This country note briefly summarizes
information relevant to both climate change and agriculture
in Honduras, with focus on policy developments (including
action plans and programs) and institutional make-up. Like
most countries in Latin America, Honduras has submitted one
national communication to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with a second one
under preparation. Land use change and forestry are by far

This book grew out of the Global Issues
seminars and is itself a testament to that two-way dialogue:
the suggestion to compile the speakers' lecture notes
into a book came from the students themselves. Both the
seminars and this book reflect the Bank's conviction
that the seemingly intractable problems of our globalizing
world-from entrenched poverty, to climate change, to new
infectious diseases such as AIDS and avian flu-can be

This country note briefly summarizes
information relevant to both climate change and agriculture
in Venezuela, with focus on policy developments (including
action plans and programs) and institutional make-up. Like
most countries in Latin America, Venezuela has submitted one
national communication to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with a second one
under preparation. Land use change and forestry are the

There is increasing interest in climate
change issues in Indonesia particularly in the lead-up to
the COP13 or Copenhagen meeting in Bali in December 2007
when there was renewed focus on Indonesia as the third
largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world due
to deforestation, peat-land degradation, and forest fires.
In Indonesia, the agriculture sector employs the largest
share, 45 percent, of Indonesia's labor and contributes

Over the last two decades Samoa has
suffered major damage from two cyclones in 1990-91, minor
damage from a third cyclone in 2004, and an earthquake
tsunami in 2009. Changes in the scale and impact of these
types of natural disasters are likely to be important
consequences of climate change for the country because the
increases in sea level and in average sea surface
temperatures will increase theintensity and damage

This report summarizes the findings of
the study on Competitive Commercial Agriculture for Africa
(CCAA). The objective of the CCAA study was to explore the
feasibility of restoring international competitiveness and
growth in African agriculture through the identification of
products and production systems that can underpin rapid
development of a competitive commercial agriculture. The
CCAA study focused on the agricultural potential of

The worldwide concern with deforestation
of Brazilian Amazonia is motivated not only by the
irreversible loss of this natural wealth, but also by the
perception that it is a destructive process in which the
social and economic gains are smaller than the environmental
losses. This perception also underlies the diagnosis,
formulation and evaluation of public policies proposed by
government and non-governmental organizations working in the

Based on analysis of recent data on the
evolution of global temperatures, snow and ice covers, and
sea level rise, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) has recently declared that "warming of
the climate system is unequivocal." Global surface
temperatures, in particular, have increased during the past
50 years at twice the speed observed during the first half
of the 20th century. The IPCC has also concluded that with

Estimating the potential costs of
climate destabilization is not a trivial matter. Potential
climate impacts have multiple consequences, some of which
can be monetized while others are beyond the reach of
standard economic tools. A full assessment of the
implications of climate impacts often cannot be completed
because many of the consequences are only partly known. This
report summarizes data recently made available, through the

World Development Indicators (WDI) 2009
arrives at a moment of great uncertainty for the global
economy. The crisis that began more than a year ago in the
U.S. housing market spread to the global financial system
and is now taking its toll on real output and incomes. As a
consequence, an additional 50 million people will be left in
extreme poverty. And if the crisis deepens and widens or is
prolonged, other development indicators, school enrollments,

These organizations have joined together to recommend the principles presented below. The document concludes with anticipated next steps, which point toward a toolkit of best practices, guidelines, governance frameworks, and possibly codes of practice by the major sets of private actors.

This paper presents a framework for
analyzing tropical deforestation and reforestation using the
von Thunen model as its starting point: land is allocated to
the use which yields the highest rent, and the rents of
various land uses are determined by location. Forest cover
change therefore becomes a question of changes in rent of
forest versus non-forest use. While this is a simple and
powerful starting point, more intriguing issues arise when