Irrigation has made a major contribution
to poverty reduction in the past decades, enabling higher
yields and better nutrition. Despite these achievements,
large-scale irrigation schemes have usually yielded low
returns and attracted negative publicity because of their
adverse environmental and social impacts. As a result, the
Bank has largely switched its support for irrigation away
from new construction toward rehabilitation and policy

South Asia has attracted global
attention because it has experienced rapid GDP growth over
the last two decades. What is not so well known is that
South Asia is the least integrated region in the world.
South Asia has opened its door to the rest of the world but
it remains closed to its neighbors. Poor market integration,
weak connectivity, and a history of friction and conflict
have resulted in two South Asias. The first South Asia is

Bangladesh represents a success story
among developing countries. Poverty incidence, which was as
high as 57 percent at the beginning of the 1990s, had
declined to 49 percent in 2000. This trend accelerated
subsequently, reducing the poverty headcount rate to 40
percent in 2005. The primary contributing factor was robust
and stable economic growth along with no worsening of
inequality. Respectable GDP growth that started at the

The Philippines by virtue of its geographic circumstances is highly prone to natural disasters, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tropical cyclones and floods, making it one of the most disaster prone countries in the world. This report seeks to document the impacts of natural disasters on the social and economic development of the Philippines; assess the country's current capacity to reduce and manage disaster risk; and identify options for more effective management of that risk.

This report is the result of a technical
and economic assessment of the fisheries sector in Cape
Verde. While originally focusing particularly on the
long-term development and governance strategy of the sector,
the authors, faced with the increasingly apparent need for
fundamental restructuring of the sector, redirected their
attention to what has become an assessment of how to create
a viable fishing sector that can effectively reach realistic

The Philippines is one of the most natural hazard-prone countries in the world. The social and economic cost of natural disasters in the country is increasing due to population growth, change in land-use patterns, migration, unplanned urbanization, environmental degradation and global climate change. Reducing the risk of disasters will be key to achieving the development goals in the Philippines. The World Bank with assistance from the Philippines Government conducted an informal study on natural disaster risk management in the Philippines.

Benefit-cost analyses of disaster risk
reduction (DRR) projects are an important tool for
evaluating the efficiency of such projects, and an important
input into decision making. These analyses, however, often
fail to monetize the benefits of reduced death and injury.
The authors review the literature on valuing reduced death
and injury, and suggest methods for calculating
order-of-magnitude estimates of these benefits. Because few

Traditionally both national and regional
development planning in Vietnam has been driven by
'top-down' Central Government social and economic
targets based on limited analytical investigation. However,
with the advent of the free market economy in Vietnam since
the late 1980s, vigorous global economic competitiveness and
Vietnam's membership to the World Trade Organization
(WTO), changes in national policy in Vietnam have now

Local governments can have a large effect on carbon emissions through land use zoning, building codes, transport infrastructure investments, and support for transportation alternatives. This paper proposes a climate policy instrument--city carbon budgets--that provides a durable framework for local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Local governments would be assigned an emissions "budget", and would be required to keep annual local transport and buildings emissions within this budget.

The Africa Development Indicators 2007 essay explores the patterns of growth in Sub- Saharan Africa over the past three decades. It finds that the volatility of growth-an outcome of conflict, governance, and world commodity prices-has been greater than in any other region. Volatility has dampened expectations and investments-and has obscured some periods of good performance for some countries. The essay shows that pickups in growth were seldom sustained- indeed, that they were often followed by ferocious declines, and hence, Africa's flat economic performance over 1975-2005.

This report seeks to present micro
evidence on how environmental changes affect poor
households. It focuses primarily on environmental resources
that are outside the private sphere, particularly commonly
held and managed resources such as forests, fisheries, and
wildlife. The objectives for this volume are three-fold. It
is first interested in using an empirical data-driven
approach to examine the dependence of the poor on natural

This document presents the recently
elected Colombian administration with a set of policy notes
meant to enrich the debate around critical issues affecting
the country's development. These notes build mostly
upon existing research and represent the Bank's
independent view on topics which are either at the crux of
ongoing policy discussions or merit a more prominent place
in this dialogue. This window of opportunity provides a very