This Policy Note discusses the status of
Forestry in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MNA) of
the Bank. The Policy Note is a product of the FAO Investment
Center in Rome, the International Food Policy Research
Institute (IFPRI) and the Bank. Experience in natural
resource management shows that to adequately address
sustainable development, solutions must go beyond any single
sector, and be cross-sectoral. They must also go beyond

A major problem in the Europe and
Central Asia (ECA) agricultural sector and rural areas
during the transition was the breakdown of the relationships
of farms with input suppliers and output markets. The
simultaneous privatization and restructuring of the farms
and of the up- and downstream companies in the agrifood
chain have caused major disruptions. The result is that many
farms and rural households face serious constraints in

This note deals with the extent to
which, and the means by which, project level distributional
analysis of benefits can be undertaken and how poverty
impact indicators can be developed. Section 1 sets out the
issues associated with using traditional cost benefit
analysis for the appraisal of pro-poor projects. Section 2
discusses the techniques and analysis available to consider
the distributional consequences of a transport change,

States can do much to tap
community-level energies, and resources for development, if
they seek to interact more synergistically with local
communities. The broader spin-off is creating a
developmental society, and polity. Using case studies from
Asia and Latin America, the authors show how: 1) State
efforts to bring about land reform, tenancy reform, and
expanding non-crop sources of income, can broaden the

The authors examine the performance of the crop insurance scheme in Karnataka, a southern state of India and the second driest state in the country. Their analysis highlights weaknesses in product design, implementation challenges, and operational problems. The authors' finding is that the crop insurance scheme in its current form does not achieve its objectives, either explicit (risk management) or implicit (safety net and containment of both the central and state governments' contingent liability).

Critical choices must now be made if
growth is to be sustained. Significant potential exists for
future growth, but bringing out this potential poses a major
challenge for government policy. Agricultural strategy must
shift its focus towards support for continuous productivity
growth by peasant farms in a conducive marketing
environment. Key priorities include completion of land
reforms (especially in the North); fundamental restructuring

The study develops a new method to
measure the impacts of climate change on agriculture called
the Agro-Ecological Zone (AEZ) Model. A multinomial logit is
estimated to predict the probability of each AEZ in each
district. The average percentage of cropland and average
crop net revenue are calculated for each AEZ. Then an
estimate of the amount of cropland in Africa and where it is
located is provided. Using current conditions, the model

The study focuses on analyzing and
assessing some main features of the situation and the
implementation results of Comprehensive Poverty Reduction
and Growth Strategy (CPRGS) in order to identify major
challenges for economic growth and poverty reduction, which
will serve as the basis for the proposal of policy framework
to overcome the challenges as well as achieve the basic
targets for economic growth and poverty reduction in the

For Rwanda, one of the poorest countries in the world, trade offers the most effective route for substantial poverty reduction. But the poor in Rwanda, most of whom are subsistence farmers in rural areas, are currently disconnected from markets and commercial activities by extremely high transport costs and by severe constraints on their ability to shift out of subsistence farming. The constraints include lack of access to credit and lack of access to information on the skills and techniques required to produce commercial crops.

Concerns about the sustainability of
conventional agriculture have prompted widespread
introduction of integrated pest management (IPM), an
ecologically-based approach to control of harmful insects
and weeds. IPM is intended to reduce ecological and health
damage from chemical pesticides by using natural parasites
and predators to control pest populations. Since chemical
pesticides are expensive for poor farmers, IPM offers the

The fisheries and aquaculture sectors are significant contributors to the economy of Vietnam. Direct production value (at the farm gate or on the wharf) in 2003 was approximately $1.7 billion. Both sectors have expanded rapidly over the past decade, with marine fisheries production rising from 800,000 to 1.5 million tons over the period 1990 to 2003. Aquaculture production has increased rapidly to around one million tons, while inland fisheries contribute in excess of 200,000 tons.

Over the past five years in Turkey, the
agricultural and rural sector has seen substantial change in
transfer policies which now place greater emphasis on
improved equity and investment. These have been summarized
in the earlier World Bank "Review of the Impact of the
Reform of Agricultural Sector Subsidization (2004), and
"Policy and Investment Priorities for Agricultural and
Rural Development" (2005). Currently, the structural