Forests, biomass use, and poverty in Malawi

Sushenjit Bandyopadhyay, Priya Shyamsundar and Alessandro Baccini

No 4068, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: In this paper, the authors seek to answer three questions about poverty and forests in Malawi: (1) What is the extent of biomass available for meeting the energy needs of the poor in Malawi and how is this distributed? (2) To what extent does fuelwood scarcity affect the welfare of the poor? (3) How do households cope with scarcity? In particular, do households spend more time in fuelwood collection and less time in agriculture in response to scarcity? The authors attempt to answer these questions using household and remote-sensing data. They find that 80 percent of rural poor households in Malawi are likely to benefit from an increase in biomass per hectare in their community. Rural women respond to biomass scarcity by increasing the time they spend on fuelwood collection. But the actual decrease in consumption expenditure and increase in time in fuelwood collection are small and biomass scarcity is not associated with a reduction in agricultural labor supply.

Keywords: Renewable Energy; Crops&Crop Management Systems; Wildlife Resources; Climate Change; Ecosystems and Natural Habitats (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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