In May 2006, the Government of the
Solomon Islands placed rural development at the top of its
policy agenda. The Solomon Islands Government's May
2006 Policy Framework Document places emphasis on
development through a bottom-up and holistic approach that
encompasses the empowerment of the people through rural
advancement strategies, the pursuit of the Millennium
Development Goals, the revitalization of the economy,

The paper examines the ways in which recent economic growth has been uneven in China and India and what this has meant for inequality and poverty. Drawing on analyses based on existing household survey data and aggregate data from official sources, the authors show that growth has indeed been uneven-geographically, sectorally, and at the household level-and that this has meant uneven progress against poverty, less poverty reduction than might have been achieved had growth been more balanced, and an increase in income inequality.

The report documents poverty in Zamia
along a number of dimensions, including material
deprivation, human deprivation, vulnerability, destitution,
and social stigmatization. The report identified a number of
basic actions to facilitate growth in the rural sector;
these include (1) a (revived) system of regular manual
maintenance of rural roads; (2) simple systems of animal
disease control; animal movement control; health inspection

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

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

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.

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

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

Drought is a normal part of climate for
virtually every country. This paper notes that in response,
a risk-based management approach is more cost effective
because it emphasizes improved monitoring and early warning
systems; development of strong decision-support systems;
identification and implementation of mitigation actions;
education and training of policy makers, natural resources
managers, and the public; and drought mitigation plans that

The purpose of this study is to update
the review of World Bank experience in Irrigation (IEG 1994)
and to broaden the scope of evaluation to include all water
lending for agricultural development. Since that first
study, the proportion of World Bank lending for agricultural
water management continued to decline, a trend that started
in the late 1970s when the sub-sector received 11 percent of
the lending, is falling to less than 2 percent in 2001-03.

This paper provides an institutional
record of the implementation experiences of all the four
World Bank-assisted National Emergency Employment Program
(NEEP)/National Rural Access Program (NRAP) projects and
evaluates the impact on community members of the improved
rural access that the projects have provided. It is based on
desk reviews of project documentation, supervision mission
notes, field visits to communities in rural areas, and