The performance of Senegal’s
agricultural performance exemplifies the impact of unmanaged
risk on productivity among vulnerable smallholder crop
producers and pastoralists. The government of Senegal has
historically responded to drought and other shocks with
direct financial support to farmers as well as general
assistance to the rural population. The World Bank, with
support from the group of eight (G-8) and the United States

Climate change is a core development
challenge in Tanzania, and the potential costs of inaction
are significant. Current climate variability (including
extreme events such as droughts and floods), already leads
to major economic costs in mainland Tanzania and in
Zanzibar. Individual annual events have economic costs in
excess of 1 percent of GDP, and occur regularly, reducing
long-term growth and affecting millions of people and

Watershed management has come to be
recognized as a critical issue in the Nile Basin. Upstream
land use can cause degradation and soil erosion, resulting
in lower agricultural yields locally and causing
sedimentation downstream. The increased sediment load causes
economic problems by reducing water quality, and irrigation
and hydropower potential, as well as increasing flooding.
This note shows how, through Basin-wide cooperation, the

Remarks delivered by Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, discuss Ethiopia’s commitment to climate action, the role of industrialization in delivering development, and bringing these together for low-carbon, equitable growth. He speaks about the government’s promotion of low-carbon growth, poverty reduction, and climate resilience to tackle the impact of climate changes.

This paper uses farm panel data from
China to examine the dynamics of land transactions, machine
investments, and the demand for machine services. Recently,
China's agriculture has experienced a large expansion
of machine rentals and machine services provided by
specialized agents, which has contributed to mechanization
of agricultural production. The empirical results show that
an increase in nonagricultural wage rates leads to expansion

Improved agricultural risk management is one of the core enabling actions of the
Group of Eight’s (G-8’s) New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. The Agricultural
Risk Management Team (ARMT) of the Agriculture and Environment Services
Department of the World Bank conducted an agricultural sector risk assessment to better understand the dynamics of agricultural risks and
identify appropriate responses, incorporate agricultural
risk perspective into decision-making, and build capacity
of local stakeholders in risk assessment and management.

This report focuses on how we achieve
water sustainability over long timescales - decades, even
centuries from now. These timescales are important and
relevant to our decisions about planning, infrastructure,
and institutions today. Many of the methods we use to manage
water, directly or indirectly, commit us to future decision
pathways and restrict us from making other, alternative
decisions. Across the first four chapters, this report

Why produce a policy note on
horticulture in Uzbekistan? There are several answers to
this existential question, although they are not necessarily
obvious ones. Agriculture, taken as a whole, constitutes a
small and declining share of Uzbekistan s national income,
and horticulture is a small share of agricultural income.
Even so, it is an important source of income for the 4.7
million households that operate dehkan farms in rural and

China is considered one of the most seriously eroded countries in the world. The
many causes of this degradation can be divided into natural, human-induced and root causes.
The consequences of watershed degradation are severe and reach even beyond the country’s
boundaries. Addressing this issue requires a sustainable participatory and integrated watershed
management approach. The Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Projects, implemented by
the Ministry of Water Resources and co-financed by the World Bank has provided a model that

This forest policy note (FPN) offers
an outside view of the Moldovan forestry sector, provides
some strategic guidance to help define sector goals, and
identifies opportunities for consideration in the continued
development of the sector and for the implementation of the
Moldova and World Bank (WB) country partnership strategy
(CPS). This study is based on a number of short visits to
Moldova and on a number of background studies undertaken

In countries such as Azerbaijan, 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. The need to
adapt to climate change in all sectors is now on the agenda
of the countries and development partners. International
efforts to limit greenhouse gases and to mitigate climate

This paper uses resource-based cereal
equivalent measures to explore the evolution of China's
demand and supply for food. Although demand for food
calories is probably close to its peak level in China, the
ongoing dietary shift to animal-based foods, induced by
income growth, is likely to impose considerable pressure on
agricultural resources. Estimating the relationship between
income growth and food demand with data from a wide range of