Informal Settlements and Sustainable Urban Development: towards a more inclusive urban agenda Welcome to a webinar hosted by SLU Urban Futures and SLU Global. This webinar brings together international guests to explore the dynamics of rapid urbanization and environmental change in the context of informal settlements in the global south, asking how informal settlements form part of an inclusive and sustainable urban agenda. With the New Urban Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals, ambitions to achieve sustainable urbanization are high. However, uneven development process and weak governance coupled with rapid urbanization and the dynamics of environmental change is driving the growth of informal [...]

Bioeconomic characterization of oil palm production and adoption among non-industrial producers in Cameroon: Some environmental and socio-ecological implications Regardless of the environmental and socio-ecological implications of oil palm cultivation, palm oil is considered one of the most important oil crops in the world because of its high production efficiency, and has seen a marked increase in the area of land under cultivation. While previous studies have analyzed the implications of this increase in cultivation on various socio-economic and environmental indicators, less is known about the drivers and constraints of production, especially with respect to economic and profitability motives. In this study, [...]

Water Rights and Water Fights: Transboundary Water Governance in Africa Africa has experienced various disputes over access to and rights over the shared water resources among riparian countries. This webinar assesses the impacts of mega water diversion projects on the access to water resources, by using interdisciplinary lenses. Africa is a continent of transboundary waters that has experienced various disputes over access to and rights over the shared water resources among riparian countries. This webinar focuses on the impacts of mega water diversion projects on the access to water resources, population, and ecosystems in the largest African water basins (the Congo and [...]

Welfare Sensitivity and Positional Preferences in a Developing Country It is well-established in the empirical literature that people care about relative-status or positionality, hence any policy that makes someone better off imposes negative externality on his/her peers. However, the effectiveness of public policy aimed at mitigating positional externality hinges on the measurement of relative concerns, which is individual and context specific requiring empirical data. This study investigates positional concerns among over-exploited natural resource dependent communities with defined gender roles in a developing country, and the specific role of welfare sensitivity in moderating relative concerns. We found that compared to the women, [...]

Gender Norms, Women’s Executive Function, and Anti-Poverty Programs: Experimental Evidence from India Sociocultural norms and executive function are powerful factors in an individual’s agency, decision-making, and development. Gender norms, for example, mediate the relationship between economic development and women’s labor market outcomes. Executive functions make it possible for a person to live, work, and learn. They are important for taking simple to complex actions, from cooking, shopping, nurturing children, planning, and to execution. Low executive functions can frustrate the success of anti-poverty and empowerment programs through participants’ inadequate planning, improper utilization of resources, and the lack of timely actions. In developing [...]

Randomized Controlled Trials in Environment and Development Economics Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), also known as Randomized Evaluations, have gained increasing prominence as a methodology for evaluating policy impacts. In RCTs, researchers randomly assign study participants to one or more groups: the "treatment group," which receives the intervention, and the "control group", which doesn't. Researchers measure the outcome variables of interest in these groups to identify the impact of the treatment as the single mean difference between the treatment and control groups. RCTs also empower researchers and policymakers to tailor their research designs to address specific inquiries about program effectiveness and its [...]