The Environment for Development initiative (EfD) is one of the Green Growth Knowledge Platform’s Knowledge Partners. Gunnar Köhlin, Associate Professor at the Environmental Economics Unit, Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg, introduces the EfD mission, its partners, and research projects, as part of a new GGKP “Partner in Focus” feature.
The Environment for Development initiative (EfD) is a global network of environmental economics’ centers that share the conviction that research can help to make the environment become a dynamo of development. Our vision is a green economy with sustainable economic growth founded on efficient management of the economy, ecosystems, natural resources and climate change impacts.
Our mission is to contribute to poverty alleviation and sustainable development through increased use of findings from environmental economics’ research in policy design. We use environmental economics to identify the roots to environmental problems, evaluate their welfare implications and analyze which policy instruments are most efficient in addressing the environmental challenges.
EfD is made up of researchers in environmental economics centers based in reputable academic institutions. An EfD center is characterized by a good research environment – with a group of PhD’s specialized in environmental economics, links to a graduate program and a strong interface to policy making bodies. The current EfD partners are:
- The Environmental Economics Unit at Department of Economics, University of Gothenburg, which also acts as secretariat for the EfD initiative.
- The Environmental Economics Policy Forum for Ethiopia at the Ethiopian Development Research Institute in collaboration with Department of Economics, Addis Ababa University.
- The Environmental Economics Program in China based at the College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Peking University.
- The Environmental Policy Research Unit at the School of Economics, University of Cape Town.
- EfD-Central America at CATIE, Turrialba, Costa Rica.
- EfD-Kenya at the School of Economics, University of Nairobi in collaboration with KIPPRA.
- EfD-Tanzania at the Department of Economics, University of Dar-es-Salaam.
- The Research Nucleus on Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at Universidad de Concepción, and last but not least,
- Resources for the Future (RFF) in Washington DC.
EfD started in 2007 and since then the collaborating researchers have published hundreds of papers in international peer reviewed journals. EfD also has a dedicated, peer reviewed Discussion Paper series edited by Professor Peter Berck at UC Berkeley and a book series with RFF Press. Most publications emanates from the internal research fund and the yearly research cycle that involves policy interaction, proposals, peer review of proposals, research, peer review of results and feed-back to the policy making process.
Increasingly, the EfD centers are working together on collaborative research projects in order to increase the learning between countries and be able to develop more general policy recommendations regarding various facets of green growth. At the moment these projects include:
- Adaptation to climate change in African agriculture
- The design and evaluation of forest sector reforms in China, Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania.
- Marine protected areas and small-scale fishing behavior: a Comparative Analysis between South Africa, Tanzania and Costa Rica.
- Optimal pricing of parks and wildlife resources in Eastern and Southern Africa.
- The design of policy instruments.
EfD research fellows are of course active also as a capacity for other Green Growth Knowledge Partners. Dr. Alemu Mekonnen, Director for the Ethiopian EfD center was for example very active in the development of the Ethiopian climate-resilient green economy strategy which was developed with the active support of the Global Green Growth Institute. EfD research fellows were also making major contributions to the African Development Report 2012 – Towards Green Growth in Africa.
The major thrust in the EfD initiative is, however, close interaction between domestic policy makers and local academics, in collaboration with international associates. You can find many examples of such policy interactions on the EfD website www.environmentfordevelopment.org along with our publications and researcher descriptions.
Finally, EfD builds on a long-term (started in 1991!) Sida-supported capacity building program in environmental economics that also includes a PhD program at University of Gothenburg and support to regional environmental economics networks.