In the event of global climate change,
agriculture will be one of the worst-hit sectors in
Bangladesh. Increasing global temperatures, rising sea
levels, and melting polar ice caps result in land
submergence, salinity intrusion, drought, and so on all of
which drastically impact agricultural productivity and
therefore food security and the livelihoods of millions of
people in the affected regions. Bangladesh, a low-lying

The country water resources assistance
strategy for Zambia provides an analysis of the role of
water in the economy and identifies the specific challenges,
development opportunities and policies which inform an
agreed framework for priority areas of assistance. Zambia
lies entirely within the catchments of the Zambezi and Congo
rivers and all internal runoff is shared by downstream and
parallel riparian countries. This strategic geographic

Policy makers and development
practitioners who are responsible for developing investment
strategies to promote economic growth find many challenges
in the changing face of agriculture in the twenty-first
century. In addition to its productive role of providing
food, clothing, fuel, and housing for a growing world
population, agriculture assumes other roles, the importance
of which has more recently been recognized. In addition to

This paper develops a methodology for
regional disaggregated estimation and mapping of the areas
that are ex-ante the most vulnerable to the impacts of
climate change and variability and applies it to Tajikistan,
a mountainous country highly vulnerable to the impacts of
climate change. The authors construct the vulnerability
index as a function of exposure to climate variability and
natural disasters, sensitivity to the impacts of that

There have been important changes in the
budgeting process in Vietnam since 2006 when the government
of Vietnam instituted a revolutionary reform in the
management and allocation of the state budget. For the
period of 2007-2010, the norms include ethnic minority
population data, and poverty rates. The purpose of this
research assignment is to describe the evolution of
budgeting mechanisms in recent years, in association with

This paper examines the impacts of
weather shocks, defined as rainfall or growing degree days
more than a standard deviation from their respective
long-run means, on household consumption per capita and
child height-for-age. The results reveal that the current
risk-coping mechanisms are not effective in protecting these
two dimensions of welfare from erratic weather patterns.
These findings imply that the change in the patterns of

During the past several months, the
Ministry of Environment, Housing and Territorial Development
of Colombia has been researching potential indicators that
would be useful to assess and possibly adopt among which
included the ecological footprint. This work was
commissioned in order to provide the Ministry with a deeper
understanding of the ecological footprint and to train a
number of its staff on the scope of the footprint in order

Little is known about the situation
facing widows and their dependent children in West Africa
especially after the widow remarries. Women in Malian
society are vulnerable to the loss of husbands especially in
rural areas. Households headed by widows have significantly
lower living standards on average than male or other female
headed households in both rural and urban areas; this holds
both unconditionally and conditional on observable household

This first World Bank for Results report
provides the Bank's shareholders, partners, and
external stakeholders with an integrated view of results and
performance in recent years. It serves as a companion to the
World Bank Corporate Scorecard. Aggregating results that
countries have achieved with Bank support against the
backdrop of global development results, the report also
assesses operational and organizational performance at the

Wastewater use in agriculture is a
growing practice worldwide. Drivers include increasing water
stress, in part due to climate change; increasing
urbanization and growing wastewater flows; and more urban
households engaged in agricultural activities. The problem
with this trend is that in low-income countries, but also in
many middle-income countries, it either involves the direct
use of untreated wastewater or the indirect use of polluted

Lesotho began a structural economic
transformation in the early 1990s. The transformation has
brought higher, more secure incomes to households while the
government succeeded in dramatically improving access to
services such as education, health, water, and
transportation. Yet today, Lesotho faces a number of serious
development challenges, including a high rate of chronic
poverty, entrenched income inequality, and most troubling

This country note for Macedonia is part
of a series of country briefs that summarize information
relevant to climate change and agriculture for four pilot
countries in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Region, with
a particular focus on climate and crop projections,
adaptation options, policy development and institutional
involvement. The note series has been developed to provide a
baseline of knowledge on climate change and agriculture for