Resources, greenhouse gases, technology and jobs in India's informal economy the case of rice

This is a pilot project, under the ESRC-DFID’s Poverty Alleviation call, which was funded from October 2011 to June 2014 and in practice is ongoing. It seeks to contribute to research on low carbon transitions. It develops a set of micro-level methods which measure, integrate and examine existing and future trade-offs between economic, social and environmental aspects of sectors of the economy that are poorly regulated by the state, do not have good official statistics and must be researched through first-hand field-work in the informal economy.

 

Cross-cutting research on informality involved fieldwork on the informalisation of policy; on innovation in the informal economy; and on the ways informal workers make gains.

 

The methods - fusing Life Cycle assessment, Supply Chain Analysis and Multi-Criteria Mapping - can be usefully applied elsewhere, including in advanced economies.