Journal of Resources,Energy and Development

Energy is a crucial ingredient in the socio-economic development of any country. This paper examines whether a developing country like Nepal can achieve the development objectives specified under its Tenth Five-year Plan (2002–07) in terms of energy requirements. In this regard, an IO (input–output) analysis was carried out to study the energy demand by the different economic sectors as outlined in the Tenth Five-year Plan. This analysis indicates that Nepal’s total energy demand cannot be met by the existing energy policy and the unsustainable supply sources. Alternative energy sources can play a vital role in meeting the deficit energy demand as these sources need less time and cost for installation and energy extraction, and are sustainable. One of the possibilities could be community-based initiatives like smallscale or micro hydropower schemes at the local level, which would mobilize social capital and conserve ecological resources, as well as enhance their sustainability in the long term.

South Asia, with its burgeoning population density and poverty on the one hand, and rapid urbanization and industrialization on the other, seems to be facing an impending water crisis. This crisis is not due to water shortage, but due to conflicts over water use at various levels. The governments in the region have neglected the knowledge base needed to research water systems management and deal with these conflicts. The paper stresses that only a transdisciplinary approach, including the engineering and medical sciences, along with social, political, and economic expertise, can help in poverty alleviation and development. Eventually, the paper traces the knowledge gaps in water systems management in South Asia and sets forth a research agenda based on the emergent paradigm of integrated water resources management.

There is a commonly held view that countries heavily dependent on trade incur some welfare loss when environmental regulations, standards, and protocols are introduced. There is an alternative argument that environmental regulations act as incentives to innovate and improve trade efficiency and competitiveness. The empirical findings on both these hypotheses are quite mixed, both at the international and Indian context. There is a serious methodological problem in aggregating a diverse set of environmental regulations in a time-related index of environmental stringency. Econometric investigation of the impact of environmental regulations on India’s tea exports reveals a negative effect, while the export of leather goods seems to have internalized this non-trade barrier to its comparative advantage. The real challenge is faced by primary exports, as they may not be able to internalize the environmental compliance costs in the short run.

Ensuring or enhancing the security of humans from environmental hazards has been a significant agenda of environmental practitioners in the recent years. Some of these hazards are not visible and may be of a semipermanent or permanent nature. Subsurface fires in coal mining regions threaten human security, both directly indirectly, because in developing countries mining regions are densely inhabited and urbanized. Often, the existence of the fire is detected only after the damage is done. This article links the risk of subsurface coal fires and human security issues by identifying and locating villages in a coal mining region in eastern India. For this purpose, Landsat thermal data (Landsat-5 TM6) of April 1997 has been used in combination with official statistics to locate the buried hot features in order to calculate the number of people at risk in this densely populated mining-industrial-urban belt. The populations and the occupational characteristics of the fire-affected villages have been sourced from the latest available Census 2001 data and their significance discussed. Finally, some recommendations are made for improving human security in the fire-prone coal mining regions of India.