M.Comm.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science. Johannesburg, 2016. / This study evaluates the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) practice in the South African energy sector against a criteria developed by the researcher to determine the extent to which the EIAs contribute towards sustainable development. A questionnaire survey was conducted to gather information on the performance of the EIA practice of Eskom, which in this study represents the energy sector of South Africa. A review of the quality of a sample of EISs was also done against the modified Lee and Colley review package. The study revealed some strengths and weaknesses of EIA, as practiced by Eskom. The strengths include effective mitigation, public participation, training and the use of resources within ecological limits. The EISs were found to be generally of satisfactory quality. The weaknesses which limit EIA in the energy sector to reach its full potential in promoting sustainable development include inadequate monitoring, inadequate consideration of cumulative impacts and alternatives and inadequate engagement with community members directly affected by development projects on a personal level. Despite these weaknesses, the study concludes that EIA in the energy sector contributes, to some extent, towards the promotion of sustainable development. Key words: Environmental Impact Assessment, EIS, sustainable development, monitoring, mitigation, public participation, alternatives, ecological limits / LG2017

This research addresses conceptual and practical issues in the field of environmental education. Environmental education is a compound and contested field in terms of both environmental and educafional ideologies. Its practice is also influenced by perspectives of context and change. Hence, the operationalisation of environmental education might be expected to vary across different ideologies and contexts. Thus, this research attempts to ore the operationalisation from theory into practice in environmental education. 'he approach of this research derives from those issues in the research context of education lental education that are currently of most concern. That is, policy-makers and I practitioners expect researchers to answer question such as "what works?" because they face the pressure of making decisions, in response, this research attempts to shed light on the nature of environmental education by using an evidence-based approach. However, most lence-based work in education is grounded in a post-positivistic perspective. This research, by contrast, employs evidence drawn from qualitative inquiry that recognises the significance depth contextual understanding. Thus the research sits within the qualitative paradigm and employs case study methodology.

Bakgrund: Utifrån de miljöhot som finns idag har miljödebatten blivit hårdare. Alla branscher är involverade och företag arbetar för att nå upp till de krav som ställs. Det finns företag som arbetar mer genuint än andra för att ge ett så litet avtryck på naturen som möjligt. Ett exempel på ett företag som arbetar ansvarstagande för miljön är det svenska textilföretaget Klättermusen. Företaget har från sin start år 1984 haft hållbarhet som fokus och är idag en förebild för andra företag inom samma bransch.Problemformulering: Vad kan textilbranschen lära sig av Klättermusens ansvarstagande hållbarhetsarbete?Syfte: Vi vill med vår rapport lyfta fram hur fler företag kan arbeta hållbart och ansvarstagande i textilbranschen. Genom att belysa Klättermusen som ett konkret exempel kan små och medelstora textilföretag inspireras och även de bidra till en skillnad för miljön. Studien kommer därför att undersöka vad det är Klättermusen exakt gör för en bättre miljö och vad som möjliggör detta arbete. Detta för att kunna ta ställning till om vedertagen teori i ämnet stämmer överrens med verklighetens premisser.Metod: Som forskningsmetod har vi valt att arbeta utifrån en kvalitativ ansats i form av en fallstudie eftersom vi vill fördjupa oss i ett specifikt företag. Fallstudien syftar till att ge en så heltäckande bild som möjligt av det valda företaget samt att metoden uppmuntrar till att använda sig av så många olika informationskällor som möjligt. Detta är något vi har försökt att eftersträva för att ge studien relevans och trovärdighet.Resultat: Efter avslutade studier har vi kommit fram till att den teori och empiri som vi har samlat in överensstämmer och att andra företag därigenom kan se till den befintliga teorin när de implementerar CSR. Andra textilföretag har således mycket att lära av Klättermusens miljöarbete om de vill arbeta med hållbarhet på ett mer ansvarstagande sätt. Efter att ha studerat Klättermusens hållbarhetsarbete har vi även kunnat utveckla den befintliga teorin. Detta för att ge textilföretag ytterligare guidning i deras hållbarhetsarbete. / <p>Background: Based on the climate threats that exist today the environmental debate has becoming tougher. All industries are involved and companies are working to achieve the required standards that are expected. There are companies that work more genuine than others to give such a small footprint on nature as possible. An example of a company that is taking responsibility for the nature is the Swedish textile company Klättermusen. The company has from its start in 1984 had sustainability focus and is today a role model for other companies in the same industry.</p><p>Problem: What can the textile industry learn from Klättermusens responsible sustainability work?</p><p>Objective: With our report we want to highlight how more companies can work sustainable and responsible in the textile industry. By bringing out Klättermusen as a concrete example, textile companies of small and medium sizes can be inspired and they also make a difference for the environment. The study will therefore investigate what it is exactly Klättermusen does for the environment and what enables this work. This to be able to decide whether existing theory sympathises with the reality.</p><p>Method: As a research method we have chosen to work with a qualitative approach in form of a case study since we want to immerse ourselves in a specific company. The case study aims to provide as complete picture as possible of the selected company and the method also encourages using as many sources as possible. This is something we have tried to pursue in order to give relevance and credibility of the study.</p><p>Result: After terminated studies we have found that the collected theory and empirics conforms and that other companies therefore can see to the existing theory when they implement CSR. Other textile companies have a lot to learn from Klättermusen, from the environmental point of view, if they want to work with sustainability in a more responsible way. After investigating what it is Klättermusen exactly does for the sustainable development and what allows this work we have been able to develop the existing theory slightly. This to give textile companies further guidance in their aspiration for working responsible against the nature.</p><p>Program: Textilekonomutbildningen</p>

The three papers in this dissertation apply quasi-experimental and experimental methods for causal inference to the fields of health and development economics. The first paper exploits a plausibly exogenous reduction in the supply of health care in New York City caused by an historic storm to separately identify the impacts of health care access, weather shocks, and their interaction on chronic conditions. The second paper investigates how formal credit, informal risk sharing, and insurance interact. I exploit a natural experiment wherein tens of thousands of microfinance borrowers across rural Haiti received a quasi-random value of insurance benefit in the aftermath of catastrophic hurricanes. I show that subsequent demand for credit is increasing in the value of insurance, that insurance has decreasing marginal effects on the demand for credit, and that formal insurance increases the fungibility of the informal social ties underpinning risk sharing arrangements. Additionally, I present evidence suggestive of collusion in peer-based claims processing as a function of informal financial proximity. Finally, the third paper reports results from a cluster-randomized trial in rural Haiti that I led. It provides the first causal evidence that delivering basic health goods through microfinance institutions, which offer a platform that reaches 200 million rural poor households globally, is clinically effective.

Heavy air pollution is a global phenomenon that affects both developing and developed countries. While many studies have estimated air pollution’s negative impact on health, no study has shown air pollution to have any impact on countries’ aggregate economic productivity. With a growing body of literature showing that air pollutants may have a significant negative impact on labor productivity, a primary input to a nation’s economic production, I hypothesize and show that ambient air pollution indeed exhibits a significant negative impact on a country’s economic productivity as measured by GDP per capita. In Chapters 1 and 2 of this dissertation, I make identification of the causal relationship between air pollution and GDP per capita using the Huai River Policy and wild res as instruments. Chapter 3 investigates the impact of temperature, another key environmental factor, on labor productivity using a rich data set comprising 4 million baseball pitches. My results provide empirical evidence for modeling economic loss in response to air pollution and climate change.

This dissertation presents results from research on three development economics issues. In Chapter 1, I study the impacts of fuel subsidy reforms on the spatial dispersion of grain prices using a "natural experiment'' from Ethiopia---which removed fuel subsidies in 2008---and a highly disaggregated monthly grain price data from about 300 locations. I find that the removal of fuel subsidy substantially increased grain price dispersion and remote areas are particularly highly affected. Change in grain price dispersion resulting from high transportation cost is a key channel through which the removal of fuel subsidy could influence welfare. Farm households in remote districts have experienced welfare losses due to dampening of grain prices in their areas. In Chapter 2, I present evidence from a randomized control trial on the impact of in-service teacher training and books, both as separate educational inputs and as a package. I test whether there is complementarity between these education inputs. The results suggest that the provision of books, in addition to teacher training, raises student achievement substantially. However, teacher training and books weakly improve test scores when provided individually. The evidence suggests that it is pertinent to supplement teacher training schemes with appropriate teaching materials in resource-poor settings. In Chapter 3, I study the rural non-farm economy (RNFE) in Uganda and Ethiopia to understand the gender gap in access to and return from RNFE using panel household surveys. I find that female-headed households tend to have low access to and return from RNFE.

This dissertation consists of three essays on development and health economics. In the first chapter, I study how abortion responds to drought-induced transitory income shocks and generates unintended demographic consequences under son preference. I focus on rural Vietnam where low rainfall induces a short-run downturn through a reduction in rice yields. With widely available sex-selection technologies at a low cost under son preference, Vietnamese parents can decide the quantity and the sex of child simultaneously, and it can be directly observed from rich household-level data on abortions. Linking rich microdata on fertility with droughts defined at a fine geographic unit, I first find no effects of droughts on the number and the composition of mothers who conceive. I then find compelling evidence that affected mothers were 30% more likely to get abortions, and the effect was mainly driven by the income effect because most abortions occurred in the pre-harvest season of the next rice crop when consumption smoothing is difficult. Surprisingly, droughts are associated with disproportionately more abortions of female fetuses, which exacerbated the problem of the skewed sex ratio: the affected birth cohorts become more male-biased due to the six abortions of female fetuses to one aborted male fetus, explaining up to approximately 3% of the sex ratio imbalance in rural Vietnam from 2004-2013. While a full rebound in births in approximately two years appears more consistent with the effect on the timing of fertility, the effect on the sex ratio at birth emphasizes that even transitory income shocks can have long-run demographic consequences. Thus, this study can shed light on how the gender gap can persist during a process of economic development. This study also enhances our understanding of the mechanism through which credit-constrained mothers adjust their fertility to smooth consumption. Finally, this study can provide timely evidence to developing countries which witness demographic transitions to low infant mortality but are vulnerable to extreme weather events. In the second chapter (joint work with Anna Choi and Semee Yoon), we study how usual economic activities can harm the health of people who are living in other countries. This study investigates the adverse effect of transboundary particulate matter on fetal health. The adverse health effects at exposures to particulate matter are evident by a handful of experimental and epidemiological studies. The health effects of PM2.5, which has a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers, are particularly alarming because those hazardous particles are so diminutive that they can easily enter the bloodstream to cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Unlike the consensus in the United States on the negative impact of pollution on human health, the evidence for the relationship between pollution and health in developing countries is not straightforward to quantify due to the lack of accurate pollution and welfare measures as well as the difficulty of finding exogenous variables to purge other endogenous factors. However, this study can circumvent these endogeneity concerns by exploiting the unique meteorological settings which can trigger transboundary transport of particulate matter. The westerlies from heavily polluted eastern China carry pollutants to South Korea, thereby intermittently exposing the population to pollution above threshold levels. We find that conditional on local weather and pollution trends, one standard deviation increase in Beijing’s PM2.5 explains 1.1% of standard deviation of daily fetal mortality rates in South Korea. We hope that the results of this research can suggest the first accurate cost estimates of transboundary fine-particle to highlight the urgent need for regional cooperation. In the third chapter, the unintended consequences of economic activities on human capital in developing countries can be further emphasized by a randomized control trial study (joint with Hyuncheol Bryant Kim, Booyuel Kim and Cristian Pop-Eleches). We use a four-year long follow-up of an intervention based on a two-step randomized design within classrooms in secondary schools in Malawi to understand the impact of male circumcision on risky sexual behaviors and the role that peers play in the decision and consequences of being circumcised. Although medical male circumcision can reduce HIV infections, its preventive effects may diminish if circumcised men are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors. Despite a number of short-term studies of risk compensation following male circumcision, there is scant rigorous evidence on how these behavioral responses change in the longer term. This study is the first evaluation of risk compensation over such a long follow-up period. Our analysis yields three main results. First, we show that the intervention substantially increased the demand for male circumcision for the students assigned to the treatment group. Second, we find evidence of positive peer effects in the decision to get circumcised among untreated students. Third, we find evidence of risk compensation using biomarkers of sexually transmitted infection for those who got circumcised due to the intervention, but not for those induced by peer effects.

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This dissertation provides three examples of how considering interactions across transport modes as well as land use systems is important for addressing the biggest challenges in sustainable development, particularly climate change and growing inequality. In the first essay, I explore path dependency in urban form for U.S. cities built around rail transit prior to the automobile. I find that these cities continue to be denser and have lower per capita transportation emissions than cities that came of age after the automobile. I estimate the size of the effect and how long it lasts. The built environment is durable, and urban infrastructure is costly to alter post-construction, so land use and transport decisions made early in a city’s history can have a lasting environmental impact. The second essay exploits a natural experiment to quantify the impact of bikesharing on bus transit ridership in New York City. This work demonstrates one way in which shared modes impact pre-existing public transit systems, which is particularly important as these systems are expanding and operating outside of traditional public agencies. The way these modes work together determines the overall quality of the transport network. The third essay discusses the concept of accessibility and how accessibility measures can be used in the case of Nairobi to explore the dynamics of social exclusion across modes, residential location, and income. This dissertation provides three examples of how sustainability goals may fall short if transportation is not viewed as a multimodal system that interacts with and shapes urban form.