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This paper aims to provide a comprehensive review and analysis of the potential impacts of Small-scale Renewable Energy Technologies (SRETs) in reducing deforestation, forest degradation and carbon emissions in the Eastern African region. A systematic review approach was used to select, critically analyze and synthesize findings of various studies in the region. The review showed that SRETs, if efficiently and uninterruptedly used, could significantly reduce household consumptions of traditional biomass and fossil fuels, and hence, can reduce deforestation, forest degradation and carbon emissions from biomass energy use at household levels. The FAO charcoal to dry wood conversion rate and the IPCC conversion factor of fuelwood from dry weight to CO 2 equivalent were used to estimate potential wood fuel and CO 2 e emissions savings. Our conservative estimates based on the analysis of the evidence indicated that domestic biogas and improved cook stoves distributed up to now have a combined potential of saving 0.307–3.100 million tons of wood fuel and 0.562–5.673 million tons of CO 2 e emissions per country per year. However, when compared to the annual biomass energy consumptions of each country, the potential wood fuel savings from the biogas plants and improved cooks-stoves disseminated so far do not appear to offset more than 7.2% of the national demands of the respective countries. The review suggests that building on the household level positive results for scale and lasting impact at national and regional levels requires addressing key policy, technical, financial and sectoral integration barriers. • Utilization of small-scale renewable energy technologies is growing in East Africa. • Use of clean energy could reduce household carbon footprint and reducing wood consumption. • At local level the impact of domestic biogas and improved cook-stoves is promising. • At wider geographic level the impact of the technologies is limited and undeveloped. • Achieving greater environmental benefits entails addressing critical barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has become an issue of concern for sustainable agriculture production. East African nations are heavily reliant on the agriculture sector, which accounts for a substantial amount of their gross domestic product (GDP) and employment. Due to climatic fluctuations, the output of the sector became very unpredictable. Hence, this study investigates the effects of climate change on cereal crop production in nine East African nations between 1990 and 2018. The study implemented pooled mean group (PMG) approach to examine the long-run and short-run dynamic impacts of the varying climatic circumstances on the output of cereal crops. The results reveal that rainfall and carbon emissions have favourable and significant long-run effects on cereal crop output, even though their short-run impacts are negligible. Additionally, cultivated land area and rural population have a constructive role in enhancing agricultural output both in the long-run and short-run. However, average temperatures have negative repercussions on cereal crop production in the long-run and short-run, even though the magnitude of sensitivity is greater in the short-run. Dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) validated the robustness of the long-run findings of the PMG technique. Besides, the Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel causality outcomes indicate that cereal crop output has a bidirectional causality with temperature, carbon emissions, and cropped area. The study further demonstrated unidirectional causation from rural population to cereal crop yield. The study recommends that East African policymakers improve the quality of farm inputs, the adoption of climate-resilient farming practices, the development of water retention facilities and the establishment of crop diversification initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• CO 2 emissions in East Africa are growing exponentially at 6.5% per year. • The process of energy clean-up is slow with little emission reduction. • Economic and population growth are the most significant emission drivers. • Emission patterns and drivers vary significantly from country to country. • Locally tailored emission reductions are needed. East Africa is typical of the less developed economies that have emerged since the 21st century, whose brilliant economic miracle has also triggered the rapid growth of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. However, previous carbon accounting studies have never focused on the region. Based on multi-source data, this paper rebuilt the 45-sectors carbon emission inventories of eight East African countries from 2000 to 2017, and used index decomposition analysis to quantify the drivers of growth. Here we found that overall the CO 2 emissions show a 'two-stage exponential growth' pattern, with significant heterogeneity between countries. In terms of the energy mix, technical progress in hydro and geothermal energy was almost offset by a growing appetite for oil and coal, making it the weak and valuable factor driving emissions reduction (−1.4Mt). But it was far from enough to overcome the pressure of economic and population growth, which brought about a 13Mt and 11Mt emission growth respectively from 2000 to 2017. Increasing energy intensity due to industrialization and transport development also contributed to an increment of 6.4Mt. Low-carbon policies should be tailored to local conditions and targeted at the improvement of energy efficiency and use of renewable energy so as to achieve a win-win situation between sustainable economic growth and emission reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]