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

Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, focuses on economic policy as the key to mobilizing a
coordinated global response to climate change. He talks
about the need to confront climate change, without which
there will be no hope of ending poverty or boosting shared
prosperity. He adds that the longer the delay in tackling
climate change, the higher the cost will be to do the right
thing for our planet and our children. He affirms that from the

Gross domestic product (GDP) growth was
a disappointing 3.5 percent in 2013. It remained largely
unchanged compared to 2012, reflecting a decline in cereal
production and stagnation in the industrial sector. Services
continue to drive the economy. The economic outlook for 2014
was more positive, but poor rainfall and the Ebola outbreak
have forced downward revisions in GDP growth projections,
now expected to reach 4.5 percent. The plan Senegal emergent

The purpose of this report is to improve
the knowledge base for facilitating investments in land
management technologies that sequester soil organic carbon.
While there are many studies on soil carbon sequestration,
there is no single unifying volume that synthesizes
knowledge on the impact of different land management
practices on soil carbon sequestration rates across the
world. A meta-analysis was carried out to provide soil

Bolivia’s distinct characteristics and
aspirations are a key for understanding its development
trajectory. Bolivia is one of the countries with the highest
share of indigenous population, representing a tapestry of
different groups with different historical, cultural and
economic features, with a significant influence in policy
decision making. The country is landlocked and one of the
most sparsely populated in the world. As a result, long

Improving access to affordable and
reliable energy services for cooking is essential for
developing countries in reducing adverse human health and
environmental impacts hitherto caused by burning of
traditional biomass. This paper reviews empirical studies
that analyze choices of fuel and adoption of improved stoves
for cooking in countries where biomass is still the
predominant cooking fuel. The review highlights the wide

From 2005 to 2013, a mining boom quickly
promoted Mongolia from a low-income to a middle-income
country. Although the World Bank Group strategy initially
overlooked the challenge of the mining boom, the new country
management team that came on board in 2005 decided to
prioritize mining issues in a more selective framework. This
involved taking a set of bold steps to support Bank Group
engagement in the extractive industry, including basing for

With limited land, capital, and a fast
growing population, Burundi's main asset is its
youthful population. Its main challenge is also to create
good quality jobs for its youth. With low levels of
educational attainment and poor health status, the quality
of this young population is poor. After more than 13 years
of conflict ending in 2000, and a period of modest recovery,
Burundi has the opportunity to stimulate growth. Burundi is

This handbook is the product of a
workshop held in June 2014 with about 25 environmental
regulators from over 10 FCV-affected countries (Burkina
Faso, Central African Republic, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar,
Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and
Sudan) that was financed by the Korean Trust Fund (KTF) and
organized and hosted by the World Bank Group (WBG). Over the
course of one week the participants went through a dense

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
(MEA), The Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity study
(TEEB) and the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity
and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) provide a comprehensive and
useful framework to understand human dependence on ecosystem
services and how best to protect these services in
perpetuity. In these three authoritative studies, payment
for ecosystem services (PES) is listed as one of the

The Amazon rainforest, the world's
largest and most biodiverse, represents a global public good
of which 15 percent has already been lost. The worldwide
value of preserving the remaining forest is today unknown. A
"Delphi" exercise was conducted involving more
than 200 environmental valuation experts from 36 countries,
who were asked to predict the outcome of a survey to elicit
willingness to pay for Amazon forest preservation among

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