The role of interacting social and institutional norms in stressed groundwater systems.

Groundwater resources play an important role for irrigation, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions, where groundwater depletion poses a critical threat to agricultural production and associated local livelihoods. However, the relationship between groundwater use, farming, and poverty, particularly with regards to informal mechanisms of resources management, remains poorly understood. Here, we assess this relationship by developing a behavioural model of groundwater user groups, empirically grounded in the politically fragile context of Tunisia.

Declining cost of renewables and climate change curb the need for African hydropower expansion.

Across continental Africa, more than 300 new hydropower projects are under consideration to meet the future energy demand that is expected based on the growing population and increasing energy access. Yet large uncertainties associated with hydroclimatic and socioeconomic changes challenge hydropower planning. In this work, we show that only 40 to 68% of the candidate hydropower capacity in Africa is economically attractive.

Assessing the time intervals between economic recessions.

Economic recessions occur with varying duration and intensity and may entail substantial losses in terms of GDP, employment, household income, and investment spending. In this work, we propose a statistical model for the time intervals between recessions that accounts for the state of the economy and the impact of market adjustments and regulatory changes. The model uses a generalized renewal process based on the Gumbel distribution (GuGRP) in which times between consecutive events are conditionally independent.