In the Pacific island countries, which
are small and far from world markets, labor mobility
represents the most significant and substantial opportunity
for overcoming geographic constraints on employment. This
report presents a brief overview of employment challenges in
small Pacific island countries and recommendations for
addressing them. The report contributes to an ongoing World
Bank analytical program examining the linkages between

Climate change is a huge challenge for
the agriculture and rural development (ARD) sector in
Romania. On the one hand, agriculture is a source of
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and must therefore be
expected to contribute towards the climate change mitigation
goals of the Europe 2020 strategy. European farmers,
foresters, rural businesses, and other local people
therefore need to start paying much greater attention to

This strategic environmental assessment
(SEA) is a technical piece intended to assist in the current
and future identification of priority industrial pollutants
and economic instruments to minimize industrial waste. This
industrial sector SEA is one of six pieces of technical
support envisioned by the Himachal Pradesh (HP) inclusive
green growth (IGG) development policy loan (DPL) to fill
knowledge gaps and strengthen operational success of the

Livestock are an important component of
rural livelihoods in developing countries, but data about
this source of income and wealth are difficult to collect
because of the nomadic and semi-nomadic nature of many
pastoralist populations. Most household surveys exclude
those without permanent dwellings, leading to undercoverage.
This study explores the use of a random geographic cluster
sample as an alternative to the household-based sample. In

The accumulation of decent housing
matters both because of the difference it makes to living
standards and because of its centrality to economic
development. The consequences for living standards are
far-reaching. In addition to directly conferring utility,
decent housing improves health and enables children to do
homework. It frees up women's time and enables them to
participate in the labor market. More subtly, a home and its

Knowledge exchange, or peer-to-peer
learning, is a powerful way to share, replicate, and scale
up what works in development. Development practitioners want
to learn from the practical experience of others who have
gone through, or are going through, similar challenges. They
want to be connected to each other and have ready access to
practical knowledge and solutions. When done right,
knowledge exchange can build the capacity, confidence, and

Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) have
been introduced in Romania as a prerequisite for accessing
EU funds under the Regional Operational Program (ROP). The
IDPs designed for growth poles represent a specific category
of strategic planning documents as: 1) they need to be
considered within the frame of the national policy to whose
implementation they contribute; and 2) they represent a
first endeavor to think of development across functional

Changes in climate and their impact on agricultural systems and rural economies are already evident throughout Europe and Central Asia (ECA). Adaptation measures now in use in Albania, largely piecemeal efforts, will be insufficient to prevent impacts on agricultural production over the coming decades. There is growing interest at the country and development partner levels to have a better understanding of the exposure, sensitivities, and impacts of climate change at farm level, and to develop and prioritize adaptation measures to mitigate the adverse consequences.

In 2000, the Government of India
launched the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (hereinafter
PMGSY) with the primary objective of providing all-weather
road connectivity (with necessary culverts and
cross-drainage structures operable throughout the year), to
eligible unconnected habitations in rural areas. Currently,
about 60 percent of the 170,000 eligible habitations have a
road. By the end of 2010, expenditures for the program had

Over the seven years from 2004 through
2011, Cambodian economic growth was tremendous, ranking amid
the best in the world. Moreover, household consumption
increased by nearly 40 percent. And this growth was
pro-poor, not only reducing inequality, but also
proportionally boosting poor people's consumption
further and faster than that of the non-poor. As a result,
the poverty rate dropped from 52.2 to 20.5 percent,

Agricultural production is inextricably tied to climate, making agriculture one of the most climate-sensitive of all economic sectors. In countries such as Uzbekistan, the risks of climate change for the agricultural sector are a particularly immediate and important problem because the majority of the rural population depends either directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Private sugar processors in Andhra
Pradesh, India use an unusual form of vertical coordination.
They issue 'permits' to selected cane growers a
few weeks before harvest. These permits specify the amount
of cane to be delivered during a narrow time period. This
article investigates why processors create uncertainty among
farmers using ex post permits instead of ex ante production
contracts. The theoretical model predicts that ex post