Stefano Pareglio

Access to Modern Energy: A Review of Impact Evaluations

Universal access to modern energy services, in terms of access to electricity and to modern cooking facilities, has been recognized as fundamental challenge for development and is likely to be included in the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Despite a strong praise for action and several programs at both national and international level, very few impact evaluation studies try to shed light on the causal relationship between access to energy and development, by also allowing decision makers to rigorously assess cost-effectiveness and efficiency of policies and programs. This work attempts to review the literature on existing impact evaluation of access to electricity and modern cooking facilities. For access to electricity we consider as outcomes labour markets, time allocation, household welfare (consumption, income, schooling and health) and business. For access to improved cookstoves, we assess impacts on household welfare. The reviewed literature highlights a significant causal impact of electricity access on important metrics of wellbeing, but more mixed evidence regarding clean cookstove. Finally, we also review the barriers and drivers of access to modern energy services identified by most recent impact evaluation studies.

Controlling pollution in rural areas by economic instruments

The most interesting economic instruments for the control of environmental pollution belong to the categories of taxes (or charges) and of tradeable pollution permits. After the basic theoretical propositions of the seventies and their early applications, the search now is for practical methodologies and for a correct and effective use of such instruments. With this aim in view, the paper begins by introducing the concepts of environmental externality and of optimal level of pollution, then illustrates the two main options of control (taxation and market of tradeable permits) and briefly discusses their application in reducing pollution in wide rural areas.

Social Interaction and Technology Adoption: Experimental Evidence from Improved Cookstoves in Mali

We investigate the role of social interaction in technology adoption by conducting a field experiment in neighborhoods of Bamako. We invited women to attend a training/marketing session, where information on a more efficient cooking stove was provided and the chance to purchase the product at market price was offered. We randomly provided an information nudge on a peer’s willingness to buy an improved cookstove. We find that women purchase and use the product more when they receive information on a peer who purchased (or previously owned) the product, particularly if she is viewed as respected. In general, we find positive direct and spillover effects of attending the session. We also investigate whether social interaction plays a role in technology diffusion. We find that women who participated in the session, but did not buy during the intervention, are more likely to adopt the product when more women living around them own it. We investigate the mechanisms and provide evidence supporting imitation effects, rather than social learning or constraint interaction.

The Value of Our Common Environment

The Encyclical Letter “Laudato Si” (“Praise be to you”) gives space to an important reflection on the social and environmental development dimensions as well on the relationship between economic growth and human progress. The Letter proposes an explicit critique to the current economic system, based on the neoclassical paradigm, and it claims some not strictly traditional economic issues. Starting from this critical analysis, the Letter offers an in-depth reflection that moves from the decisions making processes and the objectives of economic policies up to the evaluation tools, which should be able to support an effective care of the Earth, dubbed as a “Common Home”. In order to overcome prejudices and the traditional perspectives and to seriously tackle the environmental and social challenges, the Encyclical Letter tries to broaden the concepts of value and progress. There are several causes for reflection: from the critique to methodological individualism (and the consequent representation of choices based on preferences not structured as needs) to the lack of recognition of the special harmony between humans and nature. Similarly to the Marxian thought of men’s alienation, it underlies the identity value of places, so to make the reduction of environmental and public goods to mere commodities controlled by the market unacceptable. The answer to this challenge cannot be vague ecology. For this reason the Letter calls for a new definition of the relationship between human beings and nature, starting from the Judeo-Christian anthropocentrism, which recalls that kind of reciprocity and which doesn’t assign to man the role of lord of the universe, but rather of responsible administrator. This new definition is based on some deep-rooted principles: the limits of resources and technology’s power, the social limits of affluent societies, the acceptance of the steady state condition, the attention to diversities, capabilities, willingness to participate by local communities, the individual character of well-being and life projects, the exhortation for a distributive justice into and between generations. The change of paradigm should be radical and subjected to mediation. In this framework the Encyclical Letter assigns to the Appraisal discipline a fundamental role for pursuing the envisaged changes and it outlines some operational assumptions to make the evaluation activities a real support to policy making.

Extension Services, Production and Welfare Evidence from a Field Experiment in Ethiopia

The paper assesses the impact of a small-scale agricultural extension project implemented in rural Ethiopia and aimed at introducing the culti- vation of horticultural gardens along with some innovative techniques, products and inputs. Our main outcome of interest is the level of adoption of new horticultural products. We also assess the consequent impacts on the level of revenues from sale and diet diversification. We use a mixed impact evaluation design combining across-villages comparisons, through difference-in-differences estimations, with a within village randomized control trial. To this aim, we make use of micro-data collected through surveys administered to 602 households in two time periods (2013 and 2014). We find that the project contributes to production diversification as the number of house- holds growing vegetables increases by about 30%. Overall, such changes do not seem to in uence in a relevant way the total revenues from sales of agricultural products and do not consequently affect household welfare. We do not find significant changes in the consumption of vegetables and only marginal increase in fruit uptake. This leads to an overall irrelevant impact on diet diversification.

Conservation Agriculture as a Driving Force to Accumulate Carbon in Soils: An Analysis of RDP in Lombardy

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emission credits and C-sequestration are measures that are largely applied to limit the rising concentration of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. In this context an increasing role is played by conservation agriculture (CA). This chapter aims to present the policies pursued in Lombardy and to calculate, with the soil CN-cycle model ARMOSA, the potential of C-storage in soils with the adoption of CA measures for 20 years. The analysis is performed on 600 farms (24,550 ha), and it is implemented here taking into account the economic incentive provided by the 2007–2013 Rural Development Program (RDP) of Lombardy. The results show that C-accumulation in soils by CA can contribute to achieve Kyoto targets, but it needs a significant economic effort. Suggestions for policy-makers are here briefly outlined in relation to similar policies applied at the international level.

Sostenibilità e riqualificazione ambientale nel piano di città metropolitana

1. Premessa Nelle aree metropolitane del mondo industrializzato cresce la domanda di qualita ambientale, e con essa si diffonde la prassi dell’analisi e della valutazione delle prestazioni ecologiche del piano urbanistico. La sostenibilita, anche urbana, e oggi un’opzione acquisita e condivisa in via di principio. Diverse, come si vedra piu avanti, sono invece le definizioni e le misure di tale sostenibilita, ed ugualmente dibattuta e la traduzione in regole per l’uso e la produzione di beni e servizi pubblici. Lo scritto delinea sinteticamente i riflessi economici della sostenibilita urbana, in termini di paradigmi, principi e misure, con una lettura orientata piu alle esigenze (contingenti) di trasformazione e di riqualificazione delle aree metropolitane, che non al tema ideale della riforma legislativa del governo del territorio. In tal senso, la prima esigenza e quella di aggiornare le finalita e i contenuti della pianificazione urbanistica, per accrescere l’efficienza nell’impiego delle risorse (non solo ambientali) necessarie alla produzione di beni/servizi urbani1, e per garantire maggiore attenzione nella distribuzione dei costi e dei benefici prodotti dalla citta’.

Freedoms, institutions and sustainable human development according to Sen’s capability approach

The aim of this paper is to outline the role of instrumental freedoms and institutions in the achievement of sustainable human development, doing so according to the perspective of Sen’s capability approach. Each area of sustainability can be represented by a set of driving forces, response variables and state variables. State variables denote constitutive freedoms, the achieved functionings chosen from the capability set. Their variations are produced by driving force variables. The latter are, in their turn, influenced by response variables triggered by institutions and instrumental freedoms. We map a selected set of variables related to the environmental dimension in order to show how instrumental freedoms and institutions influence sustainable human development.