The sector review includes seven
chapters and one annex. This first chapter is an overview of
agriculture, irrigation and the purpose and content of this
report. The second chapter provides a review of the Bank s
own strategy and priorities for irrigation and drainage
within its portfolio of investments, from the time of its
2004 Strategy until the present. It also includes a short
summary of key lessons learned in this sector. The third

This note on integrating
gender-sensitive disaster risk management (DRM) in
community-driven development (CDD) Programs is the sixth in
a series of guidance notes on gender issues in DRM in the
East Asia and the Pacific region. Targeting World Bank
staff, clients and development partners, this note gives an
overview of the main reasons for incorporating
gender-sensitive DRM into CDD programs, identifies the key

This paper studies the use of labor
markets to mitigate the impact of violent shocks on
households in rural areas in Colombia. It examines changes
in the labor supply from on-farm to off-farm labor as a
means of coping with the violent shock and the ensuing
redistribution of time within households. It identifies the
heterogeneous response by gender. Because the incidence of
violent shocks is not exogenous, the analysis uses

This paper analyzes real estate market dynamics over the past decade in the city of Ahmedabad, India, with a view to improving the living conditions of the large population living in slums. The paper combines census data, the National Sample Survey, and slum household surveys to review the demand side of the market. Satellite photography was used to estimate the production of both formal and informal housing over the past ten years. Analysis of the execution of the development plan for the Ahmedabad region and town planning schemes shows how the system of housing supply has evolved.

In this issue: benchmarking global
poverty reduction; rethinking the stateapos;s role in
finance; coordinating housing and transport policies in
urban South Africa; making public sector reforms work;
helping women get to work; export superstars; why did
inequality in Latin America decline in the 2000s?

This paper uses small area estimation
techniques to update Vietnam's province and
district-level poverty map to 2009. It finds that poverty
rates continue to be highest in the northern and central
mountainous regions, where ethnic minorities make up a large
fraction of the population. Poverty has fallen in most
provinces and districts over this decade, but the pace of
poverty reduction has been least pronounced in those

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

This paper describes the key challenges
to job creation in conflict-affected environments in South
Asia. It uses household survey data since the early 2000s
for Afghanistan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka to document the
characteristics of labor markets in conflict-affected areas,
exploiting the spatial and time variation in armed conflict
within countries. The analysis finds that, across countries,
labor markets look very different in conflict-affected areas

The objective of the Nepal Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) is to evaluate the investment climate in Nepal in all its dimensions and promote policies to strengthen the private sector. The investment climate is made up of many dimensions that shape the opportunities for investments, employment creation, and growth of private firms. Such dimensions include factor markets, product markets, infrastructure services, and the macroeconomic, legal, regulatory, and institutional framework.

The report is divided into two volumes.
The first volume includes the fundamental content of the
report. It is organized as follows. Chapter one provides a
conceptual framework to analyze risk and vulnerability and
provides a definition of social protection. Chapter two
assesses the main risks faced by the Malagasy population as
well as its vulnerability profile. Chapter three reviews
Madagascar's social protection policies, the

This study examines the major
constraints of rural business entry and performance in
Yemen. The Yemen rural investment climate survey made it
possible to analyze rural investment climate constraints for
rural businesses. The survey was used to investigate both
farm and nonfarm rural enterprises. The rural investment
climate was assessed using a combination of subjective
impressions related by rural entrepreneurs, and a more

Today, 370 million people live in cities
in earthquake prone areas and 310 million in cities with
high probability of tropical cyclones. By 2050, these
numbers are likely to more than double. Mortality risk
therefore is highly concentrated in many of the world s
cities and economic risk even more so. This paper discusses
what sets hazard risk in urban areas apart, provides
estimates of valuation of hazard risk, and discusses