There is no doubt that the poorest
people are already and will continue to be most severely
impacted by climatic changes, including shifting trends as
well as more frequent and severe extreme events. Yet, new
insights on the dynamics and distribution of poverty point
to the need to comprehend where the poor and poorest are,
how they are poor, and why their poverty constrains their
abilities to cope with and adapt to occurring and predicted

As the world is urbanizing, many cities
are grappling with a population that is growing rapidly,
thereby increasing demand for land and housing. This
pressure on land and housing markets often is exacerbated by
inappropriate or inadequate policies. The result is a supply
of well-located land and housing that falls well short of
demand and the proliferation of poorly serviced informal
settlements, many of which are located far from jobs, city

The objective of this policy note on
land is to assist the Government of Moldova in improving the
effectiveness of land management in agriculture, with a view
to enhancing the sector's contribution to
Moldova's economic growth and poverty reduction
objectives. The note reviews the progress that has been
made to date on land reform in Moldova, and provides
rigorous economic analysis of the impacts of the reforms and

In the last 30 years, China’s record economic growth lifted half a billion people out of poverty, with rapid urbanization providing abundant labor, cheap land, and good infrastructure. While China has avoided some of the common ills of urbanization, strains are showing as inefficient land development leads to urban sprawl and ghost towns, pollution threatens people’s health, and farmland and water resources are becoming scarce.

This paper estimates slum residents
willingness to pay for formalized land tenure in Pune,
India. In so doing, it offers evidence that the legal
assurance of slum residents occupancy of their lands could
benefit them. Previous studies have discussed legal and
non-legal factors that substantially influence the tenure
security of residents in informal settlements. However, it
remains unclear to what extent, and how, the assignment of

The Lake Chad Climate resilience action
plan outlines the concept that there is a need to turn Lake
Chad into a rural hub for regional development in parallel
to the restoration of peace and security. The Plan intends
to contribute significantly to food security, employment,
and the social inclusion of the youth by improving, in a
sustainable way, the living conditions of populations
settled on the Lake’s banks and islands as well as the

The city of Kampala has undergone a
period of rapid urbanization that has contributed to the
degradation of the city’s natural environment. The urban
environmental profile for Kampala has been prepared as the
first component of the assignment promoting green urban
development in Africa: enhancing the relationship between
urbanization, environmental assets, and ecosystem services,
a project being conducted under the leadership of the World

Agriculture is the dominant sector of
the economy, contributing a third of the country’s gross
domestic product (GDP) and about half of Rwanda’s export
earnings. The government of Rwanda has therefore made
agricultural development a priority and allocated
significant resources to improving productivity, expanding
the livestock sector, promoting sustainable land management,
and developing supply chains and value-added activities. At

This systematic country diagnosis (SCD)
for Chad aims to identify how to achieve the twin goals of
ending poverty and improving shared prosperity. It
acknowledges both: (i) the need for selectivity in pro-poor
interventions, and (ii) the inherent difficulty to do so
given the many competing binding reasons for poverty.
Selectivity means the identification of principal
opportunities for sustainable poverty reduction in the next

Since the industrial revolution, the
economic development of Western Europe and North America was
characterized by continuous urbanization accompanied by a
gradual phasing-in of urban land property rights over time.
Today, however, the evidence in many fast urbanizing
low-income countries points towards a different trend of
“urbanization without formalization”, with potentially
adverse effects on long-term economic growth. This paper

Biochar is the carbon-rich organic
matter that remains after heating biomass under the
minimization of oxygen during a process called pyrolysis.
There are a number of reasons why biochar systems may be
particularly relevant in developing-country contexts. This
report offers a review of what is known about opportunities
and risks of biochar systems. Its aim is to provide a
state-of-the-art overview of current knowledge regarding

Liberia had an estimated 4.3 million
hectares of forests in 2011, comprising approximately 50
percent of Liberia’s landmass. These forests support very
high levels of biodiversity, provide a wide range of
ecosystem services (for example, bush meat, medicines,
construction materials, and charcoal), and generate
employment and revenue from commercial and chainsaw logging.
Encouraging inward investment while striking a sound balance