Road use charging is used by agencies
for activities ranging from revenue collection, through
demand and environmental management. It is applied on
individual road segments, such as an expressway, or over
geographic areas, such as zones in a city or even an entire
country. When a government is considering implementing a
road use charging system, it needs to consider four broad
issues: (i) the technology to adopt; (ii) how it will be

A watershed is an area that supplies
water by surface or subsurface flow to a drainage system or
body of water. Watersheds vary from a few hectares to
thousands of square kilometers. Watershed management (WSM)
is the integrated use of land, vegetation, and water in a
specific drainage area with the objective of conserving
hydrologic services and reducing or avoiding damage
downstream or underground. The first generation of WSM

Communities supported by World Bank
rural development projects often cite support for the
development of income-generating activities (IGAs) as a
critical need. This note identifies some of the core
problems encountered by Bank task teams that attempt to
respond to this need, outlines the issues involved, and
offers suggestions on some of the points that should be kept
in mind when designing grant programs for this purpose.

The Bank has been involved in a number
of urban upgrading projects over the last three decades,
which have demonstrated that quality of life in slums can be
improved through realistic policies, investments and
implementation processes. This note reviews community-driven
development (CDD) in World Bank-assisted urban upgrading
projects. The note identifies how CDD approaches have been
applied in such projects. The review focuses on a small

With a population of seven million,
Honduras is the second most populous country in Central
America. It is also the second poorest country in the region
with an annual per capita income of less than US$ 1,000. Two
out of every three people in Honduras are poor (per capita
income less than US$ 1.50/day); and three out of every four
poor people are extremely poor (per capita income less than
US$ 1.00/day). Social indicators such as child malnutrition

Poverty and economic stagnation
characterize most rural areas in Peru. National growth has
been slow and uneven since the mid-1970s, benefiting urban
areas rather than rural ones. Between 1985 and 2000, the
number of poor people increased by 71 percent. The incidence
of poverty (67 percent) and extreme poverty (40 percent) is
highest in rural areas, reaching 73 percent (poverty) and 41
percent (extreme poverty) in the sierra. This means that 4.2

Recent experience with monitoring and
evaluation (M&E) in Uganda has shown how M&E can be
developed to contribute to national capacity building,
rather than become a demanding, but unproductive data
collection exercise. Symptoms of M&E overload have been
addressed by assigning coordination responsibility to the
Office of the Prime Minister. Prospects are now improving
for aligning M&E capacity with strengthening

The Nuestras Rais Program (NR) was
created in Honduras in 1995 after massive ethnic
demonstrations, in which people protested poor access to
basic public services and demanded more access roads (and
land rights). The government responded with the Roads for
Production (Caminos para la Produccion) program, which paid
nominal wages to beneficiaries to open and rehabilitate
small tertiary roads and paths. NR phases I and II was

More than 90 percent of the population
in the Sahel lives on agriculture. The fact that crop
production has not kept up with population growth during the
last two decades is attributed to land degradation and
productivity decline resulting in increased levels of rural
poverty, food shortages and chronic food insecurity. In
response, since the 1980s, Sahelian farmers have
experimented with various soil and water conservation

The Sustainable and Participatory Energy
Management project - PROGEDE was implemented by the
government between 1997 and 2004. From project preparation
to supervision the World Bank worked in close collaboration
with Dutch Co-operation (DGIS). At the time of project
preparation, forest-based traditional fuels (firewood and
charcoal), mainly used for household cooking purposes,
represented 53 percent of Senegal's final energy

The development plan of the Federal
Government of Ethiopia emphasized low-cost energy supply as
a prerequisite to the enhancement of industrial and economic
development for the period 1984-1993. Current power planning
studies have estimated Ethiopia's hydropower potential
at 30,000 MW, which greatly exceeds foreseeable domestic
demands. Presently, only 1 percent of the potential is
utilized. The government has therefore initiated the

Participatory community-based Natural
Resources Management (NRM) Projects have been implemented
over the last 5-6 years in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, and
Niger with the support of France, Germany, Norway, the
United States, and the World Bank's International
Development Association facility. Furthermore, pilot
operation concentrating on specific NRM issues are underway
in Chad (pastoral perimeters) and Guinea (land tenure