Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-jbkpb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-19T04:28:51.119Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fuelwood scarcity, energy substitution, and rural livelihoods in Namibia*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

CHARLES PALMER  and
JAMES MACGREGOR
CHARLES PALMER
Affiliation:
Senior Researcher, Chair of Environmental Policy and Economics, Institute for Environmental Decisions, ETH Zürich, Universitätstrasse 22, CHN K 76.2, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland. Tel: +41 44 632 32 25. Email: charles.palmer@env.ethz.ch
JAMES MACGREGOR
Affiliation:
Senior Researcher, Environmental Economics Programme, Sustainable Markets Group, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, UK.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Namibia, as in many parts of Africa, households are highly dependent on forest resources for their livelihoods, including energy needs. Using data originally collected for Namibia's forest resource accounts and insights from a non-separable household model, this paper estimates household fuelwood demand. Specifically, the factors underlying the substitution between fuelwood collected from open access forest resources, cow dung, and fuelwood purchased from the market are analysed. Heckman two-step estimates show that households respond to economic scarcity, as measured by the opportunity costs of collecting fuelwood, by reducing energy consumption slightly more than by increasing labour input to collection. There is limited evidence for substitution from fuelwood to other energy sources, particularly with declining availability of forest stocks. Market participants may be more sensitive to price changes than non-participants. All estimated elasticities are low, similar to those observed in previous studies.

Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 6 , December 2009 , pp. 693 - 715
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acharya, G. and Barbier, E. (2002), ‘Using domestic water analysis to value groundwater recharge in the Hadejia-Jama'are floodplain, Northern Nigeria’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 84: 415–426.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amacher, G.S., Hyde, W.F., and Joshee, B.R. (1993), ‘Joint production and consumption in traditional households: fuelwood and crop residues in two districts in Nepal’, Journal of Development Studies 30: 206–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amacher, G.S., Hyde, W.F., and Joshee, B.R. (1996), ‘Household fuelwood demand and supply in Nepal's Tarai and Mid-Hills: choice between cash outlays and labour opportunity’, World Development 24: 1725–1736.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amacher, G.S., Hyde, W.F., and Kanel, KR. (1999), ‘Nepali fuelwood production and consumption: regional and household distinctions, substitution and successful intervention’, Journal of Development Studies 35: 138–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, M., Köhlin, G., Persson, R., and Shepherd, G. (2003), ‘Fuelwood revisited: what has changed in the last decade?’, Occasional Paper No. 39, Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia.Google Scholar
Barnes, J.I., Nhuleipo, O., Macgregor, J., and Muteyauli, P.I. (2005), ‘Preliminary asset and flow accounts for forest resources in Namibia’, mimeo, Environmental Economics Unit, DEA, Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET), Namibia.Google Scholar
Barnum, H. and Squire, L. (1979), ‘A model of an agricultural household: theory and evidence’, Occasional Paper No. 27, World Bank, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Chen, L., Heerink, N., and Berg, M. (2006), ‘Energy consumption in rural China: a household model for three villages in Jiangxi Province’, Ecological Economics 58: 407–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooke, P.A. (1998a), ‘Intra-household labor allocation responses to environmental good scarcity: a case study from the hills of Nepal’, Economic Development and Cultural Change 46: 807–830.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooke, P.A. (1998b), ‘The effect of environmental good scarcity on own-farm labor allocation: the case of agricultural households in rural Nepal’, Environment and Development Economics 3: 443–469.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooke, P.A., Köhlin, G., and Hyde, W.F. (2008), ‘Fuelwood, forests and community management – evidence from household studies’, Environment and Development Economics 13: 103–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erkkilä, A. (2001), ‘Living on the land: change in forest cover in north-central Namibia 1943–1996’, Silva Carelica (Finland) 38, 118 pp.Google Scholar
FAO (1997), State of the World's Forests, Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).Google Scholar
FAO (2000), ‘The energy and agriculture nexus’, Environment and Natural Resources Working Paper 4, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome.Google Scholar
FAO (2007), ‘Forests and energy in developing countries’, Forests and Energy Working Paper 2, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome.Google Scholar
FAOStat (2007), Database: http://faostat.fao.org/. Accessed on 15 November 2007.Google Scholar
Greene, W. (1993), Econometric Analysis, 2nd Edition, New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Heckman, J. (1976), ‘The common structure of statistical models of truncation, sample selection and limited dependent variables and a simple estimator of such models’, Annals of Economic Social Measurement 5: 475–492.Google Scholar
Heckman, J. (1979), ‘Sample selection bias as a specification error’, Econometrica 47: 153–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heltberg, R., Channing, T.C., and Sekhar, N.U. (2000), ‘Fuelwood consumption and forest degradation: a household model for domestic energy substitution in rural India’, Land Economics 76: 213–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyde, W. and Köhlin, G. (2000), ‘Social forestry reconsidered’, Silva Fennica 34: 285–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaimowitz, D. and Angelsen, A. (1998), Economic Models of Deforestation – A Review, Bogor, Indonesia: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).Google Scholar
Kumar, S.K. and Hotchkiss, D. (1988), ‘Consequences of deforestation for women's time allocation, agricultural production and nutrition in hill areas of Nepal’, Research Report 69, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Lind-Rahr, M. (2003), ‘Property rights and deforestation: the choice of fuelwood source in rural Vietnam’, Land Economics 79: 217–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacGregor, J., Palmer, C., and Barnes, J. (2007), ‘Forest resources and rural livelihoods in the North-central regions of Namibia’, Environmental Economics Programme Discussion Paper 07-01, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London.Google Scholar
Mekonnen, A. (1998), ‘Rural energy and afforestation: case studies from Ethiopia’, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Department of Economics, Gothenberg University.Google Scholar
Mekonnen, A. (1999), ‘Rural household biomass fuel production and consumption in Ethiopia: a case study’, Journal of Forest Economics 5: 69–97.Google Scholar
Mroz, T. (1987), ‘The sensitivity of an empirical model of married women's hours of work to economic and statistical assumptions’, Econometrica 55: 765–799.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, R. and Topel, K. (1985), ‘Estimation and inference in two-step econometric models’, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics 3: 370–379.Google Scholar
Nhuleipo, O., MacGregor, J., Muteyauli, P., and Barnes, J. (2005), ‘Forest use projects in the North-central Regions of Namibia: a preliminary report on DEA economic analysis’, mimeo, Environmental Economics Unit, DEA, Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET), Namibia.Google Scholar
Pattanayak, S.K., Sills, E., and Kramer, R. (2004), ‘Seeing the forest for the fuel’, Environment and Development Economics 9: 155–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Puhani, P. (2000), ‘The Heckman correction for sample selection and its critique’, Journal of Economic Surveys 14: 53–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sadoulet, E. and de Janvry, A. (1995), Quantitative Development Policy Analysis, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Singh, I., Squire, L., and Strauss, J. (1986), Agricultural Household Models, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
United Nations (2007), ‘Environment statistics country snapshot: Namibia’, United Nations Statistics Division, United Nations, New York.Google Scholar
Williams, P.J. (1983), ‘The social organization of firewood procurement and use in Africa: a study of the division of labor by sex’, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington.Google Scholar