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,

Ningbo serves as the Chinese pilot city
for the World Bank Climate Resilient Cities (CRC) Program.
The CRC program aims to, prepare local governments in the
East Asia region to better understand the concepts and
consequences of climate change; how climate change
consequences contribute to urban vulnerabilities; and what
is being done by city governments in East Asia and around
the world to actively engage in learning capacity building,

The expanding coverage of social
assistance in Vietnam raises a question of whether relevant
arrangements at all levels are sufficiently robust to handle
a larger program. This note explores institutional and
delivery aspects of formal and informal social assistance in
metropolitan cities. It is a result of a rapid assessment of
governance and administration of social assistance in
metropolitan cities, including interviews with related

Cities and the people who live in them
account for more than 80 percent of the world's total
greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, more than 80 percent
of the overall annual global costs of adaptation to climate
change are estimated to be borne by urban areas. This issues
brief looks at potential financing opportunities and costs
of mitigation and adaptation in the urban context.
Wide-ranging potential sources for finance for climate

North Africa's coastal cities, long
benefitting from their ready access to commerce and culture,
also face distinct vulnerabilities due to their location.
Natural hazards and extreme weather patterns impose risks on
coastal areas that inland areas seldom encounter. North
Africa's increasingly populous cities face tangible
risks today, but these will be amplified as the impacts of
global climate change further manifest themselves over the

Adaptation has long been neglected in
the debate and policies surrounding climate change. However,
increasing awareness of climate change has led many
stakeholders to look for the best way to limit its
consequences and has resulted in a large number of
initiatives related to adaptation, particularly at the local
level. This report proposes a general economic framework to
help stakeholders in the public sector to develop effective

Robert B. Zoellick, World Bank Group President, addresses the
biggest threat to the poor around the world: high and
volatile food prices. The Bank released an updated Food Price Watch
that underscores the need for the G20 to put food
first. The key driver behind the upward spiral in the food
price index has been sharp rises in the prices of wheat,
maize, sugar, and oils. He discusses the global food
price hikes which have pushed about 44 million people into

This paper examines the role of social
safety-net programs in Bangladesh run by the government and
nongovernmental organizations to mitigate seasonal
deprivation in the country's highly vulnerable
northwest region. Specifically, the paper explores whether
social safety nets are limited to averting seasonal
deprivation or can also address seasonality of income and
employment more generally. Using a recent survey from the

Over the recent year, humanity has faced
natural disasters of unprecedented magnitude and impact.
However, governments and international aid organizations do
not systematically plan for preventing and mitigating the
effects of natural disasters, and macroeconomic scenarios
seldom take into account the results of their increasing
incidence, damages, and costs. Using evaluative lessons from
the World Bank's and others' experience, this note

Climate change is already a reality.
This is evidenced by the acceleration of global temperature
increases, the melting of ice and snow covers, and rising
sea levels. Latin America and the Caribbean region (LCR) are
not exempt from these trends, as illustrated by the changes
in precipitation patterns that are already being reported in
the region, as well as by observations of rising
temperatures, the rapid melting of Andean tropical glaciers,

The Country Environmental Analysis,
presents a review of environmental priorities, public
environmental expenditures and the supporting institutional
framework and makes recommendations to improve the
efficiency and effectiveness of public environmental
expenditure in Azerbaijan. The focus is to identify areas
for improvement and changes to ensure that the process of
establishing environment-related priorities is sufficiently