Around the world, countries are becoming
urbanized at an astonishing pace. As countries develop
economically, their economies shift from mainly rural and
agrarian to increasingly urban and nonagricultural. This
rural-urban transformation presents both opportunities and
challenges for development. When managed effectively, the
transformation spurs growth and reduces poverty. When
managed poorly, however, the process can result in stark

In 2006, the government approved a
national livestock policy based on the premise that the
livestock industry has an important role to play in building
a strong national economy and in the process, reducing
inequalities among Tanzanians by increasing their incomes
and employment opportunities. This report presents an
analysis of rural livelihoods in Tanzania, with particular
emphasis on the livestock sub-sector, smallholder

Climate change is believed to represent
a serious challenge to poverty reduction efforts around the
globe. This paper conducts an up-to-date review of three
main strands of the literature analyzing the poverty impacts
of climate change : (i) economy-wide growth models
incorporating climate change impacts to work out consistent
scenarios for how climate change might affect the path of
poverty over the next decades; (ii) studies focusing on the

Global warming is expected to heavily
impact agriculture, the dominant source of livelihood for
the world's poor. Yet, little is known about the
distributional implications of climate change at the
sub-national level. Using a simple comparative statics
framework, this paper analyzes how changes in the prices of
land, labor, and food induced by modest temperature
increases over the next three decades will affect

This book provides an overview of the
World Bank's Eco2 cities : ecological cities as
economic cities initiative. The objective of the Eco2 cities
initiative is to help cities in developing countries achieve
a greater degree of ecological and economic sustainability.
The book is divided into three parts. Part one describes the
Eco2 cities initiative framework. It describes the approach,
beginning with the background and rationale. Key challenges

After 20 years of neglect by
international donors, agriculture is now again in the
headlines because higher food prices are increasing food
insecurity and poverty. In the coming years it will be
essential to increase food productivity and production in
developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and
with smallholders. This however requires finding viable
solutions to a number of complex technical, institutional

This paper explores the reduction of
food insecurity in Bolivia, adopting a supply side approach
that analyzes the role of agricultural spending on
vulnerability. Vulnerability to food insecurity is captured
by a municipal level composite -- developed locally within
the framework of World Food Program food security analysis
-- that combines welfare outcomes, weather conditions and
agricultural potential for all 327 municipalities in 2003,

This paper estimates the relationship
between initial village inequality and subsequent household
income growth for a large sample of households in rural
China. Using a rich longitudinal survey spanning the years
1987-2002, and controlling for an array of household and
village characteristics, the paper finds that households
located in higher inequality villages experienced
significantly lower income growth through the 1990s.

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

Although Bulgaria now implements the
European Union's (EU's) "common"
agricultural policy (CAP), national policymakers still
maintain responsibility to tailor CAP implementation to meet
the specific development needs of the country. The National
Rural Development Program (NRDP) very appropriately lays out
the challenges that Bulgarian agriculture and rural
development face, but the early implementation of a

Agriculture sector growth has made a
powerful contribution to post-war economic recovery in
Tajikistan, accounting for approximately one third of
overall economic growth from 1998 to 2004. Sector output
increased by 65 percent in real terms during this period,
and has now returned to the level extant at independence in
1990. Total Factor Productivity (TFP) has also increased, by
3 percent per year. Despite this progress, there is

The poor in Bangladesh are more likely
to belong to households with a larger number of dependents
and lower education among household members, be engaged in
daily wage labor, own little land, and be less likely to
receive remittances. This poverty profile for 2005 is
similar to the profile in the mid-1980s and hence at first
glance it would appear that little has changed over time. A
closer look at national household survey data suggests a