groups. Interventions may also create unplanned outcomes, and may even increase vulnerability for some, if the broader vulnerability context is not taken into account. There is currently a gap between local needs and ongoing and planned adaptation interventions. The most vulnerable groups of eastern and southern Africa are generally not included in these projects, nor are the sources of their vulnerability being adequately addressed.

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http://www.norad.no

From the article:

"On the one hand, if we look at specific examples of natural resources (fresh water, ocean fisheries, the atmosphere as a carbon sink—more generally, ecosystems), there is strong evidence that the rates at which we are currently utilizing them are unsustainable. During the twentieth century, world population grew by a factor of four to more than six billion, industrial output increased by a multiple of 40 and the use of energy by 16, methane-producing cattle population grew in pace with human population, fish catch increased by a multiple of 35, and carbon and sulfur dioxide emissions by 10. The application of nitrogen to the terrestrial environment from the use of fertilizers, fossil fuels, and leguminous crops is now at least as great as that from all natural sources combined. Ecologists have estimated that 40% of the net energy created by terrestrial photosynthesis is currently being appropriated for human use. These figures put the scale of our presence on Earth in perspective and reveal that Humanity has created an unprecedented disturbance in Nature in a brief period of a century or so."

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http://www.eoearth.org

The high reliance on charcoal makes Tanzanian producers, traders and consumers vulnerable for environmental problems such as deforestation. Increasing the sustainability of the charcoal chain in Tanzania calls for a comprehensive approach that accounts for a multitude of aspects (e.g technological, economic, social and environmental issues). At present, the development of such a comprehensive policy is hampered by lack of information about the charcoal chain as well as the limited recognition of policy makers in Tanzania of the interdependencies between the segments within the charcoal chain. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analytical overview of all three components of the charcoal sector: production, trade and consumption. This overview contributes to the development of a comprehensive policy regarding the role of charcoal in Tanzania’s energy strategy.

Preliminary lessons drawn from the available sources of information include the following: (1) The vast magnitude of the industry implies that changes in the sector can only be realized gradually with a comprehensive approach as a basis. Sudden interventions such as the ban on charcoal production and trade are counter-effective; (2) Despite the high environmental awareness among the charcoal producers, their poverty leaves no alternative but to continue the profession of charcoal making. Lack of alternative livelihood options, prevent them from shifting to more sustainable income sources; (3) Kiln efficiency is extremely low, thereby enhancing the rate of deforestation. Projects supporting the improvement of kiln efficiency would greatly support local communities as well as the environment. (4) Charcoal induced deforestation causes ample externalities, such as downstream water shortages. Because of these relationships, innovative economic instruments such as Payments for Environmental Services (PES) could be considered. (5) Current policies directed at the charcoal chain are inefficient in many ways. The command and control policies dominating the approach of the current Tanzanian government need to be supplemented by market-based approaches.

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PREM

Where are the forests in the MDGs? When players in the forestry world get together they are good at setting goals. They are a good match for the political leaders that gave us the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Since the 1980s there has been a proliferation of international dialogues dealing with forests and, a bit like the football World Cup, every four years or so they come up with a feast of goals. If forestry goals were all that was needed to make progress, then sustainable and pro-poor forestry would have long since become a worldwide reality. Of course, implementation still lags well behind aspiration, but at least there is now a considerable body of international knowledge and agreement on how forests can contribute to development.

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http://www.iied.org

The document aims to contribute conceptually to the methodological challenge on how avoided deforestation and degradation can become measurable contributions for global efforts to save the earth’s climate. Even as the obstacles are by no means trivial, real substantial emission reductions are critical.

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http://www.gtz.de

In 2002 the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted a target to significantly reduce biodiversity loss by 2010 "as a contribution to poverty alleviation". In 2005, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment offered compelling evidence of the positive links between biodiversity conservation and human well-being. In practice, however, biodiversity conservation and local people’s livelihoods often compete – particularly in some "top-down" approaches to conservation such as certain national parks. Can "bottom-up" approaches to conservation – decentralization and community management – provide the answer?

A recent review shows that community-led conservation can contribute to human well-being and to the achievement of many Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but in the majority of cases, it remains small-scale, isolated and not integrated within the formal conservation sector. The authors suggest that, given appropriate support, community conservation could achieve much more for poverty reduction. Indeed, without further local action, the international targets set within the CBD and the MDGs are likely to be unattainable. They suggest a range of actions for donor and government agencies to help unleash this potential – including payments for ecosystem services, mainstreaming biodiversity into sector-wide initiatives, and better integration of biodiversity within the MDG framework.

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http://www.iied.org

Water harvesting is increasingly seen as a means of reducing poverty in many drought prone areas. While extensive efforts are going on in constructing and providing smallholder farmers with water harvesting structures, such as household ponds and wells in Ethiopia, there is limited effort to systematically assess the impact of households’ access to ponds and wells on household welfare. This study applies advanced econometric evaluation techniques to assess whether households with ponds and wells are better off compared to those without. It also explores the factors that explain household level poverty. Results show that households with ponds and wells are not significantly better off compared to households without, even though they are comparable in essential household characteristics. A range of household characteristics, demographics, asset endowments and village level factors were found to be significant in explaining household poverty. Policy conclusions are drawn.

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PREM

This paper investigates environmental and design related issues that can affect the performance of small-scale water harvesting schemes in theTigray region of northern Ethiopia. Results indicate that the impact of evaporation loss during the rainy season on net harvested water is generally small, and depends on the extent of the surface area of the ponds. However, the impact of the seepage loss on the net harvested water is very high unless there is proper lining of the bed and walls of the ponds. The irrigated area can be increased considerably if proper water saving and utilization measures and mechanisms are implemented.

The current silt trap structures are ineffective in minimizing the sediment deposition in the ponds. The design, construction and maintenance of the structures need to be improved in order to reduce the sediment deposition and increase the water storage capacity of the ponds.

As there is little experience with the extensive use of ponds and hand dug wells for supplementary irrigation in Tigray, the soils of almost all schemes are currently salt free. If the soil salinity and good quality water of the ponds are taken into account, salinity may not be a threat for farmers using ponds for supplementary irrigation. However, the water quality of wells is poor. Besides, since they are continuously recharged by the groundwater, most of the wells irrigate longer period than the ponds. Farmers using wells would have to implement necessary measures indicated earlier to minimize the effect of salinity.

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PREM

In Kenya, conservation and sustainable utilization of the environment and natural resources form an integral part of national planning and poverty reduction efforts. However, weak environmental management practices are a major impediment to agricultural productivity growth. This study was motivated by the paucity of literature on the poverty-environment nexus in Kenya, since poverty, agricultural stagnation and environmental degradation are issues of policy interest in the country’s development strategy. The paper builds on the few existing studies from Kenya and explores the impact of household, farm and village characteristics as well as the development domain dimensions on household welfare and investment in soil and water conservation. The results show that strengthening the tenure security improves household welfare. Further, soil quality, topography and investments in soil and water conservation affect household welfare. Agroecological potential, which is related to environmental conservation, is also a key correlate of poverty. Results for investment in water and soil conservation confirm the importance of tenure security in determining adoption and also the intensity of SWC investments. We also find that household assets, farm characteristics, presence of village institutions and development domain dimensions are important determinants of adoption and intensity of soil and water conservation investments. The results for both poverty and investment in soil and water conservation suggest the existence of a strong poverty-environment link in our sample. The results also suggest that rural poverty can be alleviated by policies that improve environmental conservation and strengthen land tenure security. The study also underscores the importance of village institutions in both investment adoption of soil and water conservation and in improving household welfare.

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PREM

World Development Report 2008 calls for greater investment in agriculture in developing countries. The report warns that the sector must be placed at the center of the development agenda if the goals of halving extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 are to be realized.

• While 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas in developing countries, a mere 4 percent of official development assistance goes to agriculture.
• In Sub-Saharan Africa, a region heavily reliant on agriculture for overall growth, public spending for farming is also only 4 percent of total government spending and the sector is still taxed at relatively high levels.
• For the poorest people, GDP growth originating in agriculture is about four times more effective in raising incomes of extremely poor people than GDP growth originating outside the sector.

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http://www.worldbank.org

This report is part of a larger study looking at how marine protected areas have contributed to poverty reduction at four different sites in four countries. Between November 2006 and May 2007, the study team conducted almost 1,000 household interviews and many group discussions in Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and the Philippines.

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http://www.prem-online.org

This report is part of a larger study looking at how marine protected areas have contributed to poverty reduction at four different sites in four countries. Between November 2006 and May 2007, the study team conducted almost 1,000 household interviews and many group discussions in Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and the Philippines.

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http://www.prem-online.org

This report is part of a larger study looking at how marine protected areas have contributed to poverty reduction at four different sites in four countries. Between November 2006 and May 2007, the study team conducted almost 1,000 household interviews and many group discussions in Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and the Philippines.

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http://www.prem-online.org

This report is part of a larger study looking at how marine protected areas have contributed to poverty reduction at four different sites in four countries. Between November 2006 and May 2007, the study team conducted almost 1,000 household interviews and many group discussions in Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and the Philippines.

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http://www.prem-online.org

The dominant late 20th century model of land use, which assumed and promoted the strict segregation of agricultural production from areas managed for biodiversity conservation, is no longer adequate in much of the world. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment confirmed that the extensification and intensification of agriculture have dramatically increased the ecological footprint of crop, livestock, fishery and forest production. Moreover, rural communities themselves depend for sustainable production and livelihoods on key components of biodiversity and ecosystem services that are found in non-domestic habitats. Conservation of much of the world's biodiversity will necessarily take place in or around agricultural regions.

Fortunately, a growing body of research suggests that agricultural landscapes can be designed and managed to host wild biodiversity of many types (though not all), with neutral or even positive effects on agricultural production and livelihoods, through innovations in farming systems and in the spatial layout and management of natural areas within agricultural landscapes. Innovative practitioners and
scientists, as well as indigenous land managers, are adapting, designing and managing diverse types of "ecoagriculture" landscapes to generate positive co-benefits for production, biodiversity and local people.

This paper synthesizes the results of a large number of sectoral review papers and case studies to assess the state of knowledge of ecoagriculture. The authors assess the potentials and limitations for successful conservation of biodiversity in productive agricultural landscapes, the feasibility of making such approaches financially viable, and the organizational, governance and policy frameworks needed to enable ecoagriculture planning and implementation at a globally significant scale.

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http://www.ecoagriculturepartners.org

International attention is focusing increasingly on environmental concerns, from global warming and extreme weather to persistent chemical pollutants that affect food supplies, health and well-being. These environmental exposures disproportionately affect the poor and those residing in developing countries, and may partly explain the persistent social gradients in health that exist within and between nations.

The authors support recent calls for environmental epidemiologists to play a more active role in furthering the global agenda for sustainability, environmental health and equity. They further suggest that the discipline of environmental epidemiology, as well as relevant funding agencies, broaden their focus to include rigorous research on the upstream, larger-scale societal factors that contribute to inequitable patterns of exposure and health outcomes. By widening the scope of vision and increasing the strength and breadth of the evidence base about how poverty and environment together affect health, better participation in efforts to promote social justice and responsible use and protection of the environment can be achieved, and thus reduce health inequities. That is both a primary mode and rationale for achieving sustainability.

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http://www.epidem.com

This report provides a new approach to examining the links between ecosystem services (the benefits derived from nature) and the poor.

Through a series of maps and analyses, the authors focus on the environmental resources most Kenyans rely on such as soil, water, forest, rangeland, livestock, and wildlife. The atlas overlays georeferenced statistical information on population and household expenditures with spatial data on ecosystems and their services (water availability, wood supply, wildlife populations, and the like) to yield a picture of how land, people, and prosperity are related in Kenya.

While the maps and analyses presented here will not provide easy answers to questions concerning the causes of poverty in Kenya and how ecosystems can best be managed to increase economic growth and improve livelihoods, they are a first step toward stimulating more informed dialogue and provoking questions for which answers may be found.

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http://www.wri.org

There is a general consensus on the relationship between population, development and the environment. The debate about population increase started several decades ago, but to date the controversy surrounding the relationship of the three variables in terms of cause and effect is yet to be resolved. It is in relation to the theme of "Urban Population, Development and Environment Dynamics" that the paper intends to analyze availability of water and sanitation in South Africa by gender of head of households.

The paper argues that the urban poor are victims of urban environmental problems. For instance ecological disruption due to various city activities, emissions of green house gases, inadequate waste management are certainly not caused by the urban poor. This argument was also put forth by Satterthwaite, (2003) that there exists little evidence of urban poverty attributing to environmental degradation than evidence that urban environmental hazards attributing to urban poverty and health impacts on the urban poor. Different perspectives of understanding lead to different policy orientations.

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http://www.cicred.org

Overarching objective: sustainable environmental and natural resource management that benefits livelihoods and reduces poverty.

This report covers the first full year of the second phase of the Partnership Programme Agreement between WWF and DFID. One example was chosen under each indicator to illustrate progress.

Overall, WWF is confident that the program is on track to deliver the outcomes set out by 2011.

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http://www.panda.org

The authors of this paper reveal how national leadership, local champions, and numerous initiatives, events, and conditions constitute the Tanzanian experience of environmental mainstreaming. Many of these drivers were drawn into Tanzania's National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (MKUKUTA), enabling a significant leap forward in integrating poverty reduction and environmental management. The authors explain how this inclusive approach was achieved. They reflect on what has been accomplished, the challenges to come, and offer lessons that may help countries beyond Tanzania.

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http://www.iied.org

Fire is an important community wetland management tool in Indonesia, but its increasing use in the wetlands of southern Sumatra is degrading the landscape and diminishing household incomes and livelihood options.

The authors studied evolving community land and fire use, resource and livelihood impacts on two sites of roughly 250 km2 each using satellite image analysis and biological and socio-economic surveys. Uncontrolled fire use expanded over time in relation to sonor or swamp rice cultivation, logging, fishing, grazing, and annual cropping on drained wetlands. As a result, most of the landscape has been subject to repeated fires of varying intensities, more extensive in El Niño years. Direct burning by companies played a smaller transitory role in fire ignition over the two decades. But company activities and other large-scale developments contributed to expanding community fire-based land use by bringing in more people, improving access to remote wetlands or making them more flammable.

Widespread, repeated fires have transformed the landscape from mature high swamp forests to uniform stands of fire-resistant Gelam (Melaleuca cajuputi) forests and thickets, open savannas and grasslands. These new types of land cover are also degrading. Local communities have rapidly adapted to the changing resources and new opportunities. Logging and fishing declined in importance, and sonor and harvesting of Gelam expanded. But resource depletion has led to falling incomes and fewer livelihood options. The impacts extend beyond local areas as workers migrate into neighbouring forests to extract resources. Large-scale developments, community fire-based management practices and landscape transformation are spreading from accessible to formerly more remote wetlands.

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http://www.cifor.cgiar.org

The objectives of this Technical Paper are to highlight the contribution that inland and coastal small-scale fisheries can make to poverty alleviation and food security and to make practical suggestions on ways that this contribution can be maximized.

This paper is organized into three main sections. The first section discusses the concepts of poverty, vulnerability and food security, and briefly outlines how these concepts have evolved in recent years within the field of fisheries (in line with the rest of the development literature). The second section reviews the actual and potential contribution of small-scale fisheries to poverty alleviation and food security. It illustrates, through use of examples, the role that small-scale fisheries can play in economic growth at the national level and poverty alleviation and rural development at the local level. The third and main section of the document discusses ways of increasing the contribution of small-scale fisheries to poverty alleviation and food security through nine main entry points.

The paper then proposes a series of broad pro-poor or pro-small-scale fisheries principles, before discussing in greater detail three of the main management instruments adopted in fisheries: (i) property right approaches; (ii) co-management; and (iii) protected areas.

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http://www.fao.org

This paper provides a short review of the poverty-environment nexus in Africa, which has emerged as a major development challenge for the continent. It looks specifically at issues related to deforestation and land degradation, low agricultural productivity, water scarcity, threats to Africa's biodiversity, and the impact of civil conflicts.

It summarizes some of the main policy implications that arise based on the time inconsistency problem between short-term survival strategies and longer-term environmental concerns. The policy recommendations include sector-specific interventions as well as cross-cutting policy changes addressing gender imbalances and insufficient institutional reforms.

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http://www.afdb.org

This assessment describes key water-food-environment trends that influence our lives today and uses scenarios to explore the consequences of a range of potential investments. It aims to inform investors and policymakers about water and food choices in light of such crucial influences as poverty, ecosystems, governance, and productivity. It covers rainfed agriculture, irrigation, groundwater, marginal-quality water, fisheries, livestock, rice, land, and river basins.

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http://www.iwmi.cgiar.org

This paper presents a study on the impacts of recurring droughts on communities in the Ninh Thuan province of Viet Nam. It examines the root causes of drought in the region, people's perceptions of drought-related vulnerabilities in relation to climate change, and what action is most appropriate to combat the problem.

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http://www.eldis.org

Strengthening the capacity of developing countries to prepare for and participate in negotiations on future actions under the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol: the BASIC project final report

The role of large developing countries in combating climate change will become increasingly important as the world negotiates a post-2012 agreement on climate change. This report summarises the activities undertaken by the BASIC Project (Building and Strengthening Institutional Capacities on Climate Change in Brazil, India, China and South Africa). This action-orientated research and capacity development project focused on supporting the institutional capacity of key developing countries to undertake analytical work to determine what kind of national and international climate change actions best fit within their circumstances and priorities.

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http://www.eldis.org