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This paper contributes to the debate on the determinants of deforestation, a menace that is posing threat to sustainable development particularly in tropical developing regions. Specifically, the paper focuses on the effect of energy justice and democratization. The main contribution to the literature hinges on the emphasis on energy justice - operationalized as rural-urban equality in access to electricity and clean fuels and technologies for cooking - and its interaction with democracy. Using a panel data of 47 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2000–2020 and the dynamic two-step generalized method of moment estimator, the results generally indicate that improvement in rural-urban equality in access to electricity and clean fuels and technologies for cooking is associated with a reduction in deforestation. Democracy is similarly found to be associated with reduction in deforestation. The conditional effect analysis largely depicts an intensified reducing effect of energy justice on deforestation in the presence of improved democratic practices. The results though robust to an alternative estimator, the Driscoll-Kraay estimator, differ when sub-regional analysis is considered. The paper aligns with the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Goals 7, 13, 15 and 16. • How energy justice and democratization contribute to deforestation is examined. • Energy justice is measured by rural-urban equality in modern energy access. • Participatory, deliberative, egalitarian, liberal and electoral democracy are used. • Improving rural-urban equality in access to modern energy reduces deforestation. • Improving democracy reduces deforestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In numerous countries of Sub-Saharan Africa the strategic agenda of the water-sector is undergoing substantial change because of demographic pressure, climate change and economic transformation. Two new policy questions are arising from the need to make better use of available groundwater storage to improve water-supply security: What is the scope for promoting much increased groundwater use for irrigated agriculture, and how might the investment risks be reduced and sustainable outcomes ensured? How can the demand to expand urban groundwater use, for both further supplementing municipal water-supply systems and for direct in situ water supply, be best channelled to maximise the benefits whilst minimising the risks? This 'new agenda' poses very different challenges from the long-standing requirement to provide rural water supplies of adequate coverage, reliability and quality (which, while still not yet fully addressed, is outside the scope of this paper). Balanced answers to these new questions are needed to provide a sound basis for appropriate investment policies on managed groundwater development and adequate institutional provisions for their implementation. They are discussed here from the standpoint of the GW-MATE experience in some World Bank-supported projects in eastern Africa during 2001-2010, together with a review of some developments in western Africa and insights from parts of Asia and Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]