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,...

Using purpose-collected survey data from 535 households in 60 different villages of the Jhabua district of India, this paper investigates the extent to which rural households depend on common-pool natural resources for their daily livelihood. Previous studies have found that resource dependence...

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...

Previous studies of rural households in developing countries have tended to find that the dependence of these households on common-pool resources declines with income. Our study of households in Jhabua, India, finds a more complex relationship. Using the share of resource income in total...

This study examines pesticide use in Kuttanad, India, an ecologically sensitive area often referred to as the rice bowl of Kerala. Using primary data collected from pesticide applicators and farm labor, the study assesses short-term health costs associated with pesticide exposure. The study...

The Dutch canal wetland system in Sri Lanka is an important wetland area for shrimp farming and has become a promising foreign exchange earner. However, shrimp farming in the Dutch Canal is largely unplanned and un-coordinated with more than 1,300 farms working in an area of 3,750 hectares. The...

In this paper we test for appropriate policies that could help control the use of plastic bags in Delhi. In January 2009, the Government of Delhi introduced a wide-ranging ban on the use of plastic bags in market places. Our results showed a dilution in the efficacy of the ban within a year,...

The Government of India appealed a new forest policy in 1988 which resulted in Joint Forest Management. This new policy allowed community groups to share part of the responsibility of forest management with the State. However, even before this, community-initiated and NGO-promoted "Collective...