China is considered one of the most seriously eroded countries in the world. The
many causes of this degradation can be divided into natural, human-induced and root causes.
The consequences of watershed degradation are severe and reach even beyond the country’s
boundaries. Addressing this issue requires a sustainable participatory and integrated watershed
management approach. The Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Projects, implemented by
the Ministry of Water Resources and co-financed by the World Bank has provided a model that

This paper examines whether cooperative
behavior by respondents measured as contributions in a
one-shot public goods game correlates with reported
pro-forest collective action behaviors. All the outcomes
analyzed are costly in terms of time, land, or money. The
study finds significant evidence that more cooperative
individuals (or those who believe their group members will
cooperate) engage in collective action behaviors that

This Country Partnership Framework (CPF)
sets out the World Bank Group (WBG) program for Albania for
the period FY15-19, aimed at supporting Albanias aspiration
to achieve equitable growth and integration into the
European Union. Albania emerged from the collapse of
isolationist communism in the early 1990s as one of the
poorest countries in Europe. The country then experienced
rapid growth of nearly 6 percent per annum, rising into the

Drawing on a new set of nationally
representative, internationally comparable household
surveys, this paper provides an overview of key features of
structural transformation—labor allocation and labor
productivity—in four African economies. New, micro-based
measures of sector labor allocation and cross-sector
productivity differentials describe the incentives
households face when allocating their labor. These measures

The inability to unlock natural resource
wealth for the benefit of developing countries’ local
populations, a phenomenon popularly known as the ‘resource
curse’ or the ‘paradox of plenty’, has spawned extensive
debate among researchers and policy makers in recent years.
There is now a well-established body of literature exploring
the links between natural resources and conflict, with some
sources estimating that over the past 60 years, 40 percent

Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, focuses on economic policy as the key to mobilizing a
coordinated global response to climate change. He talks
about the need to confront climate change, without which
there will be no hope of ending poverty or boosting shared
prosperity. He adds that the longer the delay in tackling
climate change, the higher the cost will be to do the right
thing for our planet and our children. He affirms that from the

A significant portion of the world’s
forests that are eligible for Reducing Emission from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation, known as REDD ,
payments are community managed forests. However, there is
little knowledge about preferences of households living in
community managed forests for REDD contracts, or the
opportunity costs of accepting REDD contracts for these
communities. This paper uses a choice experiment survey of

Mongolia’s ongoing economic transition generates levels of uncertainty that often inhibit investments in
productivity and marketing improvements on the part of producers and processors. This study was undertaken to identify gaps in policies, laws, regulations, and practices from production
to the consumer end point, and to stimulate discussions about how to leverage the agriculture sector’s
potential contributions to national development objectives.

African governments and international
development groups see boosting productivity on smallholder
farms as key to reducing rural poverty and safeguarding the
food security of farming and non-farming households.
Prompting smallholder farmers to use more fertilizer has
been a key tactic. Closing the productivity gap between male
and female farmers has been another avenue toward achieving
the same goal. The results in this paper suggest the two are

In this issue: The State as Employer of
Last Resort in Postrevolution Tunisia; What Drives Weak Job
Creation in Tunisia?; Macroinsurance for Microenterprises;
Testing the Effectiveness of Job Matching in Jordan;
Predicting Bank Insolvency in the Middle East and North
Africa; Economic Inequality in the Arab Region; Open Skies
over the Middle East.

Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, discusses promoting strong economic growth in developing countries. He speaks about the need to invest in people,
especially in education, health and to build social safety
nets and protections against both natural disasters and
pandemics to ensure that people don't remain trapped in
extreme poverty. He talks about the challenges in trying to
work in all kinds of complex political situations, so that

This paper estimate the effects of
collective action in Nepal’s community forests on four
ecological measures of forest quality. Forest user group
collective action is identified through membership in the
Nepal Community Forestry Programme, pending membership in
the program, and existence of a forest user group whose
leaders can identify the year the group was formed. This
last, broad category is important, because many community