The Deepwater Horizon incident demonstrated that most of the oil left is deep offshore or in other difficult to reach locations. Moreover, obtaining the oil remaining in currently producing reservoirs requires additional equipment and technology that comes at a higher price in both capital and...

Restrictions on CO2 emissions, the nuclear phase out announced by some member states, high emissions from coal-fired power plants, and barriers to rapid development of renewable generation are factors that make the European Union (EU) highly dependent on natural gas. With three non-EU countries...

Exploring the short-run and long-run relationships between consumption of various sources of non-renewable energy, economic growth and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would be considered as a golden key to provide rational energy policies of Iran in the post sanctions era. The aim of this paper...

Medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) provide opportunities for developing a variety of safe and cost effective, prophylactic, and curative medicines for a number of maladies. It is estimated that the primary health care of over 80 per cent of the world’s population still depends on plant based...

This paper argues that natural resources in the past have been falsely identified as a cause of civil conflict onset. The idea that natural resources spur conflict has reached a certain degree of acceptance among scholars and policy makers with a number of quantitative studies concluding that...

he paper analyzes the deforestation problem and its Sustainable Local Development (SLD) impact, during 1998-2005 periods. A stochastic frontier production function is defined for panel data of farm-specific variables. The inefficiency effects are assumed to be independently distributed as...

Egypt seems to be on the brink of a new era in water management. The country suppose to follow a different operational mode that is “water conservation oriented, decentralized, environmentally sensitive, private sector oriented, equitable and operationally efficient” The focus of this study...

This essay establishes four propositions. First, the diamond industry has been a positive force for development in southern Africa. Second, jewelry, among the most profitable segments of the industry, is a non-essential luxury, and accordingly, consumer concerns over conflict diamonds pose a...

In this paper we incorporate interdisciplinary New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics (combining Economics, Organization, Law, Sociology, Behavioral and Political Sciences), and suggest a framework for analysis of mechanisms of governance of agro-ecosystem services. Firstly, we...

There is an increasing tension between the Iranian Government and the west on an increasingly likely European oil embargo and the Iranian threat to close the Strait of Hormuz. The main question is: What will happen to the international oil prices in the case of shocks in the flow of Iranian oil...