The issue of regional differences in
development has moved to the center of the development
debate in Sri Lanka, partly after the release of regional
poverty data. For the past many years, there have been
significant and increasing differences between the Western
province and the rest of the country in terms of per capita
income levels, growth rates of per capita income, poverty
rates, and the structure of provincial economies. The

Over the last two decades Samoa has
suffered major damage from two cyclones in 1990-91, minor
damage from a third cyclone in 2004, and an earthquake
tsunami in 2009. Changes in the scale and impact of these
types of natural disasters are likely to be important
consequences of climate change for the country because the
increases in sea level and in average sea surface
temperatures will increase theintensity and damage

Ethiopia's rural non-farm sector is
significant and participation is increasing. The sector is
particularly important for women and poorer households.
Non-farm enterprises provide income-earning opportunities to
those lacking alternative options and supplementary income
for farming households. This report is organized into seven
chapters. The first chapter lays the analytical groundwork
for assessing the rural investment climate in Ethiopia and

The report is structured as follows.
Section one examines the contribution of the rural economy
to the national economy, the structure of the farm and
non-farm sectors and their relative importance. Section two
describes policies and constraints affecting the wider rural
economy including, reforms in macro-economic management,
recent external influences and financial services before
discussing those which relate specifically to agriculture

The challenges facing the water sector in Egypt are enormous and require the mobilization of all resources and the management of these resources in an integrated manner. Changes in the way water resources are currently allocated and managed are inevitable. Accordingly, a National Water Resources Plan for Egypt (NWRP) was launched. The NWRP is a comprehensive document which describes how Egypt will safeguard its water resources in the future, both with respect to quantity and quality, and how it will use these resources in the best way from a socio-economic and environmental point of view.

This paper examines the impacts of
natural disasters on schooling investments with special
focus on the roles of ex-ante actions and ex-post responses
using panel data from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Malawi. The
importance of ex-ante actions depends on disaster risks and
the likelihood of public assistance, which potentially
creates substitution between the two actions. The findings
show that higher future probabilities of disasters increase

This report was undertaken in the wake
of the Ketsana Disaster, to assess damage, losses, and
resource requirements for recovery. Typhoon Ketsana hit
Cambodia between September 29 and October 5, 2009. Fourteen
out of 24 provinces were affected by the storm and
subsequent flash floods. The report addresses macro-economic
impacts, livelihood and social impacts, disaster risk
management requirements, and recovery and reconstruction

Climate models generally indicate that
climate volatility may rise in the future, severely
affecting agricultural productivity through greater
frequency of yield-diminishing climate extremes, such as
droughts. For Tanzania, where agricultural production is
sensitive to climate, changes in climate volatility could
have significant implications for poverty. This study
assesses the vulnerability of Tanzania s population to

Agriculture is a small but stable part
of the Lebanese economy. Approximately 20 to 25 percent of
Lebanon's active population is involved in the sector
in one way or another. This note is a synthesis of previous
work written on agriculture development in Lebanon and
related public expenditures in the sector. It starts with an
overview of the agriculture sector in Lebanon and its role
and contribution to the economy. Approximately eight percent

Large numbers of agricultural labor
moved from the countryside to cities after the economic
reforms in China. Migration and remittances play an
important role in transforming the structure of rural
household income. This paper examines the impact of
rural-to-urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in
the case of Hubei province using the data of a 2002
household survey. Since remittances are a potential

The report is organized as follows. The
next section puts the study into context by briefly
discussing the global EACC study and the EACC methodology,
which was applied in this study at a more disaggregated
level. The section highlights the differential impacts of
climate change among different regions of the world,
including Africa. Chapter three presents an overview of the
methodology used, including the key assumptions. An effort

This paper measures the economic impact
of climate on crops in Kenya. The analysis is based on
cross-sectional climate, hydrological, soil, and household
level data for a sample of 816 households, and uses a
seasonal Ricardian model. Estimated marginal impacts of
climate variables suggest that global warming is harmful for
agricultural productivity and that changes in temperature
are much more important than changes in precipitation. This