Escaping the Energy Poverty Trap
Escaping the Energy Poverty Trap

Author: Michael Aklin

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-11-27

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0262535866

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The first comprehensive political science account of energy poverty, arguing that governments can improve energy access for their citizens through appropriate policy design. In today's industrialized world, almost everything we do consumes energy. While industrialized countries enjoy all the amenities of modern energy, more than a billion people in the developing world still lack energy access. Why is energy poverty persistent in some countries and not in others? Offering the first comprehensive political science account of energy poverty, Escaping the Energy Poverty Trap explores why governments have or have not been able to lead in providing modern energy to their least advantaged citizens. Focusing on access to modern cooking fuels and household electrification, the authors develop a new political-economic theory that introduces government interest, institutional capacity, and local accountability as key determinants of energy access. They draw on case studies from India, East Asia, Africa, and Latin America to offer the optimistic conclusion that governments can improve institutional capacity and local accountability through appropriate policy design. Energy poverty is a policy problem, the authors assert, and engaging with it as such offers new opportunities not only for ensuring equal energy access, but also for political, economic, and environmental development.

Escaping the Poverty Trap
Escaping the Poverty Trap

Author: Amartya Sen

Publisher: IDB

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9781931003568

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Basing their discussions on the concept of "intergenerational transmission of poverty"--the "process by which poor parents pass on poverty and disadvantage to their children," in the words of editor Moran (until recently a senior economist with the International Development Bank's Sustainable Development Department)--five essays reflect on political, philosophical, social, and other dimensions of investing in early childhood in Latin America. The essays include Amartya Sen's discussion of early childhood investment within the context of the overall development process, as well explorations of the relationship between health, nutrition, and cognitive and social dimensions of poverty; the impact of early childhood investment on economic growth and equity; and the role of the state in marshalling resources for early childhood investment. Distributed by Johns Hopkins U. Press. Annotation : 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Energy and Environment in India
Energy and Environment in India

Author: Johannes Urpelainen

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2023-07-04

Total Pages: 131

ISBN-13: 0231551029

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India is driving some of the most important trends in global energy markets—with vast environmental implications. As the country grows wealthier, Indians are buying more cars, air conditioners, plane tickets, and other goods that increase demand for fossil fuels. At the same time, the country still faces widespread poverty, and it struggles to address persistent environmental and energy-sector problems, from frequent power outages to a significant number of deaths linked to air pollution. Johannes Urpelainen provides an expert guide to India’s energy and environmental issues that incorporates both domestic and global perspectives. He details how unequal economic development and rapid population growth have brought the country to its current state: a potential engine of the world economy hampered by environmental hazards and energy poverty. Urpelainen argues that institutional shortcomings have led wealthier Indians to find private solutions that protect them from threats such as air pollution and heat waves, but exclude the poor. The retreat of the rich limits the state’s ability to regulate the energy sector or address environmental degradation. Urpelainen examines India’s most severe environmental crises, considering how climate disruptions are affecting the country’s present and future. He analyzes India’s role in global environmental politics and assesses the prospects of achieving a more sustainable society. Useful and accessible, this book also offers pragmatic solutions to help overcome the constraints on effective energy and environmental policy.

Poverty Traps
Poverty Traps

Author: Samuel Bowles

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2016-05-31

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0691170932

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Much popular belief--and public policy--rests on the idea that those born into poverty have it in their power to escape. But the persistence of poverty and ever-growing economic inequality around the world have led many economists to seriously question the model of individual economic self-determination when it comes to the poor. In Poverty Traps, Samuel Bowles, Steven Durlauf, Karla Hoff, and the book's other contributors argue that there are many conditions that may trap individuals, groups, and whole economies in intractable poverty. For the first time the editors have brought together the perspectives of economics, economic history, and sociology to assess what we know--and don't know--about such traps. Among the sources of the poverty of nations, the authors assign a primary role to social and political institutions, ranging from corruption to seemingly benign social customs such as kin systems. Many of the institutions that keep nations poor have deep roots in colonial history and persist long after their initial causes are gone. Neighborhood effects--influences such as networks, role models, and aspirations--can create hard-to-escape pockets of poverty even in rich countries. Similar individuals in dissimilar socioeconomic environments develop different preferences and beliefs that can transmit poverty or affluence from generation to generation. The book presents evidence of harmful neighborhood effects and discusses policies to overcome them, with attention to the uncertainty that exists in evaluating such policies.

Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures
Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures

Author: Majia Nadesan

Publisher: Academic Press

Published: 2022-09-29

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 0128227974

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Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures explores how our dominant carbon and nuclear energy assemblages shape conceptions of participation, risk, and in/securities, and how they might be reengineered to deliver justice and democratic participation in transitioning energy systems. Chapters assess the economies, geographies and politics of current and future energy landscapes, exposing how dominant assemblages (composed of technologies, strategies, knowledge and authorities) change our understanding of security and risk, and how they these shared understandings are often enacted uncritically in policy. Contributors address integral relationships across the production and government of material and human energies and the opportunities for sustainable and democratic governance. In addition, the book explores how interest groups advance idealized energy futures and energy imaginaries. The work delves into the role that states, market organizations and civil society play in envisioned energy change. It assesses how risks and security are formulated in relation to economics, politics, ecology, and human health. It concludes by integrating the relationships between alternative energies and governance strategies, including issues of centralization and decentralization, suggesting approaches to engineer democracy into decision-making about energy assemblages. - Explores descriptive and normative relationships between energy and democracy - Reviews how changing energy demand and governance threaten democracies and democratic institutions - Identifies what participative energy transformations look like when paired with energy security - Reviews what happens to social, economic and political infrastructures in the process of achieving sustainable and democratic transitions

One Illness Away
One Illness Away

Author: Anirudh Krishna

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2010-08-26

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0191625043

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Why does poverty persist? A critical, but so far ignored, part of the answer lies in the fact that poverty is regularly created. Large numbers of people are escaping poverty, but large numbers are concurrently falling into chronic poverty. This book presents the first large-scale examination of the reasons why people fall into poverty and how they escape it in diverse contexts. Drawing upon personal interviews with 35,000 households in different parts of India, Kenya, Uganda, Peru, and the United States, it takes you on an illustrative journey, filled with facts, analyses, and the life stories of people who fell into abject poverty and others who managed to escape their seemingly predetermined fates. Letting a farmhand's son or daughter remain a farmhand, even though she or he is potentially the next Einstein, is a tragedy that poor people witness time after time. Remedying this situation is crucial for making poverty history. This book addresses how equal opportunity can be promoted and how slum-born millionaires can arise in reality. Speaking to Barack Obama's message for more effective health care, One Illness Away feeds directly into current public debates. Learning from thousands of individual experiences, this book presents a clear agenda for action and provides more effective ways of keeping people out of micro poverty traps.

From Poverty to Power
From Poverty to Power

Author: Duncan Green

Publisher: Oxfam

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 540

ISBN-13: 0855985933

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Offers a look at the causes and effects of poverty and inequality, as well as the possible solutions. This title features research, human stories, statistics, and compelling arguments. It discusses about the world we live in and how we can make it a better place.

Winning Together
Winning Together

Author: Bruno Verdini Trejo

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2017-12-15

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0262534371

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Strategies for transboundary natural resource management; winner of Harvard Law School's Raiffa Award for best research of the year in negotiation and conflict resolution. Transboundary natural resource negotiations, often conducted in an atmosphere of entrenched mistrust, confrontation, and deadlock, can go on for decades. In this book, Bruno Verdini outlines an approach by which government, private sector, and nongovernmental stakeholders can overcome grievances, break the status quo, trade across differences, and create mutual gains in high-stakes water, energy, and environmental negotiations. Verdini examines two landmark negotiations between the United States and Mexico. The two cases—one involving conflict over shared hydrocarbon reservoirs in the Gulf of Mexico and the other involving disputes over the shared waters of the Colorado River—resulted in groundbreaking agreements in 2012, after decades of deadlock. Drawing on his extensive interviews with more than seventy high-ranking negotiators in the United States and Mexico—from presidents and ambassadors to general managers, technical experts, and nongovernmental advocates—Verdini offers detailed accounts from multiple points of view, on both sides of the border. He unpacks the negotiation, leadership, collaborative decision-making, and political communication strategies that made agreement possible. Building upon the theoretical and empirical findings, Verdini offers advice for practitioners on effective negotiation and dispute resolution strategies that avoid the presumption that there are not enough resources to go around, and that one side must win and the other must inevitably lose. This investigation is the winner of Harvard Law School's Howard Raiffa Award for best research of the year in negotiation, mediation, decision-making, and dispute resolution.

The Paradox of Scale
The Paradox of Scale

Author: Cristina M. Balboa

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-11-20

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0262038773

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An examination of why NGOs often experience difficulty creating lasting change, with case studies of transnational conservation organizations in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Why do nongovernmental organizations face difficulty creating lasting change? How can they be more effective? In this book, Cristina Balboa examines NGO authority, capacity, and accountability to propose that a “paradox of scale” is a primary barrier to NGO effectiveness. This paradox—when what gives an NGO authority on one scale also weakens its authority on another scale—helps explain how NGOs can be seen as an authority on particular causes on a global scale, but then fail to effect change at the local level. Drawing on case studies of transnational conservation organizations in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, The Paradox of Scale explores how NGOs build, maintain, and lose authority over time. Balboa sets a new research agenda for the study of governance, offering practical concepts and analysis to help NGO practitioners. She introduces the concept of authority as a form of legitimated power, explaining why it is necessary for NGOs to build authority at multiple scales when they create, implement, or enforce rules. Examining the experiences of Conservation International in Papua New Guinea, International Marinelife Alliance in the Philippines, and the Community Conservation Network in Palau, Balboa explains how a paradox of scale can develop even for those NGOs that seem powerful and effective. Interdisciplinary in its approach, The Paradox of Scaleoffers guidance for interpreting the actions and pressures accompanying work with NGOs, showing why even the most authoritative NGOs often struggle to make a lasting impact.