Facing a huge fiscal burden due to
imports of entire petroleum despite the availability of a
surplus of agricultural land to produce biofuels, Zambia, a
country in Sub-Saharan Africa, has recently introduced a
biofuel mandate. But, a number of questions, particularly
those related to the economics of biofuels, have not been
fully investigated yet. Using an empirical model this study
analyzes the economics of meeting the biodiesel mandate

Ghana, like many other African
countries, had made a commitment in 2003 to allocate at
least ten percent of their national budgetary resources to
develop the agricultural sector by 2008, following the
adoption of the Comprehensive African Agriculture
Development Programme (CAADP), with an aim towards realizing
food security and poverty reduction. This Agriculture Public
Expenditure Review (AgPER) for Ghana analyzes data on public

The consequences of climate change for
agriculture and food security in developing countries are of
serious concern. Due to their reliance on rain-fed
agriculture, both as a source of income and consumption,
many low-income countries are considered to be the most
vulnerable to climate change. This paper estimates the
impact of climate change on food security in Tanzania.
Representative climate projections are used in calibrated

Transforming agriculture in Africa is
not simply about helping Africa; it is essential for
ensuring global food security. But Africa s agriculture is
also of critical importance when it comes to meeting the
world s future needs for food and fiber. With the global
population expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050, food
security producing enough food of sufficient quality and
making it accessible and affordable for consumers around the

This report evaluates the requirements
for an assessment of climate change impacts on agriculture
to guide policy makers on investment priorities and phasing.
Because agriculture is vital for national food security and
is a strong contributor to Brazil's GDP growth, there
is growing concern that Brazilian agriculture is
increasingly vulnerable to climate variability and change.
To meet national development, food security, climate

With farms cultivating tens or hundreds
of thousands of hectares, Ukraine is often used to
demonstrate the existence of economies of scale in modern
grain production. Panel data analysis for all the
country's farms with more than 200 hectares in
2001-2011 suggests that higher yields and profits are due to
unobserved factors at rayon (district) and farm level rather
than economies of scale. Productivity growth was driven not

Kazakhstan aspires to become one of the
world s 30 most developed economies by 2050. The focus is on
laying the basis for the accelerated diversification of the
economy through industrialization and infrastructure
development, including enhancing human capital to drive
innovation and economic efficiency. This country economic
memorandum report adopts an analytical framework that looks
into options that will be explored to help authorities think

As the wild tiger population in tropical
Asia dropped from about 100,000 to 3,500 in the last
century, the need to conserve tiger habitats poses a
challenge for the Global Tiger Recovery Program. This paper
develops and uses a high-resolution monthly forest clearing
database for 74 tiger habitat areas in ten countries to
investigate habitat threats for Bengal, Indochinese, Malayan
and Sumatran tigers. The econometric model links forest

The Congo Basin has the largest forest
cover on the African continent. Of the 400 million hectares
that the Basin comprises, about 200 million of them are
covered by forest, with 90 percent being tropical dense
forests. The Congo Basin's logging sector has a
dualistic configuration. It boasts a highly visible formal
sector that is export oriented and dominated by large
industrial groups with foreign capital and an informal

This paper contains an initial
reconnaissance of the situation in Yunfu, prior to the
NanGuang project construction. It provides a brief overview
of the trajectory of economic development in Yunfu from an
economy that was dominated by primary industries to that by
secondary industries. The development of local transport
infrastructure is reviewed, as is the more detailed
structure of local industries, with special emphasis on

Natural resource abundance can lead to
strong economic growth if resource rents are well invested
in physical assets and other forms of productive capital.
This paper focuses on the case of the resource-abundant
economies in Eurasia, which has been less documented in the
literature on natural resource-led development than other
parts of the world. The analysis shows that the stock of
productive physical assets is relatively low, contrary to

This paper presents simulations for the
period 2013-2030 of measures that permit increased spending
on infrastructure and human development, the priority areas
in Liberia's 2013-2017 "Agenda for
Transformation" and for its national vision, Liberia
Rising 2030. The simulations are carried out with a Liberian
version of MAMS (Maquette for Millennium Development Goals
Simulations), a Computable General Equilibrium model.