Laboratory studies suggest that improved cooking stoves can reduce indoor air pollution, improve health, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries. The authors provide evidence, from a large-scale randomized trial in India, on the benefits of a common, laboratory-validated stove with a four-year follow-up. While smoke inhalation initially falls, this effect disappears by year two. They find no changes across health outcomes or greenhouse gas emissions. Households used the stoves irregularly and inappropriately, failed to maintain them, and usage declined over time. This study underscores the need to test environmental technologies in real-world settings where behavior may undermine potential impacts.
The policy summary for this paper is available here.
Biomass combustion with traditional cookstoves causes substantial environmental and health harm. Nontraditional cookstove technologies can be efficacious in reducing this adverse impact, but they are adopted and used at puzzlingly low rates. This study analyzes the determinants of low demand for nontraditional cookstoves in rural Bangladesh by using both stated preference (from a nationally representative survey of rural women) and revealed preference (assessed by conducting a cluster-randomized trial of cookstove prices) approaches. The authors find consistent evidence across both analyses suggesting that the women in rural Bangladesh do not perceive indoor air pollution as a significant health hazard, prioritize other basic developmental needs over nontraditional cookstoves, and overwhelmingly rely on a free traditional cookstove technology and are therefore not willing to pay much for a new nontraditional cookstove.
The authors document three remarkable features of the Opower program, in which social comparison-based home energy reports are repeatedly mailed to more than six million households nationwide. First, initial reports cause high-frequency "action and backsliding," but these cycles attenuate over time. Second, if reports are discontinued after two years, effects are relatively persistent, decaying at 10-20 percent per year. Third, consumers are slow to habituate: they continue to respond to repeated treatment even after two years. The authors show that the previous conservative assumptions about post-intervention persistence had dramatically understated cost effectiveness and illustrate how empirical estimates can optimize program design.
The policy summary for this paper is available here.
This policy brief is the second in a series of six briefs drawn from the fifth edition of the Sustainable Development Report on Africa, a joint publication of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations nvironmentProgramme, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the United Nations Development Programme on the theme “achieving sustainable development in Africa through inclusive green growth”. The brief highlights the role of agriculture in promoting inclusive green growth in the region.
Implementing inclusive green growth interventions in subsectors of agriculture including the crop, agro forestry and livestrock will bring value addition by enchaing productivity and increasing household revenue while reducing vulnerability to the growing threats of climate change. The report provides best practices from various subsector and summarises lessons learned.
This policy brief is the third in a series of six briefs drawn from the fifth edition of the Sustainable Development Report on Africa.
It is a joint publication of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the United Nations Environment Programme, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the United Nations Development Programme on the theme “achieving sustainable development in Africa through inclusive green growth”. The brief highlights the role of ecosystem goods and services in promoting inclusive green growth in the region.