EEU - Academic Capacity Building 2016-2019 (Continue)

Close to 50 PhD graduates (including the four PhD students of UCT) in the area of environmental economic analysis is an important result of this intervention. This scientific capacity is urgently needed in low-income countries in order to tackle environmental challenges. According to EEU, all graduates have continued to do relevant work on environmental analysis, and most of them (86 percent) have returned to their home regions.  The programme set-up at the EEU has been possible thanks to a strong academic faculty. Six full professors, six associate professors, and a number of assistant professors/post-doctoral researchers have been directly involved in teaching and supervision. The faculty staff publishes in highly ranked field journals in environmental economics, and conduct research both with current PhD students and with former graduates. This has furnished an environment of high academic standard for the PhD students. It has arguably also served as an academic role-model for the graduates in their future careers at home institutions and elsewhere.  There is no room in this brief summary assessment to list all the concrete research results produced by participating graduate students in the programme. However, issues addressed in two of the most recent PhD-theses illustrate the type of findings emerging from research in this field:  Eyoual Demeke (together with Yonas Alem) investigates energy poverty in urban Ethiopia. They show that energy poverty tends to be persistent among the urban poor, and is often related to price increases in kerosene. Such increases also tend to lead to higher consumption of charcoal with serious environmental, climate, and health consequences. The findings have implications for policies to reduce energy poverty, conserve biomass resources, and promote energy transition. Samson Mukajari from Zimbabwe explores the effects of the Paris Climate Agreement from 2015. One of his papers (with Thomas Sterner) studies the distributional implications of two different ways of strengthening the Paris Agreement: either by incorporating carbon pricing or through tightening nationally determined contributions (NDCs; national goals for greenhouse gas emissions reductions). The results suggest that both carbon pricing and tightened NDCs are viable mechanisms that are less extreme and therefore more acceptable than so called grandfathering, which favors the most fossil-intensive economies, or equal per capita allocation, which favors low-income countries that use less fossil fuel.

The Sida-funded PhD programme in Global Change and Climate Economics (previously Environmental and Development Economics) has its origins in support to PhD training at Göteborg University (GU) of students from low-income countries in the early 1990s. Since 1997, there has been a full-fledged PhD-programme in environmental economics at the Environmental Economics Unit (EEU) at the Department of Economics at GU. The overall objective of Sida's support has been to build long-term academic and institutional capacity in developing countries, in the area of economic analysis of natural resources and ecosystems.  The programme has trained PhD students to carry out policy relevant research, and to teach and give policy advice, in order to transform societies towards an inclusive green and sustainable future. Specifically, the programme has included training in (i) analysis of the underlying reasons for environmental degradation and negative poverty-environmental links, (ii) evaluation of the impact on welfare, the costs of degradation and the benefits of sound environmental management, and (iii) design of cost-effective approaches and efficient instruments to deal with these problems.  The programme has on average recruited five new students every other year until 2014. 45 PhD’s from 17 low-income countries will have graduated at GU by 2020. The gender balance has been roughly equal throughout the full programme period. The original programme support was extended to the 2016-19 period in order to enable the then 13 enrolled PhD students to complete their training. During the final year (2019) three PhD students remained enrolled, of which two defended their PhD theses during 2019 and early 2020, and one is expected to finalize his thesis in 2020. The PhD programme has been designed to provide the students with a strong base in economics in general and in environmental- and climate change economics in particular. The first year has consisted of course work in the general field of economic analysis, followed by a unique sequence of specialization courses in environmental, climate and natural resource economics during the second year. These courses have also been offered to other students from low-income countries (more than 300 PhD students from other countries have taken one or more of the specialization courses). Special data collection grants have supported the students’ subsequent thesis work, and provided opportunity for students to interact with their home institutions. Supervision has mainly been done by EEU staff, but has often also involved previous graduates “in the field”. Back from field work, students have continued collaboration with faculty members, who have supported students in their data analysis, academic writing, and publication efforts. The programme has also funded four PhD-students enrolled at the School of Economics, University of Cape Town (UCT). The collaboration between GU and UCT has been part of the programme's efforts to strengthen so called South - South collaboration and academic capacity in low-income countries. These students have pursued most of their training at UCT, but they have also come to Sweden for the specialization courses. Four students are expected to graduate at UCT in 2020.   The PhD programme is part of the Sida funded Environmental Economics Programme (EEP) at the EEU at GU. The programme also includes the Environment for Development Initiative (EfD). The latter, which came into existence roughly around 2007, is a network for cross-country research collaboration, research-policy interaction and academic training, based at a number of research centres around the world. The overall objective of the centres is to support poverty alleviation and sustainable development in policy processes, particularly in low-income countries. The central EfD secretariat, with administrative functions, is hosted by the Swedish centre at the Department of Economics at GU, while the other EfD centres are found in Costa Rica, Chile, China, Colombia, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Vietnam.