One of the most compelling reasons for pursuing low-carbon development is that the potential impacts of climate change are predicted to be severe, for both industrial and developing countries, and that reducing greenhouse gas emissions can reduce the risk of the most catastrophic impacts.

The city of eThekwini or Durban has undergone a period of rapid urbanization that has contributed to the degradation of the city’s natural environment. Climate change is placing further strains on the city’s ability to manage the urban environment. The urban environmental profile of eThekwini has been prepared as the first component of the assignment promoting green urban development in Africa: enhancing the relationship between urbanization, environmental assets and ecosystem services, a project being conducted under the leadership of the World Bank.

By European standards, Romania is a low urbanized country. There exists a rising trend towards suburbanization, however, that is not fully captured by Romania’s urban statistics. The country’s urbanization rate of 55 percent has remained fairly constant over the past two decades, despite significant population migration out of the country, and a strong suburbanization trend in areas on the immediate outskirts of major cities.

In Romania, as well as in many other East European countries, transport sector Green House Gas (GHG) emissions are increasing fast and their growth is expected to continue into the future, accompanying the on-going economic convergence with the European Union (EU). The objective of the analysis was to assess the impact of green policies and investments on transport emissions. For this purpose, the Romania Transport Strategic Emission Prediction Tool (TRANSEPT) was developed.

This report is about Energy sector in Romania which is responsible for 58 percent of the country’s GHG emissions (except Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF)), and is therefore critical for mitigation. Romania’s economic growth and energy consumption have been decoupling since the early 1990s, and the energy intensity of the economy has been continuously decreasing, but it is still high. At present, Romanian energy supply system is relatively carbon intensive, but share of zero-carbon energy sources is growing.

This report is about Romanis's Green growth benchmarking, which is a country-level diagnostic that helps define a country’s strengths and vulnerabilities in adopting a path to greener growth. The process of defining a country’s green growth path starts with an analysis aimed at mapping the country’s current position on a multi-dimensional green-growth chart, with each dimension defined by an indicator of green growth.

This report is about forests that provide a substantial contribution to mitigation in Romania by sequestering carbon, helping to counter carbon emissions from other sectors in the economy. Sustainable forest management is challenged by fragmented ownership and insufficient financial resources in particular. A summary of key existing analytic studies, and the construction of a marginal abatement cost curve for mitigation actions in the forestry sector, was the basis for identifying key adaptation and mitigation measures for Romania’s forests.

This Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) identifies the binding constraints to reducing extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity in Ethiopia. Achieving those goals requires a two pronged strategy of building on the strengths of past performance as well as introducing new elements. Progress in rural livelihoods drove poverty reduction in the past and will likely do so in the future. In addition, faster, and more inclusive, private sector-led structural change and ‘getting urbanization right’ are essential going forward.

This Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) is designed to assess the key constraints and opportunities facing Mozambique as it strives to sustain robust growth and macroeconomic stability while accelerating poverty reduction and promoting greater economic inclusiveness. The SCD is organized into six chapters. Chapter two describes the evolution of poverty and inequality, explores their regional and demographic dimensions, and identifies strategies for accelerating poverty reduction.

Cameroon is a lower-middle income country with social indicators and levels of poverty which are below those for comparator countries. Large and rising inequalities between north and south, inefficiencies in public resource allocation and an adverse business environment explain this. While insecurity due to Boko Haram activities and rapidly rising public debt constrain efforts at poverty reduction, there exists a huge potential for economic growth and poverty reduction. This potential remains mostly untapped.

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) is a constitutionally recognized semiautonomous region in northern Iraq. Its government, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), based in Erbil, has the right, under the Iraqi constitution of 2005, to exercise legislative, executive, and judicial powers according to the constitution, except in what is listed therein as exclusive powers of the federal authorities. The Iraqi constitution defines the Kurdistan Region as a federal entity of Iraq. KRG has a parliamentary democracy with a regional assembly that consists of 111 seats.

The latest issue of Handshake, focused on public-private partnerships in the Innovation. “An age of constant invention naturally begets one of constant failure,”the New York Times Magazine declared in a recent story called “Welcometo the Failure Age.” Its core premise—that innovation is inextricably linked with failure—may be a fresh insight for the high-tech era, but has long been understood by those who work in infrastructure. To state the obvious:for those of us in infrastructure PPPs, failure is not a novel concept.Innovation is.