National government-funded payments for environmental services (PES) programs often lack sustainable financing and fail to target payments to providers of important environmental services. In principle, these problems could be mitigated by replacing at least some government funding with direct contributions from individual environmental service users who have incentives to underwrite payments and who can ensure that they are targeted appropriately.

This paper examines the multiple fuel choices of urban households in major Ethiopian cities, using panel data collected in 2000 and 2004. The results suggest that as urban and rural households’ total expenditures rise, they use more types of fuels (including wood) and spend more on the fuels consumed. The results also support arguments that multiple fuel use better describes the fuel-choices of households in developing countries, as opposed to the idea that households switch to more expensive but cleaner fuels as incomes rise.

Global biofuels production is one of the topics that amply illustrates the complexity of harmonising the different variables of sustainable development. Pursuing environmental protection and implementing social standards, while assuring economic feasibility in industrial activities is vital for developing countries to compete in the global economy.

How Egypt and Ethiopia will defend or promote their interests in the Nile basin has recently become clearer. Egypt will
again seek to create “facts on the ground,” this time a large new land reclamation and settlement scheme called the
New Valley Project. Ethiopia too will create facts by proceeding with water resources development in the Blue Nile
basin, including the construction of low-cost microdams. If Egypt and Ethiopia pursue these two unilateral initiatives, they

Using a contingent valuation survey, we elicit Swedish households' willingness to pay (WTP) to avoid power outages.