This thesis addresses two important issues of environmental and resource economics: how agricultural households adapt to climate change (CC) and how the households recover from climate hazards. Chapter 1 attempts to enunciate the perspective of the overall research and the rationale for researching on Bangladesh. It summarizes the global evidences of CC and disaster, their impacts, vulnerabilities in agriculture sector, significance of adaptation and poverty impact of disaster. Chapter 2 examines whether crop choice is affected by CC and the extent to which households switch their crops in response to the CC scenarios. It finds that crop choice is climate-sensitive and a shift in crop choices will take place in Bangladesh in response to CC scenarios. This research also finds that crop choice will be more sensitive to change in temperature than change in rainfall. Chapter 3 examines the effect of CC on crop diversification and the households’ response to CC scenarios. It finds that crop diversity is climate sensitive and this diversity in different locations varies with climatic conditions. Effects of rainfall scenarios on crop diversity are much lower compared to the effects of temperature. Chapter 4 investigates the impact of cyclone on consumption and income dynamics in a quasi-experimental setting and finds that low income people are more sensitive of their asset loss to income generation compared to the high income people, and disaster causes income loss, but, people show their resilience in accelerating higher income growth compared to the non-affected areas. Chapter 5 examines poverty group dynamics in the post-shock period and the existence of a poverty trap in the cyclone affected coastal region of Bangladesh. It finds that asset loss or asset holding impacts the dynamism of the poverty groups and poverty traps exists at low levels of income in the disaster affected areas compared to the unaffected areas.

This thesis aims to explore how some of the findings from behavioural economics and the social capital literature can apply in the case of electricity access in developing countries with a focus on solar off-grid electrification. And specifically on solar home systems and solar hybrid mini-grid electrification in rural Guinea-Bissau. Specifically, I am drawing from studies looking at the role of discounting anomalies on technology adoption and recurring payments, the role of trust on technology adoption and the role of computational limitations and the use of simplification strategies on the accuracy of frequency and expenditure reporting in surveys. This exercise aims to inform electrification policy in developing countries, demonstrate instances where insights from behavioural economics and social capital can enrich our understanding of the underlying barriers and drivers of electrification access, but also demonstrate how some selected case studies can help to strengthen empirical findings from other contexts. Chapter 1 provides an introduction on the issues surrounding electrification access in developing countries and introduces the research motivation and the research objectives of this thesis. This chapter also discusses the relevant gaps in the literature, how this thesis attempts to address them and the contribution to knowledge. Finally, the research location is introduced. Chapter 2 presents the results of a stated preference study that uses a choice experiment to estimate willingness to pay for a solar home system, and the trade-off between different repayment schemes and maintenance responsibilities, in the region of Bafatá in Guinea-Bissau. Results suggest that preferences are driven both by income constraints as well as self-control problems, excessive discounting and self-reported trust for a number of actors. Chapter 3 explores the main determinants in the decision to connect to a solar hybrid mini-grid, in the semi-urban community of Bambadinca in Guinea-Bissau, with a focus on social capital as expressed in trust. Connections are driven largely by the socio-economic background of the households and prior energy use patterns. However, there is evidence that social capital as expressed in self-reported trust for one’s neighbours, also has a positive effect on connections through facilitating the informal expansion of the grid, whereby households use their neighbours’ infrastructure to connect to the service. Chapter 4 explores how the technology of prepaid meters can help researchers acquire more insight regarding the accuracy of survey responses and the response strategies used. More specifically, this chapter tests the accuracy of reported energy expenditure in surveys, when using differently defined recall periods, namely a ‘usual’ week versus a ‘specific’ (i.e. last) week. We compare real expenditure data for prepaid meters for electricity, from a solar hybrid mini-grid operating in the semi-urban community of Bambadinca in Guinea-Bissau, with answers from a survey where respondents are asked to state their expenditures, randomly, in different recall periods. Overall, our results show that respondents tend to over-report the level and frequency of their energy expenditures, but reporting is more accurate when the ‘specific’ period rather than when the ‘usual’ period is used. Chapter 5 investigates the role of self-control problems on prepayment patterns for electricity provided by a solar hybrid mini-grid installed in the semi-urban community of Bambadinca in Guinea-Bissau. Prepayment patterns are found to be mostly driven by income constraints and equipment in use however there is evidence that individuals with self-control problems as well as individuals being charged with an additional time-varying tariff (a higher tariff between 7pm to 12am) resort to smaller refill levels possibly as a strategy to consume less electricity at home. Chapter 6 provides concluding remarks.

This thesis investigates the economic implications of climate change uncertainties. It seeks to contribute to the existing literature by exploring various aspects of how uncertainty can and should be integrated in economic assessments of climate impacts and what this entails for policy-making. For several reasons, including analytical tractability and the difficulties of accommodating uncertainty in individual and social decision-making, the full scale of climate change uncertainties is often artificially reduced in economic assessments of climate change, e.g. through the use of best estimates, averages or mid-point scenarios. However, the impacts of future climate change on humankind are highly uncertain and require full investigation. The approach taken in this thesis has therefore been to ask new questions related to the economic implications of climate change uncertainties and to address each problem using innovative methods, which allow a more accurate characterization of the uncertainties at stake and of their potential interactions. This thesis comprises four standalone chapters (Chapter 2 to 5). The first chapter (Chapter 2) investigates how uncertainty about the benefits of climate mitigation, about future economic growth and about the relationship between these uncertainties affects the rate at which we should discount the benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions today. The second chapter (Chapter 3) examines the impact of including the permafrost carbon feedback in the DICE Integrated Assessment Model on the social cost of carbon and on the optimal global mitigation policy. Whereas the first two chapters rely on the use of an Integrated Assessment Model, the final two chapters are based on econometric methods applied to weather and climate variables. The third chapter (Chapter 4) explores the impacts of droughts on regional economic growth in the United States. The last chapter (Chapter 5) examines the implications of temperature on inflation and central banks’ policy interest rates.

In the UK over the past two decades there has been a renewed investment in outdoor learning for children. This movement draws on ideas initially popularised in the United States about the importance of connecting children with nature. This movement advocates teaching children about and allowing them to connect with the natural world to provide valuable learning experiences for their personal development. Forest schools are part of this movement and have been established in the UK in response to concerns that children have lost contact with nature. This thesis provides a critical analysis of four such programmes including two forest schools, a school garden and a nature reserve located within the Midlands. It involved an immersive ethnographic study that took place over the 2014-2015 school year involving walking interviews, focus groups and participant observations. In this thesis, assumptions surrounding children’s supposed disconnection to the morethan-human world have been unpicked. A more-than-social approach is taken moving beyond narrow essentialist constructions of nature and childhood. This approach is combined with performativity in an exploration of participant practices in outdoor learning. In relation to the outdoor learning programmes, it was found that they incorporated Cartesian binaries – child-adult, male-female and people-nature. The knowledges and learning within them did little to encourage more open ways of understanding and being in the world. However, in the outdoor learning spaces there were opportunities for other ways of learning, which the children unconsciously exploited and developed. There were moments of experiential learning, whereby children assembled an array of more-than-humans to produce ways of learning and knowing about the world, which transformed their view of it. In these moments children were open to moving away from Cartesian versions of nature and created more hybrid and fluid natures.

The field of behavioral economics enhances the ability of social science research to effectively inform socially efficient climate policy at the microeconomic level, in part due to the dependence of climate outcomes upon present and future human consumption patterns. Since the behavioral field is relatively new, environmental and resource economists still have scarce evidence as to why people make particular decisions. For this thesis, I have conducted both field and laboratory experiments to address market failures highly relevant to environmental outcomes, namely international public goods problems and externalities from fuel and resource consumption. My methodology capitalizes upon the benefits of each experimental methodology—laboratory, artefactual, framed, and natural—to capture the effects of particular informational and contextual elements on subsequent behavior. While each methodology has its potential advantages and shortcomings, I contend that the complete toolkit is necessary to study a broad range of relevant environmental contexts. For instance, while natural field experiments are generally considered the “gold standard” in terms of exogeneity and generalizability, many settings in which field experimentation may provide tremendous insight preclude randomization across unknowing subjects. Similarly, researchers may not have access to populations of interest, though lab experimentation may still provide insights into the behavior of these populations or reveal motivations not yet captured in neoclassical utility functions. In this thesis, I will detail results from one of each experimental type, each suited to the context of interest. The natural field experiment in Chapter 2 aims to discern whether there is a role for environmental preferences and cognitive dissonance to play in encouraging individuals to engage in resource-conserving behaviors, and suggests that the latter may be effective in changing the behavior of green consumers. Chapter 3 presents the results of a large-scale framed field experiment comprising all eligible captains in Virgin Atlantic Airways, which tested the impacts of personalized information, tailored targets, and prosocial incentives on captains’ performance of fuel-efficient behaviors. In addition to documenting a substantial Hawthorne effect, we provide intent-to-treat estimates of the three types of feedback to show that tailored targets are the most (cost) effective strategy of those implemented. I introduce a complementary artefactual field experiment in Chapter 4, which allows for detailed scrutiny of captains’ fuel efficiency based on their social preferences as well as preferences and attitudes toward risk and uncertainty. I find that more risk-averse captains are more prone to over-fuel, that prosocial incentives increase captains’ well-being, and that revealed altruism increases responsiveness to prosocial incentives. Finally, Chapter 5 aims to provide insight into the effects of “side deals” in facilitating cooperation on international climate agreements. Using a lab experiment, we find that side deals alter the composition of group contribution to climate change mitigation, eliciting increased effort on the part of players with higher wealth.

No description available.

The collection of source segregated household food waste is becoming increasingly popular, because of its potential to divert biodegradable materials from landfill, increase recycling rates and provide a contaminant-free feedstock for anaerobic digestion. Various types of kerbside household food waste collection systems are operating in the UK and in Europe; however, studies on the energy consumption of integrating source separated food waste with collection of other waste fractions are very limited. A mechanistic model was developed in this research as a waste collection assessment tool (WasteCAT) for scoping and assessment of collection systems. Data collected from six local authorities in England was applied to verify and validate the modelling tool. Fuel consumption and other parameters such as total distance travelled (a proxy for vehicle lifespan), total time spent (a proxy for staffing costs), number of collection vehicles required (a proxy for capital costs), and arrangement of waste types and compartments were also assessed in this research, as these factors may also influence the selection of kerbside waste collection systems. A typical hypothetical town of 25,000 households was chosen to study the performance of separate, co-collection, kerbside-sorted and partially-sorted collection of household waste by different sizes and types of single and compartmentalised collection vehicles at different collection frequencies. Comparing the performance of the four collection systems, kerbside partially-sorted collection required the least fuel, while co-collection of household waste always had the best performance in terms of total travelling distance, time spent and number of collection vehicles required. The difference between the best and the worst systems was up to 156% for fuel use, 131% for distance travelled, 63% for time spent and 141% for vehicles required. Besides that, inappropriate allocation of compartment and waste type could increase fuel use by up to 1.1 times in co-collection, 2.27 times in kerbside-sorted and 3.08 times in kerbside partially-sorted collection. The research shows WasteCAT could provide a powerful tool for exploring alternative options. Keywords: Waste collection, collection vehicles, fuel consumption, food waste.

As a sector, agriculture in the UK is responsible for 43% of the methane (CH4) and 80% of the nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, greenhouse gases (GHG) with global warming potentials of 21 and 310, respectively. The UK government is providing financial subsidies to reduce GHG emissions, particularly in energy production. These subsidies primarily come in the form of feed-in tariffs (FITs) and renewable heat incentive (RHI) to the renewable energy industry. Given that the traditional, fossil-fuel based energy industry’s GHG footprint is 96% in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2), a policy based on renewable electricity and heat production is primarily rewarding CO2 abatement and fossil fuel substitution. This is appropriate for most renewable energy technologies except anaerobic digestion (AD) which, besides producing energy, also has the potential to abate substantial amounts of CH4 and N2O. Dairy farms produce large quantities of cattle slurry which are suitable for AD but have low energy potential, thus providing poor economic return on capital investment even after claiming the subsidies available. An alternative subsidy could be provided by marginal abatement cost (MAC) which gives a value for GHGs abated. This research shows that after incentives dairy farmers bear a marginal abatement cost of £27 tonne-1 CO2 eq. abated, a key factor in low uptake of on-farm AD in the UK.

The changes to catchment scale flood risk following river restoration works, including the addition of large wood logjams to the channel, are poorly quantified in the literature. Key concerns following river restoration for river managers and other stakeholders are changes to flood hydrology at the reach and catchment scale and changes in the mobility of large wood pieces. The effects of accumulations of large wood (logjams) on local flood hydrology have been documented in the literature, showing logjams slow flood wave travel time and increase the duration and extent of local overbank inundation. Modelling studies conducted at a reach scale have shown that these local effects can slow flood wave travel time through a reach and delay the timing of flood peak discharge at the reach outflow. How these local and reach scale effects translate to the catchment scale remains to be illustrated in the literature. In this thesis a combination of field and modelling studies are used to; elucidate the link between logjam form and function, to quantify the mobility of pieces of large wood relative to their physical characteristics, to predict the changes in floodplain forest restoration over time and to provide predictions of changes to catchment scale flood hydrology following river restoration at a range of scales and locations. It is shown that logjams inducing a step in the water profile are most effective at creating diverse geomorphology and habitats. Logjams were found to account for 65% of flow resistance in forested river channels, rising to 75-98% of flow resistance where the logjam was inducing a step in the water profile. Large wood in small forested river channels was found to be highly mobile with 75% of pieces moving, with the longest transport length of 5.6km. Large wood mobility is governed primarily by the length of a piece of wood with wood in excess of 1.5x channel width a threshold for a lower probability of movement. Hydrological modelling using OVERFLOW shows that reach scale river restoration can lead to modest changes in catchment scale flood hydrology. It is concluded that flood risk management can incorporate river restoration, but that results are likely to be unpredictable if engineered logjams are used alone. Substantial benefits in reducing catchment outflow peak discharge (up to 5% reduction) are modelled for floodplain forest restoration at the sub-catchment scale (10-15% of catchment area), rising to up to 10% reductions as the forest matures and becomes more complex.

Evidence suggests that improvements in both knowledge and actions are required to realize the conservation and sustainable use of intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes, specifically in terms of decisionmaking. In the absence of known research in this field, this research aimed to understand and improve decision-making for the conservation and sustainable use of intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes, using a case study in the Solent, UK. The study constructed a timeline of relevant events. It found that the majority of the events indirectly influenced the conservation and sustainable use of intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes, and were primarily concerned with some other purpose, such as coastal flooding and erosion risk management. Furthermore, that research, legislation and policy, and practice are interconnected in a complex web, with changes in one domain being reflected in another. Yet despite the significant investment in research and consultation processes by many people over numerous years, no clear end point appears to have been reached in terms of realizing intertidal mudflat and saltmarsh conservation and sustainable use. Building on these findings, the study used multi-methodology systems intervention as a lens through which to view and make sense of what the existing decision-making process is, and how to intervene to change (improve) it. It found that the decision-making process fails to start out systemically, and that an emphasis on participation through consultation is perhaps not the best means of involving stakeholders. The gradual ‘closing down’ of options as a result of the above means that there is often inaction or delays in taking actions due to multiple diverse perspectives regarding what action is required, how, why and by who. An ‘improved’ decision-making process is suggested and trialled involving a social learning cycle based on systems thinking and practice, in which stakeholders engage in dialogue and work together to make decisions and take actions towards the conservation and sustainable use of intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes. The outcomes from a pilot study workshop demonstrate that the ‘improved’ decision-making process generally proved very successful for this group of stakeholders. It engaged them in dialogue and in working together using skills and techniques in systems thinking, modelling, negotiating and evaluating, leading to new insights and shared understandings about the problem situation, and concerted actions to improve it. Notwithstanding that there are some refinements that can be made to further improve the decision-making process as a result of ‘lessons learned’ from the workshop, the participants’ feedback confirms that it was appropriate in this context, and may also be useful in other complex situations, particularly those involving multiple stakeholders from diverse backgrounds. However, it is recognized that whilst the study has made significant progress towards understanding and improving decision-making for the conservation and sustainable use of intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes, there is still further work required before the improvements can be implemented on a local, national or global scale.