Fuelwood Consumption and Forest Degradation: A Household Model for Domestic Energy Substitution in Rural India

Abstract

This paper discusses domestic energy supply and demand in rural India. Links between forest scarcity and household fuel collection are analyzed in a non-separable household model, focusing on substitution of non-commercial fuels from the commons and the private domain. Based on data from villages bordering a protected area, a novel maximum entropy approach is used for estimation. It is found that households respond to forest scarcity and increased fuelwood collection time by substituting fuels from private sources for forest fuelwood. However, the magnitude of the response appears insufficient to prevent current fuelwood collection practices from causing serious forest degradation.