This paper proposes an alternative
approach to addressing the complex problems of climate
change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. The author, who
won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, argues that
single policies adopted only at a global scale are unlikely
to generate sufficient trust among citizens and firms so
that collective action can take place in a comprehensive and
transparent manner that will effectively reduce global

The World Bank Group has a unique
opportunity to match the increases in financing for
agriculture with a sharper focus on improving agricultural
growth and productivity in agriculture-based economies,
notably in Sub-Saharan Africa. Greater effort will be needed
to connect sectoral interventions and achieve synergies from
public and private sector interventions; to build capacity
and knowledge exchange; to take stock of experience in

The Amazon basin is a key component of
the global carbon cycle. The old-growth rainforests in the
basin represent storage of ~ 120 petagrams of carbon (Pg C)
in their biomass. Annually, these tropical forests process
approximately 18 Pg C through respiration and
photosynthesis. This is more than twice the rate of global
anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions. The basin is also the
largest global repository of biodiversity and produces about

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

After the post-war reconstruction period
that started in 1990-1992, Lebanon made spectacular
improvements to repair the scars of the wars by investing
heavily in public infrastructure, roads, highways, airports
and harbors, communications, commercial estates, and high
and middle income housing. The environmental neglect had an
impact on the economy and resulted in a degradation
amounting to US$ 565 million in 2000 or 3.4 percent of Gross

Water is everyone's business.
Beside a necessity for living, water has implications on
public health and, most importantly, can cause social
conflicts. This is because water is limited, is difficult to
control, and can easily be polluted. The Integrated Water
Resource Management (IWRM) process is considered worldwide
as a means to reduce social conflicts from competing water
needs as well as to facilitate effective and sustainable

The theme of the 2011 Philippines
development report is 'generating inclusive growth,
uplifting the poor and vulnerable'. This theme is
follows from the priorities set in President Aquino's
Social Contract and the emerging 2011-2016 Philippines
Development Plan (PDP). The PDP details the vision of
inclusive growth and poverty reduction that underlies the
social contract (chapter one). Accordingly, the PDP focuses

The international aviation and maritime
sectors today enjoy relatively favorable tax treatment, as
their fuels are not taxed and the sectors are not subject to
any value-added tax or turnover tax. Nor are these fuel uses
subject to any global measures to reduce their associated
CO2 emissions, even though they represent at least 5 percent
of the global greenhouse gas emissions. A carbon charge on
fuels for international aviation and shipping equal to $25

The paper explores existing patterns of
green innovation and presents an overview of green
innovation policies for developing countries. The key
findings from the empirical analysis are: (1) frontier green
innovations are concentrated in high-income countries, few
in developing countries but growing; (2) the most
technologically-sophisticated developing countries are
emerging as significant innovators but limited to a few

Urban flooding is an increasingly
important issue. Disaster statistics appear to show flood
events are becoming more frequent, with medium-scale events
increasing fastest. The impact of flooding is driven by a
combination of natural and human-induced factors. As recent
flood events in Pakistan, Brazil, Sri Lanka and Australia
show, floods can occur in widespread locations and can
sometimes overwhelm even the best prepared countries and

This paper constructs an integrated
assessment model of tropical cyclones in order to quantify
the impact that climate change may have on tropical cyclone
damages in countries around the world. The paper relies on a
tropical cyclone generator in each ocean and several climate
models to predict tropical cyclones with and without climate
change. A damage model is constructed to compute the
resulting damage when a cyclone strikes each country.

Large-scale disasters regularly affect
societies over the globe, causing large destruction and
damage. After each of these events, media, insurance
companies, and international institu-tions publish numerous
assessments of the "cost of the disaster." However
these assessments are based on different methodologies and
approaches, and they often reach different results. Besides
methodological differences, these discrepancies are due to