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

Differences in relative female
employment by soil texture are used to explain the
heterogeneous deficit of female children across districts
within India. Soil texture varies exogenously and determines
the depth of land tillage. Deep tillage, possible in loamy
but not in clayey soil textures, reduces the demand for
labor in agricultural tasks traditionally performed by
women. Girls have a lower economic value where female labor

A Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) was
undertaken to assess the returns to land management
practices of major land use types, namely forests,
rangelands, and selected crops (rice, maize, cotton, and
millet). Also the public expenditure on SLM was reviewed
and an assessment carried out how the expenditure is aligned
to land policies and how it is targeted to land degradation
hotspots. The results show that, without some form of

Despite decades of war and instability,
Iraq's abundant natural resources, strategic geographic
location and cultural history endow it with tremendous
potential for growth and diverse economic development.
Driven by windfall oil revenues in recent years the
Government of Iraq (GoI) has invested heavily in rebuilding
infrastructure with abundant oil reserves ensuring steady
progress. However, decades of socialist policies have

Greenhouse gas emissions are largely determined by how energy is created and used, and policies designed to encourage mitigation efforts reflect this reality. However, an unintended consequence of an energy-focused strategy is that the set of policy instruments needed to tap mitigation opportunities in agriculture is incomplete. In particular, market-linked incentives to achieve mitigation targets are disconnected from efforts to better manage carbon sequestered in agricultural land.

In this issue: cities: planning,
coordinating, and financing for a better future; measuring
inequality of opportunity; breaking out of the middle-income
trap; real-time macro monitoring and fiscal policy; bank
regulation and supervision: a crisis update; how does
nationalizing water services affect quality? And what drives
investments under the clean development mechanism?

Zambia is endowed with an abundance of
natural resources that include, water, forests and wildlife.
The country's wildlife resources are managed through
government-supported National Parks and Game Management
Areas (GMAs) and private sector game ranches. The main
objective of this wildlife sector policy review is to
consolidate the findings collected from an extensive
bibliography published during the life of the current

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 purpose of this policy note is to
contribute to an understanding of the factors that combine
to constrain the development of smallholder agriculture in
Swaziland. It seeks to shed light on why, despite being
well-endowed in land and water resources, and despite having
a climate that is generally favorable for the production of
crops and livestock, Swaziland is obliged to import
substantial amounts of food to feed the population. Also,

This paper constitutes the third and final volume of a series of assessments of the World Bank Group's engagement with climate change issues. The first focused on World Bank involvement in policy issues related to greenhouse gas mitigation. It was mainly concerned with the potential for energy price reform and energy efficiency policies to yield dividends in growth, fiscal savings, and climate change mitigation. The second volume examined project-level lessons related to greenhouse gas mitigation.

This report examines poverty trends and
distribution of the poor in this larger context, paying
particular attention to the most recent past. The report
contributes to our understanding of the progress made in
combating poverty in three ways. First, it updates our
knowledge of poverty outcomes by examining the trends in
poverty and vulnerability, as well as the profile and
distribution of the poor and vulnerable across the country.

The Kingdom of Lesotho is a land-locked
nation located in the Drakensberg mountain range in Southern
Africa. The country has a total area of 30355 km² and in
2009 had an estimated population of nearly 2.1 million, with
nominal per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of US$ 1080
(in 2010). About 75 percent live in rural areas, often in
scattered mountain villages, while most of the urban
population lives in and around the capital Maseru and the