Chinese transport activity has grown rapidly in recent years, and curbing CO2 emissions from this sector is a major challenge. This paper investigates the potentials offered by both technological solutions and changes in infrastructure deployment strategy that can address this challenge. The research is carried out by using the IMACLIM-R energy-economy-environment (E3) model which includes a detailed description of passenger and freight transportation dynamics. The standard representation of transport technologies is supplemented with an explicit representation of the “behavioral” determinants of mobility. Although they drive transport demand, these determinants are often disregarded in mitigation assessments. This framework considers (i) the spatial organization of housing and production, (ii) modal choices induced by transport infrastructures and (iii) the freight transport intensity of production and distribution processes.
This paper estimates the welfare impact of rural electrification in India using nationally representative household panel survey data for 2005 and 2012. Analysis based on a propensity-score-weighted fixed effects model finds that while electrification is associated with a broad range of social and economic benefits, the size of the effects depends importantly on the reliability of electricity service. Gaining access to electricity combined with a reliable power supply is associated with a 17 percent increase in income during the sample period, but gaining access to electricity alone is associated with only a 9.6 percent increase in income. The net gain from both increasing the access rate and reducing power outages in rural India is estimated to be US$11 billion a year. Moreover, India’s rural electrification policy appears to be progressive because lower-income households benefit more from access to electricity than higher-income households during the sample period.
This report Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability presents new evidence to advance understanding on how rainfall shocks coupled with water scarcity, impacts farms, firms, and families. On farms, the largest consumers of water in the world, impacts are channeled from declining yields to changing landscapes.
Road construction is thought to result in forest loss, but causal identification has been elusive. Using multiple causal identification strategies, the authors find that India's rural road construction program, which built new feeder roads to over 100,000 villages and 100 million people, had precisely zero effect on local deforestation. In contrast, when 10,000 kilometers of India's national highway network were upgraded, there was substantial forest cover loss, driven by increased timber demand along the highway corridor. In terms of forests, last mile connectivity had a negligible environmental cost, while expansion of major corridors had important environmental impacts.
The paper System-of-systems framework for global infrastructure vulnerability assessments addresses the need for a system-of-systems framework that applies to assess infrastructure vulnerabilities in a generalized sense.
The paper Lessons from Four Decades of Infrastructure Project Related Conflicts in Latin America and the Caribbean examines infrastructure project related conflicts and their consequences in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).