the impact of rural electric access on deforestation rates summary overpopulation and economic industrialization are two common explanations for deforestation political ecology however highlights that good governance and effective land management at the local level can offset the impact of population growth and development on environmental degradation in this paper we provide an innovative argument derived from political ecology to explain deforestation but rather than pursing a bottom up approach to governance we take a top down approach we argue that the state can ease deforestation rates by weaning rural populations off of the consumption of biomass for their energy needs by expanding rural electrification access using a panel analysis of 158 countries for the years 1990 2000 and 2010 we find that not only does rural electrification cause deforestation rates to decrease but also that it is more robust in explaining deforestation than population growth or development our study provides two innovations to political ecology it highlights that the state can help rather than hinder local populations with managing their local environments in a more sustainable way by providing them with public goods based energy alternatives and it supplements political ecology s qualitative focus on environmental degradation with a generalized quantitative analysis of state based initiatives on deforestation our results suggest that current global initiatives addressing deforestation specifically the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation redd agenda of the united nations framework convention on climate change should not only assist local land managers but also work with the state to ensure universal access to electricity

modeling gas markets with endogenous long term contracts since its initial development long term contracts have been associated with the gas industry in all regions of the world this was also the case in europe where natural gas trade was for a long time dominated by bilateral long term agreements between producers and midstreamers these contracts fixed a minimum volume to be exchanged take or pay and indexed the gas price using a price formula that usually referred to oil product prices these arrangements allowed market risk sharing between the producer who takes the price risk and the midstreamer who takes the volume risk they also offered risk hedging since oil is considered as a trusted commodity by investors the fall of the european natural gas demand combined with the increase of the oil price favored the emergence of a gas volume bubble that caused significant losses for most of the european midstreamers bound by long term agreements as a result the downstream part of the industry brought forward the idea of indexing contracts on gas sp

civil unrest in north africa risks for natural gas supply abstract the uprising and military confrontation in libya that began in february 2011 has led to disruptions of gas supplies to europe an analysis of how europe has compensated for these missing gas volumes shows that this situation has not affected security of supply however this situation would change if the north african uprising were to spread to algeria since algeria is a much more important gas supplier to europe than is libya more severe consequences would be likely applying a natural gas infrastructure model we investigate the impact of supplier disruptions from both countries for a summer and winter period our analysis shows that disruptions in the low demand summer months could be compensated for mainly by lng imports into several european countries an investigation of a similar situation at the beginning of the winter shows that security of supply would be severely compromised and that disruptions to italian consumers would be unavoidable the analysis thereby highlights the importance of taking the political stability of supply countries into account when assessing the security of european gas imports

measuring the influence of canadian carbon stabilization programs on natural gas exports to the united states via a bottom up intertemporal spatial price equilibrium model abstract in this paper we present the results of a study of the impact of canadian carbon stabilization programs on exports of natural gas to the united states this work was based on a study conducted for the us environmental protection agency the gas systems analysis model gsam developed by icf consulting for the us department of energy was used to gauge the overall impact of the stabilization programs on the north american natural gas market gsam is an intertemporal spatial price equilibrium spe type model of the north american natural gas system salient features of this model include characterization of over 17 000 gas production reservoirs with explicit reservoir level geologic and economic information used to build up the supply side of the market on the demand side four sectors residential commercial industrial and electric power generation are characterized in the model lastly both above and below ground storage facilities as well as a comprehensive pipeline network are used with the supply and demand side characterizations to arrive at estimates of market equilibrium prices and quantities and flows

non farm income household welfare and sustainable land management in a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands a bio economic model has been calibrated to the socio economic and biophysical characteristics of a less favoured area in the ethiopian highlands land degradation population growth stagnant technology and drought necessitates development of non farm employment opportunities in the area the model has been used to assess the impact of improved access to non farm income on household welfare agricultural production conservation investments and land degradation in the form of soil erosion the model simulations indicate that access to low wage off farm income is restricted by lack of employment opportunities since households otherwise would have engaged in more off farm wage employment than observed the simulations show that better unconstrained access to low wage non farm income has a substantial positive effect on household income total agricultural production crop and livestock production and farm inputs used are reduced when access to non farm employment is improved and thus increases the need to import food to the area access to non farm income reduces farm households incentives to invest in conservation and this leads to more overall soil erosion and more rapid land degradation even though intensity of production is reduced special policies are therefore needed to ensure land conservation and to sustain local food production

measuring the forest and income impacts of forest user group participation under malawi s forest co management program abstract we evaluate the impacts of forest user group participation under malawi s forest co management program on forest clearing and household income we use panel data collected in 2002 and 2009 in two districts of malawi we employ a two step regression strategy to control for endogenous selection into the program using propensity score weighting and propensity score analysis with non parametric regression we find that the program lowered the rate and extent of forest clearing we also find that the program had no discernible impact on household forest incomes suggesting that the program helped achieve environmental goals without compromising household livelihoods

supply storage and service reliability decisions by gas distribution utilities a chance constrained approach this paper explores the trade offs among purchases storage and service reliability decisions faced by natural gas distribution utilities the short term demand for natural gas fluctuates because of the weather to encourage load leveling the pipeline transmission companies that supply the utilities use a demand contract that charges utilities based on their peak day needs and often charge for a minimum daily purchase requirement whether that purchase is made or not the policy variables available to the utility include increasing its storage capacity and providing interruptible service to some customers thereby lowering reliability of service there are also technological constraints on the maximum storage gas flows to explore these trade offs a chance constrained cost minimization problem is formulated two decision rules for gas purchases and storage operation are examined in these rules an initial decision is made at the beginning of each month about either the level of purchases or the level of

a large scale linear complementarity model of the north american natural gas market abstract the north american natural gas market has seen significant changes recently due to deregulation and restructuring for example third party marketers can contract for transportation and purchase of gas to sell to end users while the intent was a more competitive market the potential for market power exists we analyze this market using a linear complementarity equilibrium model including producers storage and peak gas operators third party marketers and four end use sectors the marketers are depicted as nash cournot players determining supply to meet end use consumption all other players are in perfect competition results based on national petroleum council scenarios are presented

effects of wildlife resources on community welfare in southern africa abstract this paper demonstrates the importance of wildlife in the portfolio of environmental income in the livelihoods of poor rural communities living adjacent to a national park the results show that wealthier households use more wildlife resources in total than do relatively poor households however poorer households derive greater proportional benefit than wealthier households from the use of wildlife resources excluding wildlife understates the relative contribution of environmental resources while at the same time overstating the relative contribution of farm and wage income wildlife income alone accounts for about a 5 5 reduction in the proportion of people living below the poverty line furthermore wildlife income has an equalizing effect bringing about a 5 4 reduction in measured inequality regression analysis suggests that the likelihood of belonging to a wealthier category of income increases with an increase in environmental income as expected household wealth significantly and positively affects environmental income generated by households this seems to suggest that wildlife based land reform also needs to empower poor households in the area of capital accumulation while imposing restraints on the use of capital investments by well off households to harvest wildlife

toward the integration of european natural gas markets a time varying approach abstract over the past fifteen years european gas markets have radically changed in order to build a single european gas market a new regulatory framework has been established through three european gas directives the purpose of this article is to investigate the impact of the reforms in the natural gas industry on consumer prices with a specific focus on gas prices for industrial use the strength of the relationship between the industrial gas prices of six western european countries is studied by testing the law of one price for the period 1991 2009 estimations were carried out using both cointegration analysis and time varying parameter models results highlight an emerging and on going process of convergence between the industrial gas prices in western europe since 2001 for the six eu member states the strength and the level of convergence differ widely between countries strong integration of gas markets in continental europe except for the belgian market has been established it appears that the convergence process between continental countries and the uk is not completed thus the integration of european gas markets remains an open issue and the question of how far integration will proceed will still be widely discussed in the coming years

a cross country comparison of rural income generating activities summary this paper uses a newly constructed cross country database composed of comparable income aggregates to examine the full range of income generating activities carried out by rural households the analysis paints a clear picture of multiple activities across rural space in countries on all four continents though less so in the included african countries for most countries the largest share of income stems from off farm activities and the largest share of households has diversified sources of income diversification not specialization is the norm nevertheless agricultural sources of income remain critically important for rural livelihoods in all countries

strategic eurasian natural gas market model for energy security and policy analysis formulation and application to south stream abstract the mathematical formulation of a strategic eurasian natural gas market model is presented the model represents horizontal oligopolistic relationships among producers bilateral market power between producer russia and transit ukraine countries detailed transport constraints and operation decisions over a 20 year time horizon to demonstrate the model s capabilities a financial and market analysis of the proposed south stream gas pipeline from russia via the black sea to south europe is summarized insights obtained include the following first expectations of high demand growth in europe and or transit risks do not justify the construction of the south stream pipeline because under all demand and ukraine transit interruption scenarios the net benefits to the south stream participants are negative the npv ranges from 1 9 billion bn to 7 4 bn second ukraine s perception of high transit market power vis a vis russia may trigger the construction of the otherwise unprofitable south stream project thus under ukraine s high transit market power scenario the npv of south stream ranges between 2 4 bn and 24 5 bn third we find that the south stream investment increases the efficiency of the european gas market under the following conditions i when gas demand in europe grows 2 per year up to 2030 ii when ukraine poses high transit market power or iii under a combination of severe transit risks through ukraine and low demand scenarios in europe it should be noted that the value of south stream to both its project sponsors and the market as a whole is much higher when ukraine exercises transit market power than under the high demand scenario therefore whether ukraine is likely to wield market power is crucial to the success of the south stream project because that is the only scenario in which the project yields both a positive expected npv to its sponsors and the highest value to the market as a whole

forest clearing in rural livelihoods household level global comparative evidence summary this paper examines the factors that influence rural household decisions to clear forestland we use a large dataset comprising 7172 households from 24 developing countries twenty seven percent of sampled households had converted forest to agriculture during the previous 12 months clearing on average 1 21 ha male headed households with abundance of male labor living in recently settled places with high forest cover unsurprisingly tended to clear more but regional peculiarities abounded households with medium to high asset holdings and higher market orientation were more likely to clear forest than the poorest and market isolated households questioning popular policy narratives about poverty driven forest clearing

oil and gas markets in the uk evidence from a cointegrating approach the paper examines the relationship between uk wholesale gas prices and the brent oil price over the period 1996 2003 in order to investigate whether oil and gas prices decoupled during this period as orthodox gas market liberalisation theory suggests tests for unit roots and cointegration are carried out and it is discovered that a long run equilibrium relationship between uk gas and oil prices exists moreover this relationship pre dates the opening of the uk mainland europe interconnector following a recursive methodology hansen h and johansen s 1999 some tests for parameter constancy in cointegrated var models econometrics journal 2 306 333 it was found that the cointegrating relationship is present throughout the sample period however the long run solutions seem to be more volatile evidence is provided that the short run relationship is linear and impulse response functions are used to examine the effects that a shock in oil would have on gas these findings do not support the assumption that gas prices and oil prices decouple

liberalizing the energy markets of western europe a computable equilibrium model approach using a computable equilibrium model the short run effects of a radical liberalization of the west european natural gas and electricity markets are examined in each model country oil gas coal and electricity are produced traded and consumed there are world markets for oil and coal and well integrated competitive markets for gas and electricity in western europe gas and electricity are transported and traded across markets under the assumption of ideal third party access regimes for transportation and limited capacities in the transportation networks it is found that relative to the data year 1996 radical liberalization reduces the average end user price of natural gas by around 20 and the average end user price of electricity by around 50 the supply of electricity increases by around 20 mainly due to increased coal power production after such liberalization coal power emerges with the largest market share of electricity production in western europe

nonfarm income diversification and household livelihood strategies in rural africa concepts dynamics and policy implications abstract asset activity and income diversification lie at the heart of livelihood strategies in rural africa this paper introduces a special issue on the topic income diversification and livelihoods in rural africa cause and consequence of change we concentrate on core conceptual issues that bedevil the literature on rural income diversification and the policy implications of the empirical evidence presented in this special issue

vulnerability to terrorist attacks in european electricity decarbonisation scenarios comparing renewable electricity imports to gas imports the decarbonised future european electricity system must remain secure reliable electricity supply is a prerequisite for the functioning of modern society scenarios like desertec which partially rely on solar power imports from the middle east and north africa may be attractive for decarbonisation but raise concerns about terrorists interrupting supply by attacking the long unprotected transmission lines in the sahara in this paper i develop new methods and assess the european vulnerability to terrorist attacks in the desertec scenario i compare this to the vulnerability of today s system and a decarbonisation scenario in which europe relies on gas imports for electricity generation i show that the vulnerability of both gas and electricity imports is low but electricity imports are more vulnerable than gas imports due to their technical characteristics gas outages and potentially resulting blackouts are the very unlikely consequence even of very high number attacks against the gas import system whereas short blackouts are the potential consequence of a few attacks against the import electricity lines as the impacts of all except extreme attacks are limited terrorists cannot attack energy infrastructure and cause spectacular fear creating outages both gas and electricity import infrastructure are thus unattractive and unlikely terrorist targets

the development of a natural gas transportation logistics management system abstract efficient management of the natural gas business chain based on pipeline transmission networks and taking into consideration the interaction among the main players e g shippers suppliers transmission companies and local distribution companies requires the use of decision making support systems these support systems maximise resources and mitigate contingencies due to gas supply shortfalls operational contingencies from scheduled and non scheduled equipment outages and market demand shortfalls this study presents a practical use for technologies such as a thermohydraulic simulation of gas flow through pipelines a monte carlo simulation for compressor station availability studies an economic risk evaluation related to potential revenue losses and contractual penalties and linear programming for the maximisation of income and the minimisation of contractual penalties the proposed system allows the optimum availability level to be defined and maintained by the transporter by installing reserve capacity to mitigate losses related to revenue and contractual penalties it also economically identifies quantifies and justifies the installation of stand by compressor units that can mitigate the transporter s exposure to losses caused by capacity shortfalls as a consequence of scheduled and non scheduled outages

evaluation of the environmental impact of weekly food consumption in different socio economic households in australia using environmentally extended input output analysis this paper uses input output analysis to model the environmental impacts of the weekly food consumption of australia s households sorted by income quintile in 2003 we found that weekly food consumption of the relatively better off households caused greater environmental burden than that of the less well off household meat and bakery products flour cereals were the categories that contributed the largest share of environmental impacts in an average household s food consumption footprint 58 water 26 energy 29 co2 and 31 wasted materials per dollar spent fruit and vegetables generated 0 0874 m3 of water 0 0055 gj of energy 0 37 kg of co2 and 0 0114 kg of wasted materials this was lower than the per dollar impacts of bakery products 0 8482 0 0067 0 63 0 0204 meat 0 3471 0 0070 0 65 0 0203 dairy 0 0995 0 0114 0 98 0 0192 and edible fats 0 2373 0 0080 0 70 0 0165 eating out and fast food consumption also had a low per dollar impact 0 1317 0 0046 0 38 0 0141 we surmise that substituting fruit and vegetables at the expense of animal products processed foods and fats would decrease environmental impacts change at low income levels should be focused upon meat bakery and dairy consumption while higher incomes should be focused upon the consequences of eating food outside the home

environmental impacts of changes to healthier diets in europe food consumption causes together with mobility shelter and the use of electrical products most life cycle impacts of consumption meat and dairy are among the highest contributors to environmental impacts from food consumption a healthier diet might have less environmental impacts using the e3iot environmentally extended input output database developed in an eu study on environmental impacts of products eipro this paper estimates the difference in impacts between the european status quo and three simulated diet baskets i e a pattern according to universal dietary recommendations the same pattern with reduced meat consumption and a mediterranean pattern with reduced meat consumption production technologies protein and energy intake were kept constant though this implies just moderate dietary shifts impact reductions of up to 8 were possible in reduced meat scenarios the slightly changed food costs do not lead to significant first order rebound effects second order rebounds were estimated by applying the capri partial equilibrium model this analysis showed that european meat production sector will most likely respond by higher exports to compensate for losses on the domestic meat market higher impact reductions probably would need more drastic diet changes 2011 elsevier b v

evaluation of biodiversity policy instruments what works and what doesn t w e review and confirm the claim that credible evaluations of common conservation instru ments continue to be rare the limited set of rigorous studies suggests that protected areas cause modest reductions in deforestation however the evidence base for payments for ecosystem services decentralization policies and other interventions is much weaker thus we renew our urgent call for more evaluations from many more biodiversity relevant locations specifically we call for a programme of research conservation evaluation 2 0 that seeks to measure how programme impacts vary by socio political and bio physical context to track economic and environmental impacts jointly to iden tify spatial spillover effects to untargeted areas and to use theories of change to characterize causal mechanisms that can guide the collection of data and the interpretation of results only then can we usefully contribute to the debate over how to protect biodiversity in developing countries

a mixed complementarity based equilibrium model of natural gas markets we present a new multiseasonal multiyear natural gas market equilibrium model based on the concept of a competitive equilibrium involving the market participants producers storage reservoir operators peak gas operators pipeline operators marketers and consumers the first three classes are depicted as price takers consistent with perfect competition the pipeline operations are described with regulated tariffs but also involve congestion pricing as a mechanism to allocate scarce pipeline capacity the marketers are price takers in all markets except in sales to consumers in which they compete as nash cournot players finally consumers are described by demand curves for each of the four sectors residential commercial industrial and electric power we show that the equilibrium model is an instance of a mixed nonlinear complementarity problem ncp and provide sufficient detail not generally seen in previous complementarity models of natural gas the ncp formulation is derived from considering the karush kuhn tucker optimality conditions of the optimization problems faced by these participants under mild conditions we show that this ncp has a solution and under additional reasonable conditions we show that the market prices are unique we also validate the model on a representative sample network with nine market participants and three seasons using four scenarios

land use and land use changes in life cycle assessment green modelling or black boxing the assessment of land uses and land use changes luluc impacts has become increasingly complex sophisticated modelling tools such as life cycle assessment lca are employed to capture both direct and indirect damages however quantitative assessments are often incomplete dominated by environmental aspects land uses are a multidisciplinary matter and environmental and sustainable development policies intertwine yet lcas mostly focus on environmental impacts excluding socioeconomic implications of land occupation this paper investigates the limitations of current luluc modelling practices in lca common lca assumptions harbor value choices reflect a post positivist epistemology that are often non transparent to e g policymakers they particularly influence the definition of the functional unit the reference system and system boundaries among other lca methodological choices consequently results informing land policies may be biased towards determined development strategies or hide indirect effects and socioeconomic damages caused by large scale land acquisitions such as violation of tenure rights speculation and displacement quantitative assessments of luluc impacts are certainly useful but should holistically encompass both direct and indirect impacts concerning the environmental and the social science dimension of luluc an epistemological shift towards a dialectic approach would facilitate the integration of multiple tools and methods and a critical interpretation of results

global economic activity and crude oil prices a cointegration analysis abstract this paper empirically investigates the cointegrating relationship between crude oil prices and global economic activity the kilian economic index is used as an indicator of global economic activity based on a supply demand framework and the cointegration theory we find that real futures prices of crude oil are cointegrated with the kilian economic index and a trade weighted us dollar index and crude oil prices are influenced significantly by fluctuations in the kilian economic index through both long run equilibrium conditions and short run impacts we also develop an empirically stable data coherent and single equation error correction model ecm which has sensible economic properties empirical results based on the ecm show that the adjustment implied by a permanent change in the kilian economic index is a relatively drawn out process

a complementarity model for the european natural gas market abstract in this paper we present a detailed and comprehensive complementarity model for computing market equilibrium values in the european natural gas system market players include producers and their marketing arms which we call traders pipeline and storage operators marketers lng liquefiers regasifiers tankers and three end use consumption sectors the economic behavior of producers traders pipeline and storage operators liquefiers and regasifiers is modeled via optimization problems whose karush kuhn tucker kkt optimality conditions in combination with market clearing conditions form the complementarity system the lng tankers marketers and consumption sectors are modeled implicitly via appropriate cost functions aggregate demand curves and ex post calculations respectively the model is run on several case studies that highlight its capabilities including a simulation of a disruption of russian supplies via ukraine

the economic lives of the poor in what turned out to be a rhetorical master move the 1990 world development report from the world bank defined the extremely poor people of the world as those who are currently living on no more than 1 per day per person measured at the 1985 purchasing power parity ppp exchange rate in 1993 the poverty line was updated to 1 08 per person per day at the 1993 ppp exchange rate which is the line we use in this paper poverty lines have always existed indeed 1 per day was chosen in part because of its proximity to the poverty lines used by many poor countries 1 however the 1 a day poverty line has come to dominate the conversations about poverty to a remarkable extent

cooperation among liquefied natural gas suppliers is rationalization the sole objective this paper examines the development of cooperative strategies between countries exporting liquefied natural gas lng and members of the gas exporting countries forum gecf this economic study focuses specifically on an often raised scenario the emergence of a cooperative approach designed with the sole aim of logistic rationalization and which would not have any effect on lng prices we first assess the annual gains that may result from this market power free cooperative approach using a simple static transportation model the numerical results obtained suggest that in the absence of a gain redistribution policy this cooperative strategy will probably not be adopted because cooperation would not be a rational move for some exporters the problem of gain sharing is then formulated using cooperative game theory concepts several gain sharing methods have been studied including the shapley value and various nucleolus inspired concepts our results suggest that the choice of a redistribution policy appears relatively restricted out of the methods studied only one per capita nucleolus satisfies two key requirements core belonging and monotonicity in the aggregate lastly we look at how cooperation may give rise to a coordination cost and try to determine the maximum amount of this cost in view of the low level of this amount and the relative complexity of the sharing method implemented we consider that the credibility of a logistic cooperation scenario exempt from market power should be reappraised

the system wide impact of healthy eating assessing emissions and economic impacts at the regional level abstract encouraging consumers to shift their diets towards a lower meat lower calorie alternative has been the focus of food and health policies across the world the economic impacts of such changes on regions have been less widely examined but are likely to be significant especially where agricultural and food production activities are important for the region in this study we use a multi sectoral modelling framework to examine the environmental and economic impacts of such a dietary change and illustrate this using a detailed model for scotland we find that if household food and drink consumption follows healthy eating guidelines it would reduce both scotland s footprint and territorial emissions and yet may be associated with positive economic impacts generating a double dividend for both the environment and the economy the economic impact however depends critically upon how households use the income previously spent on higher meat higher calorie diets furthermore the likely but not modelled benefits to health suggest the potential for a triple dividend

risk and resilience in the nigerian oil sector the economic effects of pipeline sabotage and theft abstract political unrest in the niger delta has long been viewed as a hurdle for extracting maximum value from nigeria s oil resources recently investors and policymakers have laid blame for sector under performance on pipeline sabotage and theft and sounded the alarm for an impending oil crisis however our understanding of the economic effects of social action against oil companies is incomplete rigorous analysis has not heretofore been offered as evidence for such dire futures despite the obvious risk of pipeline interdiction price dynamics and aggregate production respond minimally to pipeline interdiction based on quantitative analysis of the relationship among price production and pipeline interdiction from multiple data sources covering different time intervals monthly data from 2005 to 2014 and annual data from 1999 to 2013 we find no evidence of significant effects of pipeline interdiction on production and a weak relationship between pipeline interdiction and bonny light crude prices reported losses in product are substantial but there is no evidence of statistically significant impacts on price or production in the aggregate explanations for this counterintuitive result are cast in terms of sector resilience the implications of this finding for producer risk and the likelihood of an impending oil crisis are discussed

shocks income and wealth do they affect the extraction of natural resources by rural households summary this paper examines the effects of household and village level characteristics on environmental reliance and participation in resource extraction decisions unlike previous analyses that used case studies or regional samples i use a nationally representative sample of rural households rounds i and ii of the mexico national rural household survey enhrum econometric results show that participation in resource extraction follows an inverted u shaped relationship with income and that environmental reliance decreases with income beyond income results show that relatively wealthy households in rural mexico are less likely to participate in resource extraction and have lower reliance than those with less wealth there is also clear evidence that natural resources provide some sort of insurance for households that are subjected to negative agricultural shocks

welfare outcomes and the advance of the deforestation frontier in the brazilian amazon summary frontier expansion in the brazilian amazon is often described as boom bust development we critically assess this characterization by mapping and estimating statistical models of welfare as a function of deforestation at the municipal level after controlling for potential confounding variables and spatial autocorrelation estimation results are consistent with a frontier boom generated by exploitation of natural resources followed by a bust during which forests continue to fall but there is no compensating gain in welfare however average per capita welfare increases again with deforestation at very high levels this second turning point in average welfare along with the strong bivariate correlation between deforestation and municipal gdp km2 may encourage local leaders to equate deforestation with development this confirms the need for international incentive payments for global public goods such as biodiversity and carbon sequestration that are provided by the amazon forest

energy requirements of sydney households supporting the lifestyles of the populations of modern cities requires vast quantities of natural resources and leads to environmental stresses such as air and water pollution research into the metabolism of cities therefore aims at understanding the physical flows into within and out of cities with a view to reducing the use of resources and the environmental impacts one important physical indicator is energy use most studies on cities only consider direct or end user energy consumption since the function of cities is to serve the lives of their residents indirect energy use in cities or energy embodied in the consumption of goods and services by its residents can be regarded as being as important as direct energy use however physical models of cities are extremely complex and have difficulty in dealing with boundary issues and hence the indirect resource requirements in this paper we use input output analysis and detailed household expenditure data to yield comprehensive energy use breakdowns for the 14 statistical subdivisions of sydney multivariate regression and structural path analysis spa are used to interpret the results clear correlations can be drawn between energy use and income household size age and degree of urbanity the structural path analysis is used to demonstrate how significant differences in lifestyles between inner and outer areas of sydney leads to different energy use characteristics this final consumption based approach to analysing the energy requirements for households has important implications for measures aimed at reducing energy use which tend to only consider direct energy use d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

energy supply security and geopolitics a european perspective the security of energy supply to the eu is examined in the context of two storylines markets and institutions exemplifies an economically and politically integrated multilateral world with effective institutions and markets regions and empires involves a world broken up in rival political and economic blocks competing for resources and markets via political economic and military power it is shown that these storylines have a significant impact on the development of the energy market on the way in which energy supply may be secured and on the effect and applicability of the several types of instruments available the current eu is geared towards enlargement and a deepening of economic integration based on the tenets of the post 1945 multilateral world system the present world tends towards regions and empires and suggests that the eu may have to reorient its energy security policy energy policy must become an integral part of eu external trade and foreign relations and security policy the eu should develop its own strategy actively investing in dialogues with producer countries in the persian gulf and africa and with russia sustainable prosperity and governance in these regions will support eu energy security

the shift in global crude oil market structure a model based analysis of the period 2013 2017 abstract this paper analyzes the recent developments in the global oil market investigating how the 2014 2016 price collapse and the following opec agreement affected the crude oil market structure and the behavior of major suppliers to this end we develop a partial equilibrium model with a spatial structure for the global crude oil market and simulate the market for the period between 2013 and 2017 under different market structure setups the simulation results reveal that although the oligopolistic market structures fit overall well to the realized market outcomes they are not successful at explaining the low prices during 2015 and 2016 which instead are closer to estimated competitive levels we further suggest that from 2014 onward the market power potential of major suppliers has shrunk considerably supporting the view that the market has become more competitive we also analyze the saudi arabia and russia led opec agreement and find that planned production cuts in 2017 particularly of saudi arabia and russia were below the levels of estimated non competitive market structure setups

european union gas market development abstract the recently announced energy union by the european commission is the most recent step in a series of developments aiming at integrating the european union s eu gas markets in order to increase social welfare and security of gas supply based on simulations with a spatial partial equilibrium model we analyze the changes in consumption prices and social welfare up to 2022 induced by the infrastructure expansions planned for this period for the current market as well as for three hypothetical scenarios a halt of russian gas deliveries to the eu during the winter period ru a simultaneous doubling of available lng lng and for brexit in which the united kingdom market is isolated from the eu in the case of the current market the new infrastructure leads to a slight decrease of wholesale prices moreover the potential of suppliers to exert market power decreases significantly particularly in the baltic states and finland which are the most exposed countries today and consumer surplus increases by 17 4 in the eu in the ru scenario consumer surplus decreases across europe with the largest losses occurring in the baltic states as well as in finland poland and romania in the lng scenario the gains in consumer surplus are primarily found in western europe however the planned infrastructure expansions distribute the gains and losses in consumer surplus more evenly over all eu member states with the exception of romania in the brexit scenario consumer surplus decreases by up to 5 1 in the united kingdom 19 2 in ireland and 3 6 in the other eu countries our results allow us to distinguish three categories of projects i change in gas availability leading to a general increase or decrease of social welfare all over the eu the only project increasing social welfare in all scenarios in most countries is the trans anatolian gas pipeline tanap ii existing gas sources made available to additional countries this leads to an increase of social welfare in the newly connected countries while social welfare drops slightly everywhere else iii projects with a marginal effect on the market most notably the recently announced turkish stream falls into this category our results indicate that if all proposed infrastructure projects are realized the eu s single market will become a reality in 2019 when finland is interconnected to the eu markets however we also find that social welfare can only be increased significantly for the eu as a whole if new gas sources become accessible at the same time efficiency gains albeit decreasing social welfare help to improve the situation of consumers and decrease the dependency of the eu as a whole on external suppliers

economic and biological conditions influence the sustainability of harvest of wild animals and plants in developing countries abstract promoting sustainable use of wild animals and plants is a global target in biodiversity conservation however the role of wild harvest as a conservation tool remains controversial when unsustainable wild harvesting leads to population decline or even extirpation of species when sustainable it has the potential to promote win win solutions for conservation and development we reviewed 87 cases of wild harvesting of vertebrates and plants in developing countries to understand the conditions influencing its sustainability we used random forest and logistic regression to find the most important predictors among a range of biological demographic and economic indicators and to detail the predicted effects on sustainability of harvest species resilience gdp per capita and poverty headcount ratio were the strongest predictors of sustainability species resilience was positively related to sustainability of harvest whereas gdp per capita and poverty ratio were negatively related harvesting a species with low resilience is more likely to be unsustainable when harvested in a middle income high poverty ratio country than in a low income low poverty ratio country this study highlights the risks of wild population harvest under the challenging economic conditions inherent in developing countries and visualize where efforts are most needed to achieve sustainable harvest

examining market power in the european natural gas market in this paper we develop a mixed complementarity equilibrium model for the european natural gas market this model has producers as cournot players with conjectured supply functions relative to their rivals as such these producers can withhold production to increase downstream prices for greater profits the other players are taken to be perfectly competitive and are combined with extensive pipeline seasonal and other data reflecting the current state of the market four market scenarios are run to analyze the extent of market power by these producers as well as the importance of pipeline and storage capacity

what about coal interactions between climate policies and the global steam coal market until 2030 because of economic growth and a strong increase in global energy demand the demand for fossil fuels and therefore also greenhouse gas emissions are increasing although climate policy should lead to the opposite effect the coal market is of special relevance as coal is available in many countries and often the first choice to meet energy demand in this paper we assess possible interactions between climate policies and the global steam coal market possible market adjustments between demand regions through market effects are investigated with a numerical model of the global steam coal market the coalmod world model this equilibrium model computes future trade flows infrastructure investments and prices until 2030 we investigate three specific designs of climate policy a unilateral european climate policy an indonesian export limiting policy and a fast roll out of carbon capture and storage ccs in the broader context of climate policy and market constraints we find that market adjustment effects in the coal market can have significant positive and negative impacts on the effectiveness of climate policies

environmental and market determinants of economic orientation among rain forest communities evidence from a large scale survey in western amazonia abstract large scale surveys of rain forest livelihoods open up new possibilities for understanding the role of forest resources in the well being of forest peoples but often overlook the factors that influence the diverse economic foci of forest based communities in this paper we describe the peruvian amazon rural livelihoods and poverty parlap project which seeks to identify the factors that contribute to rural poverty among indigenous and folk peoples through the first large scale survey conducted in this data poor region our paper draws upon a community census undertaken in four major river sub basins in eastern peru n 919 communities and asks the question how do environmental and market factors influence the economic orientation of rain forest communities recognizing that standard approaches that explain activity choice by current conditions are problematic because of potential endogeneity we propose a new analytical framework that examines how historical initial conditions determine current conditions and thus current economic activities our approach produces a rich array of results that point to the importance of initial environmental endowments and market access of communities in shaping their economic orientation interacting in different ways depending on the key natural resource upon which they rely

food and life cycle energy inputs consequences of diet and ways to increase efficiency food consumption is one of the most polluting everyday activities when impacts during product life cycles are considered greenhouse gas emissions from the food sector are substantial and need to be lowered to stabilise climate change here we present an inventory of life cycle energy inputs for 150 food items available in sweden and discuss how energy efficient meals and diets can be composed energy inputs in food life cycles vary from 2 to 220 mj per kg due to a multitude of factors related to animal or vegetable origin degree of processing choice of processing and preparation technology and transportation distance daily total life cycle energy inputs for diets with a similar dietary energy consumed by one person can vary by a factor of four from 13 to 51 mj current swedish food consumption patterns result in life cycle energy inputs ranging from 6900 to 21 000 mj per person and year choice of ingredients and gender differences in food consumption patterns explain the differences up to a third of the total energy inputs is related to snacks sweets and drinks items with little nutritional value it is possible to compose a diet compatible with goals for energy efficiency and equal global partition of energy resources however such a diet is far from the swedish average and not in line with current trends

review of the security of supply in turkish energy markets lessons from the winter shortages abstract turkey has changed the essentials of its energy markets more than a decade ago it was mainly a transition from a state led model to a free market one although some levels of progress is observable security of supply particularly in times of short term supply disruption had not been widely tested harsh winter conditions set a litmus test for turkish energy markets basing on the this test this paper provides an analysis of to what extent turkey is open to the risks of energy supply security and discusses possible measures to relieve future supply disruption risks energy policy making should consider the fact that electricity and gas markets are highly intertwined in turkey and security of supply measures could have cross market implications paper concludes

impulse response analysis of cointegrated systems abstract impulse response or dynamic multiplier analysis of vector autoregressive systems with cointegrated variables is considered the asymptotic distribution of the responses estimated with johansen s 1988 maximum likelihood procedure is derived the results are illustrated with an analysis of a west german money demand system the investigation shows that a direct interpretation of the cointegration relations may be difficult or misleading thereby the virtue of impulse response analysis for applied work is illustrated

natural gas corridors between the eu and its main suppliers simulation results with the dynamic gastale model abstract growth in gas demand poses a challenge for european energy consumers and other gas importing countries in terms of an increasing dependency on gas imports and consequently also supply security this paper focuses on interactions among demand supply and investments in natural gas corridors namely pipeline transport lng and storage facilities affecting the european natural gas market over the period 2005 2030 a number of policy scenarios including a business as usual bau scenario are formulated to study the impact of demand uncertainty and delays in investment on the gas transport infrastructure required in the long run in europe the analyses indicate that substantial investments in gas transport corridors are needed to accommodate imports and seasonal demand variations analysis of scenarios of supply interruption in the form of suddenly reduced import capacity for particular pipeline routes indicates that portions of europe could experience price increases of up to 100 in the case of a year long interruption to accommodate import needs and to mitigate possible disruptions pipeline connections running from east to west need to be given special priority

environmental income and rural livelihoods a global comparative analysis this paper presents results from a comparative analysis of environmental income from approximately 8000 households in 24 developing countries collected by research partners in cifor s poverty environment network pen environmental income accounts for 28 of total household income 77 of which comes from natural forests environmental income shares are higher for low income households but differences across income quintiles are less pronounced than previously thought the poor rely more heavily on subsistence products such as wood fuels and wild foods and on products harvested from natural areas other than forests in absolute terms environmental income is approximately five times higher in the highest income quintile compared to the two lowest quintiles

how does a natural gas supply interruption affect the eu gas security a monte carlo simulation abstract nowadays the european natural gas production has declined having as a consequence increased import dependence which is estimated to reach 85 by 2030 therefore the implementation of a european energy policy towards the viability competitiveness and security of energy supply is more than essential necessary parameter for the elaboration of such a policy is the diversification of natural gas supply sources and corridors in order to eliminate growing dependences moreover the recent cases of natural gas supply interruptions to the eu due to international geopolitical conflicts further underline the above indicating the necessity towards an assessment of the potential impact that a natural gas supply disruption would cause to the european natural gas security to this end and given the political uprising in the area of north africa main objective of this paper is to investigate how a natural gas supply interruption from algeria the eu s third largest supplier would affect the european natural gas security in terms of natural gas demand satisfaction monte carlo simulation was applied producing results on the more affected countries and underlining the importance of supplies diversification reserves and production when applicable towards the enhancement of natural gas security

cartelization in gas markets studying the potential for a gas opec natural gas is increasingly important as a fuel for electric power generation as well as other uses due to its environmental advantage over other fossil fuels using the world gas model a large scale energy equilibrium system based on a complementarity formulation this paper analyzes possible future gas cartels and their effects on gas markets in a number of regions across the world in addition scenarios related to lower transport costs and decreased unconventional gas supply in the united states are considered

a strategic model of european gas supply gasmod abstract this paper presents a model of the european natural gas supply gasmod which is structured as a two stage game of successive natural gas exports to europe upstream market and wholesale trade within europe downstream market and which explicitly includes infrastructure capacities we compare three possible market scenarios cournot competition in both markets perfect competition in both markets and perfect competition in the downstream with cournot competition in the upstream market eu liberalization we find that cournot competition in both markets is the most accurate representation of today s european natural gas market where suppliers at both stages generate a mark up at the expense of the final customer double marginalization our results yield a diversified supply portfolio with newly emerging lng exporters gaining market shares enforcing competition in the european downstream market would lead to lower prices and higher quantities by avoiding the welfare reducing effects of double marginalization binding infrastructure capacity restrictions strongly influence the results and we identify bottlenecks mainly for intra european trade relations whereas transport capacity in the upstream market is globally sufficient in the cournot scenario

the impact of greenhouse gas emissions in the eu food chain a quantitative and economic assessment using an environmentally extended input output approach in order to provide a valuable knowledge basis for future global warming mitigation strategies and policy implementation this study carries out an integrated assessment of greenhouse gas ghg emissions throughout the eu 25 food supply chain considering the highest available level of product disaggregation based on an environmentally extended input output ee io approach we estimate the environmental impacts resulting from the food and non alcoholic beverages supply chain from production to waste management by 44 food products grouped in 11 categories further we perform a structural path analysis to identify the hotspots along the supply chain with the highest emissions finally we carry out an assessment of the economic impact of ghg emissions on each product category considering both the related environmental pressure intensity and the cost of environmental damage social cost the results offer new insights on the amount composition and origin of ghg emissions in the food supply chain more precisely detailed evidence is provided in support of the findings of previous studies that have shown that the contribution of farm level activities on overall ghg emissions is mostly related to n2o and ch4 emissions moreover we highlight the large environmental impact associated with co2 emissions even if they are scattered among a very high number of activities with a limited contribution each hence we infer that multiple hotspots for co2 exist along the whole supply chain and that many of them occur in downstream stages e g transportation processing packaging waste disposal as well as in the cold chain activities as for the economic assessment of emissions the highest costs are attributed to the highest emitting product categories but the share of social costs of these emissions as compared to the overall production value affect each product differently hence the impact of a hypothetical price control measure introduced to internalize the social cost of emissions would vary significantly from one product category to another overall our findings suggest that in order to achieve effective and efficient ghg mitigation in the food system an integrated approach is required including both concrete technological and managerial measures at various stages of the food supply chain and for specific product categories as well as appropriate economic incentive based mechanisms accounting for the social cost of damage e g a carbon tax that can prompt polluters to reduce their emissions along the whole supply chain

forest based livelihoods strategies conditioned by market remoteness and forest proximity in jharkhand india summary the study uses a novel method to investigate the role of forest proximity market remoteness and caste in determining household income especially forest income in an underdeveloped region of india a high 50 proportion of total income is earned in cash forest products contribute substantially to total income with fuelwood as the most important forest product proximity to forest is associated with higher forest incomes as expected but remote villages do not have higher forest incomes or lower cash incomes than less remote villages higher off farm income is associated with better road access and higher income households generally 2014 published by elsevier ltd this is an open access article under the cc by nc sa license http creativecommons org licenses bync sa 3 0

forest loss and economic inequality in the solomon islands using small area estimation to link environmental change to welfare outcomes abstract to study welfare effects of environmental change data from household surveys may be linked to remote sensing data using spatial aggregation to link risks ecological fallacy since surveys are usually representative for areas larger than the spatial scale of decision making units this paper uses survey to census imputation to estimate welfare indicators for small areas to study the effect of deforestation on subsequent inequality in the rural solomon islands this country depends on logging for almost half of foreign exchange and one sixth of government revenue and most forested land remains under customary ownership a sharp increase in log exports to seven times the sustainable yield and a major shift in export destinations as other countries withdrew from the tropical log trade represents an exogenous shock that helps to identify effects of deforestation on inequality rather than the reverse relationship a standard deviation increase in the rate of forest loss over 2000 to 2012 raises the gini index of inequality in 2013 by one third of a standard deviation mean incomes and poverty rates are also higher implying that deforestation makes some households richer while others become poorer these precisely estimated effects would be obscured using more spatially aggregated data

multiplicity of equilibria in conjectural variations models of natural gas markets abstract spatial partial equilibrium models incorporating conjectural variations are widely used to analyze the development of oligopolistic multi agent markets such as international energy and raw material markets although this model type can produce multiple equilibria under commonly used assumptions to the best of our knowledge the consequences for the interpretation of the model results have not yet been explored in detail to this end we derive a linear complementarity model for the gas market and discuss under which assumptions on the model structure a component of the solution is unique in particular we find that the gas flow between a trader and a consumer is unique whenever the trader is modeled to exert market power in the consumer s market we demonstrate our findings by computing the extreme points of the polyhedral solution space and show that erroneous conclusions could be drawn whenever only one arbitrary point in the solution space is picked for interpretation furthermore we discuss whether economically meaningful parameter value changes exist which would enforce uniqueness in all components of the solution

what drives natural gas prices a structural var approach abstract in this study we develop a structural vector autoregressive model var for the german natural gas market our setup allows us to analyze the determinants of the natural gas price in a comprehensive framework in particular we illustrate the usefulness of our approach by disentangling the effects of different fundamental influences on gas prices during three recent supply interruptions the russian ukrainian gas dispute of january 2009 the libyan civil war in 2011 and the withheld russian exports in february 2012 our results show that the natural gas price is affected by temperature storage and supply shortfalls in the short term while the long term development is closely tied to both crude oil and coal prices capturing the economic climate and the substitution relationship between the different energy commodities

income strategies among rural households in mexico the role of off farm activities abstract off farm activities generate on average more than half of farm households incomes in the mexican ejido sector participation in these activities helps reduce poverty and contributes to greater equality in the distribution of income this paper analyzes the determinants of access to off farm sources of income across households we find that education plays a major role in accessing better remunerated nonagricultural employment adults of indigenous ethnic origin suffer from an educational lag and have less access to off farm nonagricultural employment than non indigenous adults at identical educational levels the regional availability of off farm employment strongly affects participation in addition women are differentially limited by distance to urban centers in their ability to gain off farm employment

are forest incomes sustainable firewood and timber extraction and productivity in community managed forests in nepal summary lack of combined forest productivity and income studies means there is scant evidence for the sustainability of rural household level forest incomes in developing countries this study examines levels and patterns of forest increment wood product extraction and household level incomes in three community managed forests in nepal using data from 240 permanent sample plots and a structured household survey conducted in 2006 and 2009 n 507 and 558 respectively we find that analyses of sustainability need to recognize the complexity of forest stand utilization and that there is considerable scope by altering how existing local forest management rules are implemented for increasing rural household forest incomes while keeping harvesting levels sustainable

poverty alleviation and tropical forests what scope for synergies abstract this paper explores the state of the art of the two way causal links between poverty alleviation and natural tropical forests microimpacts of rising poverty can increase or slow forest loss at the macrolevel poverty also has an ambiguous effect but it is probable that higher income stimulates forest loss by raising demand for agricultural land the second question is what potential forest led development has to alleviate a country s poverty in terms of producer benefits consumer benefits and economy wide employment natural forests widely serve as safety nets for the rural poor but it proves difficult to raise producer benefits significantly urban consumer benefits from forest an important target for pro poor agricultural innovation are limited and seldom favor the poor absorption of poor unskilled labor is low in forestry which tends to be capital intensive natural forests may thus lack comparative advantage for poverty alleviation there are few win win synergies between natural forests and national poverty reduction which may help to explain why the loss of tropical forests is ongoing this may have important implications for our understanding of sustainable forest development and for the design of both conservation and poverty alleviation strategies

is certainty in carbon policy better than uncertainty abstract uncertainty in the strictness of carbon policy can have significant impacts on power generating firms capacity investment decisions and market outcomes we investigate the effects of this policy uncertainty on firms expected profits consumers surplus and firms cost for reaching a co 2 emission target our results derived from a game theoretical model and applied to realistic data indicate that uncertainty in the carbon policy induces more capacity investments in fossil and renewable technologies we find that it is optimal for firms with higher risk aversion to invest more in renewable technologies than their less risk averse rivals for policy makers our results suggest counter intuitively that retaining the flexibility to update emission targets whilst causing uncertainty in the carbon policy is beneficial this is because it provides higher expected consumer surplus and lower expected electricity price power generating firms are also better off under the policy uncertainty by having lower expected costs for reaching the emission goal and higher expected profits when firms risk aversions are low these results support the approach employed in european power markets to periodically update the co 2 emission cap depending on the prevailing circumstances rather than having certainty in the decrements of the caps over a longer time horizon our insights can help policy makers and firms to make better decisions by understanding how carbon policy uncertainty impacts the optimal capacity investments and how these investments might depend on the firms heterogeneity in risk aversion

modeling market power by natural gas producers and its impact on the power system strategic behavior by natural gas producers may influence the operation as well as the development of an electricity system within this paper a computational game theoretic investment model is presented which allows assessing market power by natural gas producers and its effects on the electricity market under consideration of emission markets the model is formulated as a mixed complementarity problem it uses typical time segments to represent both seasonal load fluctuations on the natural gas market and load fluctuations within a day on the electricity market investment is possible in natural gas production and lng infrastructure as well as power plants a test case is presented covering three regions and simultaneously optimizing power plant dispatch and utilization of transmission lines on the power market as well as supply transport and storage on the natural gas market we compute prices production volumes and power plant utilization for two different market power specifications to show the impact of oligopolistic market behavior

international market integration for natural gas a cointegration analysis of prices in europe north america and japan this paper investigates the degree of integration of natural gas markets in europe north america and japan in the time period between the early 1990s and 2004 the relationship between international gas market prices and their relation to the oil price are explored through principal components analysis and johansen likelihood based cointegration procedure both of them show a high level of natural gas market integration within europe between the european and japanese markets as well as within the north american market at the same time the obtained results suggest that the european respectively japanese and the north american markets were not integrated

safety nets gap filling and forests a global comparative perspective summary in the forest livelihoods literature forests are widely perceived to provide both common safety nets to shocks and resources for seasonal gap filling we use a large global comparative dataset to test these responses we find households rank forest extraction responses to shocks lower than most common alternatives for seasonal gap filling forest extraction also has limited importance the minority of households using forests for coping is asset poor and lives in villages specialized on forests in particular timber extraction overall forest resources may be less important as a buffer between agricultural harvests and in times of unforeseen hardship than has been found in many case studies 2014 published by elsevier ltd

integrating climate change and health into food policy an analysis of how climate change can affect food prices and population health abstract the inter related nature of food health and climate change requires a better understanding of the linkages and a greater alignment of policy across these issues to be able to adequately meet the pressing social and health challenges arising from climate change food price is one way through which climate change may affect health the aim of this study of the global and australian food systems is to provide a whole of system analysis of food price vulnerabilities highlighting the key pressure points across the food system through which climate change could potentially have the greatest impact on consumer food prices and the implications for population health we outline areas where there are particular vulnerabilities for food systems and food prices arising from climate change particularly global commodity prices agricultural productivity short term supply shocks and less direct factors such as input costs and government policies we use australia as a high income country case study to consider these issues in more detail the complex and dynamic nature of pricing mechanisms makes it difficult to predict precisely how prices will be impacted should prices rise disproportionately among healthy foodstuffs compared to less healthy foods there may be adverse health outcomes if less expensive and less healthy foods are substituted higher prices will also have equity implications with lower socio economic groups most impacted given these households currently spend proportionately more of their weekly income on food the ultimate objective of this research is to identify the pathways through the food system via which climate change may affect food prices and ultimately population health thereby providing evidence for food policy which takes into account environmental and health considerations

vision 2023 forecasting turkey s natural gas demand between 2013 and 2030 abstract natural gas is the primary source for electricity production in turkey however turkey does not have indigenous resources and imports more than 98 0 of the natural gas it consumes in 2011 more than 20 0 of turkey s annual trade deficit was due to imported natural gas estimated at us 20 0 billion turkish government has very ambitious targets for the country s energy sector in the next decade according to the vision 2023 agenda previously we have estimated that turkey s annual electricity demand would be 530 000 gwh at the year 2023 considering current energy market dynamics it is almost evident that a substantial amount of this demand would be supplied from natural gas however meticulous analysis of the vision 2023 goals clearly showed that the information about the natural gas sector is scarce most importantly there is no demand forecast for natural gas in the vision 2023 agenda therefore in this study the aim was to generate accurate forecasts for turkey s natural gas demand between 2013 and 2030 for this purpose two semi empirical models based on econometrics gross domestic product gdp at purchasing power parity ppp per capita and demographics population change were developed the logistic equation which can be used for long term natural gas demand forecasting and the linear equation which can be used for medium term demand forecasting fitted to the timeline series almost seamlessly in addition these two models provided reasonable fits according to the mean absolute percentage error mape criteria turkey s natural gas demand at the year 2030 was calculated as 76 8 billion m 3 using the linear model and 83 8 billion m 3 based on the logistic model consequently found to be in better agreement with the official turkish petroleum pipeline corporation botas forecast 76 4 billion m 3 than results published in the literature

does the european natural gas market pass the competitive benchmark of the theory of storage indirect tests for three major trading points this paper presents the first comparative analysis of the relationship between natural gas storage utilization and price patterns at three major european trading points using two indirect tests developed by fama and french 1987 1988 that are applied in other commodity markets we impose the no arbitrage condition to model the efficiency of the natural gas market the results reveal that while operators of european storage facilities realize seasonal arbitrage profits substantial arbitrage potentials remain we suggest that the indirect approach is well suited to provide market insights for periods with limited data we find that overall market performance differs substantially from the competitive benchmark of the theory of storage

trimming the excess environmental impacts of discretionary food consumption in australia abstract tackling the overconsumption of discretionary foods foods and drinks not necessary to provide the nutrients the body needs is central to aligning human and planetary health whilst the adverse health impacts of discretionary foods are well documented the environmental and broader sustainability impacts of these products deserve more attention especially since their consumption has been increasing in recent decades particularly amongst low income groups this paper presents a quantitative case study analysis of discretionary food consumption and the associated environmental impacts for households from different income groups in australia environmentally extended input output analysis is used to estimate the full life cycle environmental impacts of discretionary food consumption on the basis of household expenditures on average discretionary foods account for a significant 35 39 33 and 35 of the overall diet related life cycle water use energy use carbon dioxide equivalent and land use respectively these significant percentages provide further support for the need to incentivise diets that are both healthier and more sustainable including divestment from discretionary food products the study highlights the challenges ahead including the need for further research on food substitutions to minimise environmental and social impacts whilst maximising nutritional quality especially amongst poorer socioeconomic groups

a simulation approach for analysis of short term security of natural gas supply in colombia abstract achieving security of gas supply implies diversifying gas sources while having enough supply transportation and storage capacity to meet demand peaks and supply interruptions devising a strategy for securing gas supply is not straightforward because gas supply depends on complex interactions of production demand and infrastructure and it is exposed to economic regulatory political environmental and technical risks to address this complexity we propose a simulation approach that replicates the structure of the gas supply chain including transportation constraints and demand fluctuations we build and calibrate a computer model for the colombian gas sector and run the model to assess the impact of expanding transportation capacity and increasing market flexibility on the security of supply our analysis focuses on the operation and planned and proposed expansions of the transportation infrastructure because adequate regulation and development of this infrastructure can contribute to increase the security of supply in the gas sector we find that proposed import facilities specifically lng import terminals at buenaventura increase system s security under the current market structure

russian natural gas exports will russian gas price reforms improve the european security of supply in this paper we use both theoretical and numerical tools to study potential effects on russian gas exports from different russian domestic gas prices and production capacities in 2015 we also investigate whether a fully competitive european gas market may provide incentives for gazprom the dominant russian gas company to change its export behaviour our main findings suggest that both increased domestic gas prices and sufficient production capacities are vital to maintain gazprom s market share in europe over the next decade in fact russia may struggle to carry out its current long term export commitments if domestic prices are sufficiently low at the same time if russian prices approach european net back levels gazprom may reduce exports in favour of a relatively more profitable domestic market

combining income and assets measures to include the transitory nature of poverty in assessments of forest dependence evidence from the democratic republic of congo abstract a considerable amount of research on poverty environment relations in developing countries under the cifor pen initiative focuses on household income generation from forests using total annual income as a measure of poverty however income alone produces a static picture in a snapshot of time while poverty is a dynamic state that can be a transitory phenomenon using income only also fails to consider that households can liquidate asset to overcome income shocks here we show that using asset quintiles measured by value of assets produce a distinctly different pattern than the commonly observed negative relation between income and forest dependence we then present an approach enabling categorization of households as chronic or transient poor transient rich and rich providing a more nuanced picture than that provided by cifor pen studies so far the validity of groupings is tested by comparing household characteristics and exposure to shocks we then show that the chronic poor are most reliant on forest income while the transient poor consume a higher share of harvested forest products the transient rich have higher agricultural productivity and absolute forest income rich households relies more on business based on the results we suggest recommendations for improving future studies on poverty environment relations

forests livelihoods and conservation broadening the empirical base summary more than 10 000 years after the agricultural revolution started millions of rural smallholders across the developing world may still derive as much income from foraging forests and wildlands as from cultivating crops these steady environmental income flows come often from public forests and are extracted by men and women alike however inflexible supplies from nature the physical hardship of harvesting and commonly low returns limit their role as safety nets and pathways out of poverty while their harvesting does not preclude the ongoing conversion of wildlands to agriculture privileged access to high quality environmental resources can become a strong local conservation motive

forum shopping for ex post gas balancing services the patchwork of different imbalance settlement rules in geographically adjacent gas regions induces shippers to go forum shopping to minimize costs of ex post balancing services this shopping increases efficiency and thus welfare of the shippers on the one hand the impact on net efficiency is dependent on the relative incentives provided by different balancing mechanisms and the relative system balancing costs that the transmission system operators face to offer balancing services to unbalanced shippers on the other hand if the gas balancing mechanism and the system balancing costs are aligned net efficiency in the combined gas system will rise our results demonstrate that such an outcome is not guaranteed hence market integration without properly checking compatibility of balancing rules can improve shipper efficiency at the cost of reducing overall efficiency the latter outcome should clearly be avoided by policy makers and european regulators whose primary concern should be overall efficiency as this provides fair and efficient prices for gas consumers and a higher utility for society

can smallholders engage in tree plantations an entitlements analysis from vietnam tree plantations have expanded rapidly at the global scale this paper examines the possibilities for smallholders to engage in plantations as a potential means for poverty alleviation the paper analyzes the possibilities through an empirical study of household tree growing in rural vietnam with a focus on differences in the capacities of households to gain land endowments and translate endowments into tree entitlements employing heckman regression models and qualitative institutional analyses the paper finds that better off households are more likely to possess forestland grow trees and invest in plantations than poor ones in addition land plantations and investment tend to be larger for the better off than the poor better off households are in a better position to engage in tree plantations due to among other factors the institutional mechanisms differentiating household access to land and finance

quantifying the economic contribution of wild food harvests to rural livelihoods a global comparative analysis this paper empirically quantifies and analyses i the economic contribution of wild foods to rural households ii the household socio economic demographic and geographical correlates of wild food income and iii how wild foods can be better incorporated into integrative food security policies we used household income data from 7975 households in 24 developing countries across three continents collected by the poverty environment network pen we found 77 of households to be engaged in wild food collection from forest and non forest environments even though the share of wild food income in total household income was on average only 4 poorer households and households experiencing shocks derived higher income shares from wild foods state land is the main source of forest derived wild food income while private lands are most important for non forest wild food income considerable regional variation in determinants and the direction of significant relationships indicate there is no one size fits all approach to integrating wild foods into food and forest policies however our results reveal potential to increase household food security by integrating wild foods into national food policies in more customized ways

producing woodfuel for urban centers in the democratic republic of congo a path out of poverty for rural households woodfuel is a renewable energy source with good potential for climate change mitigation in the democratic republic of congo drc the sector employs over 300 000 people for the supply of kinshasa alone but the benefits to the poor are often unknown this paper analyzes the contribution of commercial woodfuel production to livelihoods and poverty reduction in the drc woodfuel revenues especially those of charcoal contribute substantially to producers household income ranging from 12 for fuelwood producers around kisangani to 75 for charcoal producers around kinshasa it supports basic needs and investments in other livelihood activities for 82 of charcoal producers and 65 of fuelwood producers which helps to reduce poverty the contribution of woodfuel commercialization to poverty reduction should be part of energy and forestry policies

empirical regularities in the poverty environment relationship of rural households evidence from zimbabwe abstract analysis of rural households and environmental resources is beset by inadequate data especially in africa using purpose collected panel data from zimbabwe we demonstrate seven empirical regularities in the rural poverty environment relationship most important environmental resources make a significant contribution to average rural incomes poorer households also depend heavily on these resources which contribute c 40 to their incomes richer households however use greater quantities of environmental resources in total finally considerable differentiation exists in the economic characteristics of environmental goods these results demonstrate the considerable economic significance of environmental resources to rural households surveys which ignore them miscalculate rural incomes and welfare