Most of the increase in ethanol production in the 2008-2012 period can be attributed to the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) and earlier federal energy legislation. The expansion in U.S. biofuel production, particularly ethanol, was the predominant cause of the elevated...

Forests support rural livelihoods and food security in many developing countries by providing critical sources of food, medicine, shelter, building materials, fuels, and cash income. The increasing demand for forest products has enhanced rural livelihoods and enabled the expansion of domestic...

Smallholder farmers in many areas of the semiarid tropics are planting exotic tree species that provide alternative income sources, fuel, and building materials. While providing other benefits, these trees often occupy land that could produce annual food crops. This study uses a polyperiod,...

Agricultural expansion has traditionally led colonization of the Amazonian rainforest. Recently, pioneer farmers in the forest margins around Pucallpa, Peru, have been changing their production decisions and altering the deforestation process. In response to a government policy to protect...

That residents of Zimbabwe's Communal Areas (CAs) obtain a variety of goods and services from their natural woodlands has long been recognized. Little was known however, of the value or preferences of CA residents for these goods and services. This paper describes a study, carried out in...

This paper outlines a framework that will facilitate the assessment of the financial sustainability of proposed improvements in water and sanitation facilities. Financially sustainable services are those in which the revenues generated from the service users exceed the cost of providing the...

The literature on community based natural resource management largely focuses on developing conditions that enable self-organized groups of resource users to collectively manage common pool resources. The analytical approach in most economic analyses is that of methodological individualism,...

Respondents are heterogeneous in their prior information about resource injury. The analysis derives an updating model of how heterogeneous respondents incorporate new information contained in resource injury descriptions. The analysis confirms that the sign of the information effect is...

Forest products play an important role in supporting rural livelihoods and food security in many developing countries. Pimentel et al. (1997) found that the integrity of forests is vital to world food security, mostly because of the dependence of the poor on forest resources. Studies of the role...

Rising prices on vegetable oils and animal fats have enabled dry mill ethanol plants to profitably extract corn oil from distillers’ dried grain. While the mandates under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 for grain based ethanol will level off at 15 billion gallons in 2015, the...