Urvashi Narain

Poverty and the Environment: Exploring the Relationship Between Household Incomes, Private Assets, and Natural Assets

This paper develops an analytical framework to examine how rural households in developing countries derive income from common-pool natural resource stocks. The focus is on how three types of private assets—land, livestock, and human capital—and one household characteristic—its size—interact with the natural assets to form the basis of household livelihood strategies. Predictions of the model are tested using purpose-collected data from rural households in Jhabua, India. Implications of our results for the potential of improved natural resource management to alleviate poverty are discussed.

Estimating costs of adaptation to climate change

In 2009 the World Bank launched the Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change (EACC) study to provide up-to-date and consistent estimates of adaptation costs for developing countries. The EACC study addresses many of the shortcomings found in the adaptation cost literature. First, it defines ‘adaptation costs’ as those additional costs of development due to climate change, thereby avoiding confounding the costs of closing the development deficit and the implicit adaptation deficit. Second, the study covers eight major sectors: infrastructure, coastal zones, water supply, agriculture, fisheries, forests and ecosystems, human health, and extreme weather events. Third, it employs common population and GDP growth trajectories across sectors and uses two climate scenarios to capture the full spread of model predictions. Finally, the EACC study uses an innovative methodology for aggregating costs at the sector level within a country, and across countries. Under these assumptions, the global price tag for the developing world of adapting to an approximately 2°C warmer world by 2050 is US

Does Disclosure Reduce Pollution? Evidence from India's Green Rating Project

70–100 billion per year for 2010–2050.

Clearing the Air: How Delhi Broke the Logjam on Air Quality Reforms

Public disclosure programs that collect and disseminate information about firms’ environmental performance are increasingly popular in both developed and developing countries. Yet little is known about whether they actually improve environmental performance, particularly in the latter setting. We use detailed plant-level survey data to evaluate the impact of India’s Green Rating Project (GRP) on the environmental performance of the country’s largest pulp and paper plants. We find that the GRP drove significant reductions in pollution loadings among dirty plants but not among cleaner ones. This result comports with statistical and anecdotal evaluations of similar disclosure programs. We also find that plants located in wealthier communities were more responsive to GRP ratings, as were single-plant firms.

The Impact of Delhi's CNG Program on Air Quality

Abstract Indias capital city and its surrounding metropolitan area have been beset by some of the worst pollution problems in the world, despite numerous laws enacted to help clean up the region. When the countrys highest court took action, however, the situation changed dramatically. What led Indias Supreme Court to take matters into its own handsand did it really go it alone? What are the implications of its decisions?

India's Firewood Crisis Re-Examined

This paper estimates the impact on Delhi’s air quality of a number of policy measures recently implemented in the city to curb air pollution using monthly time-series data from 1990 to 2005. The best known of these measures is the court-mandated conversion of all commercial passenger vehicles—buses, three-wheelers, and taxis—to compressed natural gas (CNG). Broadly, the results point to the success of a number of policies implemented in Delhi but also to a number of areas of growing concern. For example, the results suggest that the conversion of buses from diesel to CNG has helped to reduce PM10, CO, and SO2 concentrations in the city and has not, contrary to conventional wisdom, led to the recent increase in NO2. At the same time, however, the conversion of three-wheelers from petrol to CNG has not had the same benefit, possibly because of poor technology. Another policy measure that appears to have had a positive impact on air quality is the reduction in the sulfur content of diesel and petrol. This has led to a decrease in SO2 levels and, because of conversion of SO2 to sulfates (a fine particle), a decrease in PM10 concentrations. Some of these gains from fuel switching and fuel-quality improvements are, however, being negated by the increase in the proportion of diesel-fueled cars, which is leading to an increase in PM10 and NO2 levels, and by the sheer increase in the number of vehicles.

The Cost of Fuel Economy in the Indian Passenger Vehicle Market

Households in rural India are highly dependent on firewood as their main source of energy, partly because non-biofuels tend to be expensive. The prevailing view is therefore that, when faced with shortages of firewood in the village commons, such households, and especially the women in them, have to spend more and more time searching for firewood and eventually settle for poorer-quality biomass such as twigs, branches and dry leaves. Using data from a random sample of rural households in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, we come to very different conclusions, however. We find that households in villages with degraded forests do not spend longer hours searching for firewood, but instead switch to either using firewood from private trees or to using agricultural waste for fuel. In the long run, moreover, households respond to the firewood shortage by altering the mix of private trees on their land in favor of firewood, as opposed to fruit, trees. We find also that, Joint Forest Management, a government program initiated in the 1990s, is having a positive impact on the firewood economy.

Policy Monitor Urban Air Pollution in India

To investigate how fuel economy is valued in the Indian car market, we compute the cost to Indian consumers of purchasing a more fuel-efficient vehicle and compare it to the benefit of lower fuel costs over the life of the vehicle. We use hedonic price functions for four market segments (petrol hatchbacks, diesel hatchbacks, petrol sedans, and diesel sedans) to compute 95 percent confidence intervals for the marginal cost to the consumer of an increase in fuel economy. We find that the associated present value of fuel savings falls within the 95 percent confidence interval for some specifications, in all market segments, for the years 2002 through 2006. Thus, we fail to consistently reject the hypothesis that consumers appropriately value fuel economy. When we reject the null hypothesis, the marginal cost of additional fuel economy exceeds the present value of fuel savings, suggesting that consumers may, in fact, be overvaluing fuel economy.

Economics of adaptation to climate change: synthesis report

The majority of Indias population still lives in villages, but towns and cities are growing rapidly. The increased economic activity that has accompanied this urbanization has also contributed to rising air pollution in India. Like much of the world, India has relied solely on command-and-control policies to reduce air pollution from mobile sources, establishing stricter vehicle emissions standards (along with improved fuel quality) to control emissions from new vehicles, and inspection and maintenance programs for vehicles already in use. As for stationary sources, traditionally the emphasis has also been on command-and-control policies (establishing emission standards and granting permits to operate). However, in recent years India has begun to implement voluntary agreements and information disclosure programs. This article reviews the institutions and policies that have been established in India to control air pollution. We also review how these institutions and policies have been applied to reduce air pollution in the Indian capital, Delhi, and the extent to which they are being implemented in other Indian cities.