This report provides public policy
makers with the information necessary to develop a rural
infrastructure strategy, it was not intended to represent a
strategy per se, merely to highlight the issues that need
greater consideration in the definition of a strategy. It
starts with an inventory of existing rural infrastructure
assets and a description of current institutional
arrangements. It follows with a snapshot of local

This review systematically assesses the
focus of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) on
environment-related issues. A total of 40 Interim and full
PRSPs from countries in Africa, Latin America and Eastern
Europe, the Middle East, Central and East Asia are reviewed.
Four major questions: are posed: (i) What issues of
environmental concerns and opportunities are identified in
the PRSPs?; (ii) To what extent are poverty-environment

The authors describe and analyze the emergence of river basin management in the Warta River Basin of Poland. The Warta basin's 55,193 k

This report analyzes the experience
of Mauritania with the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS)
process. The focus of the report is on evaluating the
performance of the World Bank in supporting the PRSP
initiative, not on appraising the authorities policies. The
report covers the formulation and implementation of the PRSP
and encompasses the two PRSP progress reports which have
been completed since the initiative was launched in

Recent experience with monitoring and
evaluation (M&E) in Uganda has shown how M&E can be
developed to contribute to national capacity building,
rather than become a demanding, but unproductive data
collection exercise. Symptoms of M&E overload have been
addressed by assigning coordination responsibility to the
Office of the Prime Minister. Prospects are now improving
for aligning M&E capacity with strengthening

This study serves as the preliminary
basis for further rounds of discussions and analyses among
stakeholders to arrive at a strategic vision for the Eritrea
health sector. It incorporates comments received from the
Ministry of Health's central agencies, Zoba (regional)
health teams, external partners working in Eritrea, and the
World Bank Eritrea Country Team. In March 2001, the Ministry
of Health of the Government of Eritrea launched a process to

This staff sector assessment note
accompanies the recently completed national environmental
action plan for sustainable development (NEAP-SD), which, as
an output of the Industrial Pollution Control Project in
Algeria, focused on charting a new course for environmental
management in the country, based on an objective assessment
of past policy, and institutional failures, on a new
consensus on the need for mainstreaming the environment into

The focus of the report, combined with
Vietnam's remarkable long-term growth potential,
presents a favorable outlook, suggesting the effects of the
East Asian crisis are over. The country is committed to
socially inclusive development, and, translates a vision of
transition towards a market economy, with socialist
orientation into concrete public actions, emphasizing the
transition should be pro-poor, noting this will require

India's environmental problems
are deep-rooted and severe. Estimates of annual
environmental damage range from 4.5 percent to 8 percent of
gross domestic product (GDP), in line with annual economic
growth. Since 1990 the World Bank has lent India 1.94
billion dollars for 19 projects to mitigate environmental
damage and another 97 million dollars was granted under
global environmental facility (GEF) and Montreal protocol

This book presents papers on several
events organized by the World Bank's Disaster
Management Fund (DMF). The DMF's objectives are to help
the Bank provide a more strategic and rapid response to
disaster emergencies and to integrate disaster prevention
and mitigation measures in all Bank activities. Part I of
this book on risk identification contains chapters on the
economic impacts on natural disasters in developing

The present study describes, and
quantifies the provision of basic urban services to the
poor, in three Central American cities in El Salvador,
Honduras, and, Panama. It also identifies priority areas for
government intervention, using specialized household surveys
to quantify current deficits, and to rank households from
poor to rich, using aggregate consumption as the measure of
welfare. The urban poverty profile is examined in each city,

This study reviews the available
quantitative and qualitative information on urban poverty
issues and trends in the East Asia and Pacific (EAP) Region,
with particular focus on Indonesia, the Philippines, and
Vietnam. The review is a desk study-which is limited to
material accessible to the Bank in Washington and draws
mainly on existing field work and other published and
unpublished papers. The empirical analysis focuses on the