Thesis (M.S.)--Humboldt State University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-77). Also available via Humboldt Digital Scholar.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / South Africa was considered to have attained universal access to modern energy, this meant that the number of households that have access to energy had successfully increased from 30% in 1994 to 87% in 2012. However, the situation in Nigeria is such that electricity generating figures are very poor and they cannot meet half of the demand of Nigerian households, and the majority of the states have challenges in accessing sufficient fossil fuels. However, recent trends in domestic energy consumption for both countries are becoming biased in favor of fuel-wood energy especially among low-income households, “descending the energy ladder”.

Student Number : 0306319G - MSc Research Report - School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies - Faculty of Science / Combustion of fuel wood, charcoal and non-woody biofuels is a daily practice for about half of the world’s population. Combustion of biofuel is a major source of trace gases, with domestic biomass burning contributing about 17% carbon dioxide (CO2), 13% carbon monoxide (CO) and 6% nitrous oxide (N2O) to the global budget. In Africa, where there is a growing population, domestic biofuel emissions are a particularly important source of trace gases. The most important source of biomass fuels in Africa is wood fuel (wood and charcoal), crop residues and animal dung. In this project, the amount of domestic biofuel used in rural households across southern Africa was measured daily over a nine month period. This data was used to estimate the trace gas production from domestic fires throughout Southern Africa. Results indicate that RSA contributed the most trace gases to the regional budget (9.12 Tg C yr-1 of CO2, 0.89 Tg C yr-1 of CO, 10.77 Gg N yr-1 of NO and 30.25 Gg C yr-1 of CH4) and Botswana the least (0.25 Tg yr-1 of CO2, 0.02 Tg yr-1 of CO, 0.29 Gg yr-1 of NO and 0.83 Gg yr-1 of CH4). Fuel wood is the dominant fuel type used in all southern African countries, whereas charcoal was used in RSA, Mozambique and Zambia and maize residues in Malawi only. CO2 was the gas emitted in the largest quantities, with fuel wood and charcoal in RSA contributing the most (8.71 Tg yr-1 and 0.41 Tg yr-1 respectively), while CO2 from maize residue was highest in Malawi (0.82 Tg yr-1). More trace gases were emitted in the dry season than wet season particularly in Malawi and Mozambique. For the entire region the annual CO2, CO, NO and CH4 emissions produced 23.0 Tg C, 2.2 Tg C, 29.4 Gg N and 81.4 Gg C, respectively.

Fuel wood cutting, collection and distribution in recent years have been one of the booming industries in Nigeria. Plagued with the problem of energy for domestic use, more than two third of Nigerians residing in the rural areas wholly depend on fuel wood energy for their household activities; cooking, heating and generation of warmth. A consumption put at  43 million metric tons, (43 x 109 kg) per annum giving a per capita consumption of about 511.2 kg / person per anum for rural dwellers and 360 kg / person for urban settlers. An enormous use of fuel wood at this large scale poses a grave and devastating environmental side effect, notably being deforestation and desertification now eating deep into the heart of Nigerian Forest cover at a very alarming rate. (Bugaje 2004). Akinbami et al 2001’s assessment has identified feed stock substitute for an economically feasible biogas programme, a substitute for wood fuel, and Nigeria produces 227,500 tons (2.275 x 108 kg ) of fresh animal wastes daily. According to the study, 1 kilogram (kg) of fresh animal waste produces about 0.03 m3 gas, hence, Nigeria can produce about 6.8 million m3 of biogas everyday, enough to meet the cooking need of an average family size, an annual equivalent put at 4.81 million barrels crude oil, or 6.9 x 106 tons of fuel wood (Adeoti et al, 2001). This work is aimed at Evaluating Using Quantitative and Comparative Data analysis, a Batch System, Small Scale family size bio digester; The possible volume of gas that could be produced as against the same quantity of wood consumed, the estimated amount of fuel wood in kg that could be avoided, and the forested land that could be conserved by the substitution.   From the result obtained, the conservable fuel wood for a family size of say 7 could range from 11.524 kg/day when substituted with the equivalent quantity of gas (2.3048 m3), while CO2 avoidable from tree felling in the chosen region could range close to 1,540,000kg (1,540 metric tons per annum). / <p>2008-10-09</p>

This thesis is the result of nine weeks fieldwork in Babati and Bukoba districts in Northern Tanzania during spring 2012. The purpose of this thesis is to study why development projects on fuel-efficient stoves have had a limited adoption in these two regions and what obstacles and opportunities there are for further spread of fuel-efficient cooking stoves. Semi-structured interviews were the main method used for collecting the empirical data, which was then analysed from a socio-economic perspective with help from the framework of Sustainable Rural Livelihoods. The Results showed that people’s perceptions of fuel-efficient stoves are positive but that projects face many obstacles connected to socio-economic conditions. Knowledge on how to get stoves and access to financial capital is main obstacles for further spreading. Social networks and organisations are channels for information, but to spread outside these networks will need complementing strategies from organisations promoting fuel-efficient stoves. Important are also finding ways of making the financial aspect of adopting stoves less, like using materials with lower costs, using stove-models with low costs and training people in building stoves so re-investments are unnecessary and dependency of funding from organisations less. Gender is a factor affecting the adoption of fuel-efficient stoves, regarding access to assets and generated benefits. There is therefore an importance of involving gender throughout the different stages of the projects.

This study attempts to explain the inability of resource constrained farmers in Zambia to invest in soil fertility enhancing improved fallows, a sustainable land use practice developed by the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in the 1980s. Although several studies in the laboratory and field have shown that improved fallows positively impact on farmers’ welfare, the reliability of such conclusions comes into question given their use of improper identification strategies. Secondly, although there is general consensus that improved fallows additionally co-produce environmental services, the literature acknowledges that such services are not only imprecisely defined but also rarely quantified. Most estimates for environmental services have been confined to controlled field trials and laboratory experiments. Consequently, this research was designed to answer the following questions: 1) Would the use of randomisation procedures to estimate impact provide additional support to the foregone conclusions by most literature regarding the positive impact of improved fallows on farmer welfare? 2) Studies from on-station experiments show that improved fallows provide environmental services; do such conclusions hold for improved fallows planted on-farm where the near ideal experimental conditions are not guaranteed? A structured questionnaire was used to interview 324 randomly selected small scale farmers in Chongwe district of Zambia between November and December 2011. The data was analysed using well-grounded and robust matching and switching regression counter factual analysis tools. The rigorous econometric methods confirmed the positive impact of improved fallows on household maize yields, maize productivity, per capita maize yield and maize income. Insignificant impact results were however obtained when broader welfare indicators – overall per capita, crop income and value of crop production were considered. The study attributes these later results to two possible areas; first, most of the maize sold that contributes to crop income may be coming from other input sources such as the inorganic fertiliser that is common in the study area. Second, the non-use of the technology on cash crops (for example cotton) in subsequent periods after a year or two of maize cropping reduces the technology’s contribution to the households’ cash crop income portfolio. Had the study only used maize income or value of maize income to measure overall crop income (or value of crop production), or had it just made a simple comparison between adopters and non adopters, the likelihood of not finding any insignificant results on the efficacy of improved fallows would have been high. The study thus concludes that the use of improved fallows should be diversified to cover the entire cash crop portfolio especially a year or so after maize cropping when most of the nitrogen supplied by technology has been used up. More importantly, the study recommends use of better and more robust methodologies in evaluating impact of interventions. The positive effects of improved fallows on on-farm environmental quality, controlling for farmers’ biophysical and socio-economic characteristics were confirmed. Estimates from OLS regression, matching and the more robust endogenous switching regression showed that the technology had a significant causal effect on households’ consumption of fuel wood obtained from natural forests. The technology can provide up to 1,086 kg or about 51% of annual household fuel wood requirements in the year the fallows are terminated. This amount is substantial enough to make a positive contribution towards reducing encroachment on public forests and thus control the rate of deforestation. In addition to promoting the technology for soil fertility improvement (the role which is widely accepted by the farmers), explicit extension messages conveying the technology’s capacity to provide various products that contribute to farmer welfare as well as provide on farm environmental quality should be made available. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2014. / lk2014 / Agricultural Economics, Extension and Rural Development / PhD / Unrestricted

Cette thèse traite de la situation actuelle de la forêt marocaine. Dans le cadre de ce travail, deux études ont été réalisées à l’échelle nationale, au Maroc. La première a concerné le pâturage des troupeaux en forêt, et la seconde a porté sur la quantification du volume de bois de feu directement prélevé en forêt, et consommé en zone rurale et en zone urbaine. Les résultats trouvés ont été très préoccupants. Dans les deux situations, les prélèvements réels de fourrage et de bois de feu, dépassent de 3 à 4 fois la possibilité biologique de la forêt. Les populations rurales exercent une énorme pression sur la forêt marocaine, ce qui conduit à sa dégradation et menace sa pérennité.Ce travail de thèse a également estimé la valeur économique des différents biens et services de la forêt marocaine, en vue d’en déterminer la valeur économique totale (VET). Cela a démontré que la valeur économique de la forêt marocaine reste très sous estimée, ce qui encourage son défrichement et son remplacement par d’autres usages.Ce travail a aussi mis en évidence le faible taux de réussite des opérations de reboisement qui sont menées au Maroc, depuis plus d’un demi-siècle. Une nouvelle stratégie de gestion durable de la forêt est proposée dans le cadre du Plan Forestier National. Pour atteindre cette gestion durable, le PNF devra résoudre les principaux problèmes urgents qui menacent la pérennité de la forêt, et donner un rôle primordial aux acteurs de la société civile et aux populations rurales pour la supervision de cette nouvelle stratégie forestière, avec la participation du service forestier, pour faire de la forêt marocaine un modèle de gestion forestière durable, à l’échelle de la région Méditerranéenne. / This thesis deals with the actual situation of the Moroccan forests. Within the framework of this work, two studies were carried out at national level, in Morocco. The first concerned grazing in forest and the second the quantification of fuel wood directly collected from forest and consumed in both rural and urban areas. The results found were very disquieting. In both cases, the total volume of fodder and fuel wood, effectively collected from forest, are 3 to 4 times the biological possibility of the forest.The rural populations exert a huge pressure on the Moroccan forest, which causes its degradation and puts in jeopardy its perenniality.This thesis work also estimated the monetary value of the various goods and services of the Moroccan forest, towards the valuation of the total economic value (TEV). This showed that the economic value of the Moroccan forest is very underestimated, which encourages its degradation and clearing.This research work also demonstrated the weak success rate of the reforestation activities, which were carried out in Morocco, during the last half century. A new strategy towards a sustainable forest management in Morocco is proposed, within the framework of the National Forest Plan.To reach this sustainable forest management, the NFP should resolve the major urgent problems which threaten the Moroccan forest, and should give a role of prime importance to the civil society actors, and to the rural populations for the supervision of this new strategy, with the participation of the forest service, in order to make of the Moroccan forest a model of sustainably managed forest, at the level of the Mediterranean region.

MENVM / Department of Geography and Geo-Information Sciences / Fuel wood is regarded as a major source of energy around the world, particularly in developing nations. Most rural communities around the world, consider forests as the repository of stored energy. The high dependence on forests as a source of fuel wood has a major impact on vegetation because trees take a long time to regenerate to maturity, hence high dependence leads to deforestation. Fuel wood is used for household needs, such as cooking and heating and its uses contribute to the emissions of Green House Gases (GHG) such as CO2, CH4, and Black Carbon amongst others. The study assesses household energy use, the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from the combustion of fuel wood, the extent of de-vegetation and strategies to ensure sustainable energy provisions in the case study areas. Primary and secondary methods were used to collect data. The data were analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 21.0), showing the frequency distribution, measures of central tendency and chi-square to determine the extent of fuel wood used in relation to electricity. The primary data were collected through personal observations, field surveys, interviews and questionnaires, while secondary data included the 2011 South Africa Census data and remote sensing images, which with the aid of GIS, were used in mapping the vegetation change.