The biofuel program was promoted around the globe with mandate of decreasing the dependency on petroleum oil, reducing green house gas emissions, increasing agricultural profitability and as option for rural employment and development. There existed acceptable and popular perception that biofuel...

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,...

This study examines the interrelationship between poverty and forest dependency in one of the poorest regions of India, on the basis of household-level data generated through a primary survey. The findings suggest significant heterogeneity in the extent and nature of forest dependency across...

It is conventional wisdom that it is possible to reduce exposure to indoor air pollution, improve health outcomes, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions in rural areas of developing countries through the adoption of improved cooking stoves. This is largely supported by observational field...

Economic growth does not necessarily ensure environmental sustainability for a country. The relationship between the two is far more complicated for developing countries like India, given the dependence of a large section of the population on natural resources. Under this backdrop, the current...

In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion on the working of village forest institutions (VFI) in developing countries with a view to understanding their role as rural institutions. In a tropical country like India, the success of any community based forest management effort...

Environmental outcomes can be shaped by underlying politics, we test whether pre-determined election timings affect these outcomes. To conduct our analysis, we combined elections data with remote sensing data on crop burning, forest fires, slash and burn activity, and tree cover for the period...

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,...

In the Global South, inadequate infrastructure at the village level is considered as the major constraint for the economic empowerment of socio-economically deprived communities, living marginal life at the remotest part of the state. Whenever we talk about infrastructure development, normally...