This is the second edition of the 2003
paper entitled "Facilitation of transport and trade in
Sub-Saharan Africa : a review of international legal
instruments - Treaties, conventions, protocols, decisions,
directives." Three major reasons motivated this update
and an expansion of its scope. First, African countries are
increasingly cooperating, especially in the area of
corridors, to achieve full connectivity, mobility and

Yet the current situation differs from
2007-2008 in critical respects. First, recent international
price increases are more widespread across agricultural
commodities than in 2008, when price spikes were led by few
grains such as wheat and rice. Second, natural resources are
affecting food production: land and water constraints are
more binding than in the past and weather induced production
shortfalls are more of a factor now than it was 2008.

Many firms in the developing world --
including a majority of micro, small, and medium enterprises
-- operate in the informal economy. The informal firms face
a variety of constraints, making it harder for them to do
business and grow. Lack of access to finance is often cited
as the biggest operational constraint these firms face. This
paper documents the use of finance and financing patterns of
informal firms, highlights differences between use of

Women in post-conflict economies face a
number of challenges. Often their businesses stay at
embryonic stages only, due to three key limitations relating
to: knowledge of business vision and management; access to
finance and markets; and access to role models and networks.
Added to the complexity is the risk of having to start all
over again due to their countriesapos; political instability
and the limited infrastructure to make their businesses

Urbanization is undoubtedly a key driver
of development -- cities provide the national platform for
prosperity, job creation, and poverty reduction. But
urbanization also poses enormous challenges that one is
familiar with: congestion, air pollution, social divisions,
crime, the breakdown of public services and infrastructure,
and the slums that one billion urban resident's call
home. Urbanization is perhaps the single most important

This paper explains the major issues and
lessons derived from the national forest management program
and REDD+ initiatives in Tanzania. It finds that addressing
the most important drivers of forest degradation and
deforestation, in particular the country energy needs and
landownership, is essential for success in reducing
emissions regardless of the type of program implemented. It
also finds that, through the national program, forest users

Chapter one summarizes the scope of the
study and outlines its key objectives. It explains the
rationale for collecting data on SMEs in Mongolia in general
and women-owned SMEs in particular. It also provides
recommendations for integrating the insights form the study
into the on-the-ground practice of SME banking, as well as
potential interventions on the regulatory and policy level.
Chapter two begins with the analysis of the general

This paper presents a somewhat novel
approach to explore the economic contribution of ecosystems.
It develops linked models to capture connections between
resource stocks and flows and the resulting microeconomic
and macroeconomic impacts. A bioeconomic model is developed
that is imbedded into a computable general equilibrium (CGE)
model. Incorporating imperfect regulation, the bioeconomic
model characterizes optimal policies, while the CGE model

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

Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) have
been introduced in Romania as a prerequisite for accessing
EU funds under the Regional Operational Program (ROP). The
IDPs designed for growth poles represent a specific category
of strategic planning documents as: 1) they need to be
considered within the frame of the national policy to whose
implementation they contribute; and 2) they represent a
first endeavor to think of development across functional

This report provides Mayors and other policymakers with a policy framework and diagnostic tools to anticipate and implement strategies that can avoid their cities from locking into irreversible physical and social structures. At the core of the policy framework are the three main dimensions of urban development.
· Planning— where the focus is on making land transactions easier, and making land use regulations more responsive to emerging needs especially to coordinate land use planning with infrastructure, natural resource management, and risks from hazards;

This First Phase Report on Sierra Leone
growth poles is the result of a 9 months consultative
process led by the Office of the President which
specifically requested that the output of this diagnostic be
in an engaging format. The fundamental concept of growth
poles is that they exploit agglomeration economies and
spillover effects to spread resulting prosperity from the
core of the pole to the periphery. At the basis of this