abstract West Africa's rice imports currently satisfy 70% of the soaring local demand,
worsening the food vulnerability of an increasingly urbanized population. Despite
considerable rice-growing potential, lack of water control systems, access to improved
seeds, agrochemicals and appropriate mechanization have resulted in modest production
growth rates, unable to alter the region's dependency on imported rice. Governments aim to
boost production with import duties and input subsidies. However, questions remain as to …

Dams can produce electricity and ensure water security, but at the same time they radically
alter the hydrological regime of rivers with significant consequences for the economic and
environmental welfare of the region in which they are located. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is
currently the most frequently used framework for the economic evaluations of dams.
Changes at different time scales influence the economic appraisal of dams. However,
change and adaptation at both the operational and the structural level are often not included …

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs are now high in number, if not always in
impact. When groups of users pay groups of service providers, establishing PES involves
collective action. We study the creation of collective PES institutions, and their continuation,
as group coordination. We use framed lab-in-field experiments with hydroservices users and
providers within watersheds participating in Mexico's Matching Funds program in Veracruz,
Yucatan and Quintana Roo states. We explore the coordination of contributions between …

abstract Standard hydroeconomic policy models are usually applied to areas in the world
where precipitation is very low and crops are fully irrigated. As such, these models pool the
annual stored precipitation plus other water supplies and assume that this total water supply
can be allocated by time and place. This water pooling approach treats precipitation and
irrigation water as fully substitutable. In many irrigated areas, however, a significant amount
of water used by crops comes from precipitation. In fact the majority of the global irrigation …

Because the main modes of transmission of the COVID-19 virus are respiration and contact,
WHO recommends frequent washing of hands with soap under running water for at least 20
s. This article investigates how the level of concern about COVID-19 affects the likelihood of
washing hands frequently in sub-Saharan Africa. We discuss the implication of the findings
for waterscarce environment. The study makes use of a unique survey dataset from 12 sub-
Saharan African countries collected in April 2020 (first round) and May 2020 (second round) …