Search

About three billion people worldwide use solid fuels for cooking and space heating. This fueling practice contributes to global forest depletion and disease prevalence. To abate the environmental and health threats caused by the inefficient burning of biomass fuels, large-scale initiatives were undertaken globally for the dissemination of fuel-saving and energy-efficient stoves, known as improved cookstoves (ICS). This paper examines the adoption of ICS in northwest Pakistan by using a logit analysis. The results show that the education of the respondent, number of working household members, and total income of the household had significant effects on the adoption of ICS. Conversely, the age of the respondent and possession of land did not exhibit any significant influence on adoption. The overall model was significant with p < 0.001 which reveals that the selected socioeconomic variables have a statistically significant relationship with the adoption of ICS. The paper concludes that the efforts to improve health and environmental conditions may be more successful if ICS programs take the socioeconomic, contextual, and market related factors into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the debate on the links between poverty and forestry degradation; the view that due to poverty and the meeting of subsistence needs the poor use natural resources more intensively and hence cause them to degrade. Using the case of the forest rich Swat district, Pakistan, the paper addresses the issue empirically, historically, and institutionally. We do not find empirical support for the “poverty–environment nexus”, in that the poor and other income groups are equally resource dependent and also show that resource degradation is not associated with poverty. Our historical and institutional analyses provide alternative explanations for resource degradation. Selective and rotating ownership patterns, starting with the 17th century, provided limited incentive for resource conservation. It also created tension between de jure and de facto owners, that has persisted, and is one source of forest degradation. Ill-defined resource rights have also exacerbated the impacts of several other factors contributing to forest degradation which is compounded by poor management, corruption, and perverse incentives. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Deforestation is depletion of the forest cover and degradation in forest quality mainly through repeated fires, over-exploitation, and diseases. In a forest ecosystem, occurrence of wildfires is a natural phenomena. The curse of global warming and man-made interventions have made the wildfires increasingly extreme and widespread. Though, extremely challenging due to rapidly changing climate, accurate prediction of these fire events can significantly improve forestation worldwide. In this paper, we have addressed this issue by proposing a deep learning (DL) framework using long short term memory (LSTM) model. The proposed mechanism accurately forecasts weekly fire alerts and associated burnt area (ha) utilizing historical fire data provided by GLOBAL FOREST WATCH. Pakistan is taken as a case study since its deforestation rate is among the highest in the world while having one of the lowest forest covers. Number of epochs, dense layers, hidden layers and hidden layer units are varied to optimize the model for high estimation accuracy and low root mean square error (RMSE). Simulation results show that the proposed method can predict the forest fire occurrences with 95% accuracy by employing a suitable hyperparameter tuning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Large dependence of the world population on biomass fuels for domestic energy consumption is one of the major anthropogenic causes of deforestation worldwide. The use of biomass in inefficient ways in rural areas increases fuelwood demand of a household. Development of the improved biomass stove programs in the 1970s has been one of the efforts to reduce burden on biomass resource base through reliable and efficient methods of energy consumption. However, despite having multiple economic, social, environmental, and health benefits; the improved stove dissemination programs failed to capture worldwide recognition. A wide array of socio-cultural, economic, political, and institutional barriers contributes to the low adoption rate of such programs. Drawing on field work surveys in rural northwest Pakistan, this paper provides empirical evidence of individual, household, and community level variables that play a vital role in the adoption of improved cookstoves. The study is based on primary data collected from 100 randomly selected households in two villages of rural northwest Pakistan. Using regression analysis, the study depicts that education and household income are the most significant factors that determine a household willingness to adopt improved biomass stoves. The study concludes that the rate of adoption could substantially be improved if the government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play a greater role in overcoming the social, economic, cultural, political, and institutional barriers to adopting improved cooking technologies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: District Swat is a part of the high altitude Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region of Pakistan comprising a diverse set of biophysical, ecological and socio-economic characteristics. Analysis of land cover data of this region is particularly important because of disparate accounts on the state of forest resources of Pakistan in general and Swat in particular. Mainly official Pakistani sources frequently claim that Pakistan’s forests have been progressively increasing as a result of afforestation efforts and increasing environmental awareness. On the other hand, a number of studies and international statistics have reported significant deforestation in Pakistan. To resolve this uncertainty this paper documents the land use dynamics from three ecological zones of district Swat over four decades using aerial photographs and remote sensing data for the years 1968, 1990 and 2007. Analysis of land use and cover change in Swat, over this time period, shows drastic changes in the landscape. In Kalam; the forest zone of the district, forest area is decreased by 30.5%; with 11.4% of the deforestation caused by agricultural expansion. Simultaneously, a marked reduction in the agricultural area was observed with 17.3% of the agricultural area converted to rangeland. In Malamjaba, the agro-forest zone of the district, agricultural land expanded by 77.6% between 1968 and 1990 but then shrunk by 4.1% between 1990 and 2007. Forest cover in this zone decreased 49.7% over the last 40 years. In the Barikot region (agro-scrub forest zone), forest cover decreased from covering 32.7% of the total area of the zone in 1968 to 9.5% in 2007, whereas the built up areas increased by 161.4% over the four decades; and agricultural land expanded by 129.9% consuming 12.7% and 18.96% of forest area between 1968 and 1990, and between 1990 and 2007, respectively. Annual deforestation rates observed were 1.86% (scrub forest zone), 1.28% (agro-forest zone) and 0.80% (pine forest zone) in the respective areas of district Swat. Expansion of agriculture has mainly been achieved at the expense of forested areas, with only negligible accounts of afforestation from 1968 to 2007. We conclude that despite frequent claims of forest increase in Swat, the valuable coniferous forest has significantly decreased, frequently leading to land degradation. The current trend is therefore alarming and calls for increased policy action to increase protection of the remaining forest resources which otherwise might follow a similar fate. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Pakistan is facing problem of deforestation. Pakistan lost 14.7% of its forest habitat between 1990 and 2005 interval. This paper assesses the present forest wood consumption rate by 6000 brick kilns established in the country and its implications in terms of deforestation and emission of greenhouse gases. Information regarding consumption of forest wood by the brick kilns was collected during a manual survey of 180 brick kiln units conducted in eighteen provincial divisions of country. Considering annual emission contributions of three primary GHGs i.e., CO2, CH4 and N2O, due to burning of forest wood in brick kiln units in Pakistan and using IPCC recommended GWP indices, the combined CO2-equivalent has been estimated to be 533019 t y−1. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study attempts to identify the enablers that play an important role in the uptake of energy efficient cookstoves (EECs) in Chitral, Pakistan. For this purpose, primary data were collected from 390 households distributed across 20 villages. The ordered logit model is used to analyze the factors affecting the uptake of EECs in the study area. The findings show that the education level of the household head, landholding by the household, presence of organizations working to promote EECs, and media campaigns promoting EECs have a statistically significant influence on the uptake of EECs. Of these factors, the presence of NGO promoting EECs has the largest influence on EEC adoption as it increases the probability of switching from traditional cookstoves to EECs by 20.5% points. Media campaigns for promoting EECs increase the probability of switching to EECs by 14% points. The study concludes that socio-cultural and economic variables as well as efficient dissemination of information and promotion of EECs have a statistically significant relationship with the uptake of improved and clean cooking technology. Based on the findings, the study recommends that, to ensure successful dissemination, local needs and preferences of users of the area be taken into account when designing an EEC program. • Using biomass for cooking and heating is mainly responsible for global forest depletion and burden of diseases. • Large-scale initiatives were globally taken for the dissemination of energy efficient stoves. • The paper examines the adoption of energy efficient cookstoves in northwest Pakistan. • The study uses ordered logit model for analysis. • The results confirm that socio-economic variables have significant influence on adoption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]