The Impact of Forest Status on Households’ Fuel Choice in Uganda

Abstract

Forest firewood is a major source of household energy in Uganda. Firewood availability is strongly linked to forest status: degradation of the forest resource could force households to switch to other energy sources, which may be clean or dirty. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether a change in forest resource status induces a switch to cleaner (e.g., kerosene, LPG, solar and electricity), dirtier (e.g., firewood, animal-dung, crop-residue and charcoal), or a mix of clean and dirty sources. To this end, we combine socio-economic data from the Uganda National Panel Survey with high-resolution satellite data on forest status and model the relationship between energy source choice and forest status using the random-effects multinomial logit model under a Generalized Structural Equation Modeling (GSEM) framework. The results confirm that forest status significantly affects fuel choice. The presence of better forests is associated with a 6-7% lower probability of relying on a basket of dirty fuels that comprise wood fuels (firewood and charcoal) and non-wood fuels (crop-residue and animal-dung) and 6-8% higher likelihood of using mixed energy relative to non-vegetated areas. The magnitudes of the effects are higher on firewood and lower on charcoal separately. Efforts on maximizing forest social benefit through participatory forest conservation interventions taking the fuel stacking behavior into account are important.