Climate change presents significant
threats to sustainable poverty reduction in Tajikistan. The
primary impacts on rural livelihoods are expected to stem
from reduced water quantity and quality (affecting
agriculture), and increased frequency and severity of
disasters. Options for farming households to autonomously
adapt (and thereby move from climate vulnerability to
resilience) include adoption of on-farm and off-farm

Rwanda is experiencing its best
growth performance since independence. With average annual
GDP growth rate of 8 percent and 5.2 percent for
agricultural GDP from 1999-2012, Rwanda s recent growth is a
historical record. The poverty headcount fell from 59
percent in 2001 to 45 percent in 2011, and agriculture
continues to be one of the main drivers of growth and
poverty reduction in Rwanda, significantly lifting rural

The urgent need to limit anthropogenic
carbon emissions has led to a global initiative to Reduce
Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+).
But designing national architectures for REDD+ that
integrate local actions on forests with national-level
outcomes and do so effectively, efficiently, and equitably
continues to be challenging. One option to facilitate the
design and implementation of REDD+ is to learn from the

The World Bank Group (WBG) has a long
experience in engaging in biodiversity with world-class
expertise in the field. It has been the single largest
funder of biodiversity investments since the late 1980s. The
WBG investments have largely been of two kinds: (1)
investments in biodiversity, aimed at the conservation and
sustainable use of species, habitats, and ecosystems that
sustain healthy ecosystems, while enhancing people's

Ukraine is renowned as the breadbasket
of Europe thanks to its black soils ( Chernozem black
because of the high organic matter content) which offer
exceptional agronomic conditions. One-third of the worldwide
stock of the fertile black soils, which cover more than half
of Ukraine s arable land, a large variety of climatic zones,
and favourable temperature and moisture regimes, offers
attractive conditions for the production of a large range of

Implementation arrangements for Reducing
Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Deforestation and Forest
Degradation can be seen as contracts that could address some
of the inherent problems with forest carbon credits that
often lead to high transaction costs -- measuring,
monitoring, and verification. Self-enforcing contracts,
where it is in the best interest of the environmental
service providers to comply with the contracts, may be one

In countries such as Georgia, 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 most
effective plans for adapting the sector to climate change
will involve both human capital and physical capital
enhancements; however, many of these investments can also

The report focuses on the two decades
of the World Bank - Global Environment Facility (GEF)
partnership with the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
countries. This partnership has had a global environmental
impact by working both at the local and national level and
engaging all relevant partners and stakeholders. In
addition, many GEF financed operations stand as examples of
what a more holistic approach can achieve in terms of

The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN)
and the World Bank have agreed to carry out a Climate Change
Assessment (CCA) within the framework of the Bank's
Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) for Nigeria (2010-13).
The CCA includes an analysis of options for low-carbon
development in selected sectors, including power, oil and
gas, transport, and agriculture. The goal of the low-carbon
analysis is to define likely trends in carbon emissions up

Climate change is a huge challenge for
the agriculture and rural development (ARD) sector in
Romania. On the one hand, agriculture is a source of
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and must therefore be
expected to contribute towards the climate change mitigation
goals of the Europe 2020 strategy. European farmers,
foresters, rural businesses, and other local people
therefore need to start paying much greater attention to

This paper contributes to the
long-standing debate on the merits of decentralized
beneficiary targeting in the administration of development
programs, focusing on the large-scale Malawi Farm Input
Subsidy Program. Nationally-representative household survey
data are used to systematically analyze the decentralized
targeting performance of the program during the 2009-2010
agricultural season. The analysis begins with a standard

This overview of climate change
activities in the Kyrgyz Republic is part of a series of
country notes for five Central Asian countries that
summarize climate portfolio in a number of sectors, namely
agriculture, forestry, water, health, energy, and transport.
Recognizing the nature and significance of climate change
contribution to an increase in disaster risk, the note also
looks into the development partners' approaches and