International migration has increased
rapidly in recent decades and this has been accompanied by a
remarkable increase in transfers made by migrants to their
home countries. This paper investigates the effect of the
rural economic growth brought about by migration and
remittances on Nepal's Himalayan forests. The authors
assemble a unique village-panel dataset combining remote
sensing data on land use and forest cover change with data

Welfare losses from the 2008 food price
crisis in Pakistan are deepening the gap between poor and
non poor populations and further increasing inequality
between the provinces. To estimate welfare losses, the
reduction in caloric availability at household level is
measured. The analysis of calorie intake by source supports
the notion that rural households were shielded from the
worst effects of the crisis by their capacity to grow their

The paper reports on improving feed and
fodder supply for the dzud management in Mongolia study, and
aims to identify policy options that could improve the
effectiveness and efficiency of dzud emergency management
and response. It includes an assessment of the appropriate
roles for the private and public sectors, identification of
issues, and capacity building requirements. The study will
support a policy dialogue and could provide the foundation

Urban flooding is an increasingly
important issue. Disaster statistics appear to show flood
events are becoming more frequent, with medium-scale events
increasing fastest. The impact of flooding is driven by a
combination of natural and human-induced factors. As recent
flood events in Pakistan, Brazil, Sri Lanka and Australia
show, floods can occur in widespread locations and can
sometimes overwhelm even the best prepared countries and

Large-scale disasters regularly affect
societies over the globe, causing large destruction and
damage. After each of these events, media, insurance
companies, and international institu-tions publish numerous
assessments of the "cost of the disaster." However
these assessments are based on different methodologies and
approaches, and they often reach different results. Besides
methodological differences, these discrepancies are due to

Migration has historically been a source
of opportunities for people to improve their lives and those
of their families. Today, the large differences in income
between places-particularly countries-continue to motivate
individuals to escape poverty through migration. The
potential advantages of migration for sending countries are
numerous. Through remittances, migration provides a means of
improving income and smoothing consumption; it enables

The East Asia region is highly prone to
the impacts of natural disasters. Situated in the ring of
fire, countries in the region are regularly hit by typhoons,
earthquakes, floods, and other events. Natural disasters can
have major impacts on the social and economic welfare of a
population, and often pose serious obstacles in the
achievement of sustainable social and economic development.
Moreover, impacts from disasters are not uniformly

Twenty years of rapid economic
development in Ghana has done little, if anything, to reduce
the historical North, South divide in standards of living.
While rural development and urbanization have led to
significant poverty reduction in the South, similar dynamics
have been largely absent from Northern Ghana (or
equivalently the North, defined as the sum of the
administrative regions Upper West, Upper East, and the

East Sudan has received a continuous
influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees
over the last forty years. Mass influxes were witnessed
during years when the region experienced natural
catastrophes as droughts and floods, or an escalation of
tensions and conflict in neighboring countries, mainly
Eritrea and Ethiopia. Presently there is still a steady but
smaller in numbers influx of refugees, mostly from Eritrea,

After the post-war reconstruction period
that started in 1990-1992, Lebanon made spectacular
improvements to repair the scars of the wars by investing
heavily in public infrastructure, roads, highways, airports
and harbors, communications, commercial estates, and high
and middle income housing. The environmental neglect had an
impact on the economy and resulted in a degradation
amounting to US$ 565 million in 2000 or 3.4 percent of Gross

In Japan, the sustainable development of
cities and provinces has been vigorously pursued since the
late 1990s under various programs through the initiative of
the central government and local authorities. In 2009, the
World Bank launched an urban development initiative called
Eco2 Cities: Ecological Cities as Economic Cities (Eco2
Cities Initiative) to help cities in developing countries
achieve greater synergistic ecological and economic

The theme of the 2011 Philippines
development report is 'generating inclusive growth,
uplifting the poor and vulnerable'. This theme is
follows from the priorities set in President Aquino's
Social Contract and the emerging 2011-2016 Philippines
Development Plan (PDP). The PDP details the vision of
inclusive growth and poverty reduction that underlies the
social contract (chapter one). Accordingly, the PDP focuses