A key strategy for adapting to changing water availability and rapid urbanization is a move towards full cost recovery tariffs for water and sanitation services. Because these services are substantially underpriced in most places, this strategy implies that careful attention must be directed at programs to help the poor manage water affordability. In this paper, we systematize these “customer assistance programs” (CAPs) by defining their major elements and develop a typology that highlights the connection between CAPs and water scarcity.

Automobiles are a major contributor to pervasive urban air quality problems. Partly to reduce these air quality problems, China has invested heavily in urban subway systems. This paper provides the first comprehensive estimates of the effects of these investments on urban air quality. The analysis uses a unique data set that combines hourly air quality data, daily meteorological data, and characteristics of cities for all major subway projects between 2013 and 2014 in China.

Since the beginning of the decade, climate resilient green economy strategies have been proposed in many African countries. One of the pillars of the strategies is the adoption and diffusion of various climate smart agricultural practices for improving crop and livestock production and farmer income while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The effects of these innovations on household nutritional security, including gender-differentiated nutritional status, have hardly been analyzed.