The purpose of this book is to
contribute to the debate on how to confront the challenges
that Bolivia faces today. It is composed of a series of
studies on the current reality of Bolivia and has been
developed in conjunction with national and international
public policy experts. The studies present a diagnostic by
sector, a summary of the main challenges, and public policy
recommendations aimed at meeting these challenges. After

There are many reasons to believe that
Syrian agriculture has great potential for the future. The
liberalisation of agriculture in Eastern Europe delivered
rapid growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Countries
such as Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Hungary,
Kazachstan, Romania and Russia achieved labour productivity
growth in constant US$ terms of over 7 percent between 1998
and 2004. Syria has a global comparative advantage in fruit

In the wake of reforms to establish a free market in land-use rights, Vietnam is experiencing a pronounced rise in rural landlessness. To some observers this is a harmless by-product of a more efficient economy, while to others it signals the return of the pre-socialist class-structure, with the rural landless at the bottom of the economic ladder. The authors' theoretical model suggests that removing restrictions on land markets will increase landlessness among the poor, but that there will be both gainers and losers, with uncertain impacts on aggregate poverty.

Over the medium time horizon, skill upgrading, differentials in sectoral technological progress, and migration of labor out of farming activities are some of the major structural adjustment factors shaping the evolution of an economy and its connected poverty trends. The main focus of the authors is understanding, for the case of Brazil, how a trade shock interacts with these structural forces and ascertaining whether it enhances or hinders medium-term poverty reduction.

The purpose of this study is to assess
agriculture's competitiveness in Colombia. During the
past 12 years, Colombia's agricultural sector has
performed poorly, resulting in the continuation of extensive
rural poverty. Improving the sector's competitiveness
is the only sure and lasting way to improve its growth
performance and reduce poverty. Thus, the main objectives of
this study are to assess: (a) the sector's current and

This report summarizes and consolidates the findings of three Bank studies on poverty issues in Mexico, written as part of the second phase of this work: Urban Poverty, Rural Poverty, and Social Protection. It also expands on how Mexico will seek to use social protection policy as a vehicle for redistribution. Discussed in Chapter 1, the state has a clear role in providing risk-pooling mechanisms where private insurance markets fail (e.g., old age and health insurance), but the role of social protection policy in promoting redistribution is more an issue of national choice.

Economic development has brought about,
the decline in contribution of the agricultural sector to
the economy of Sri Lanka, and, consistent with this economic
transformation, the structure of employment also changed.
Thus, as labor migrates away from agriculture, the
productivity, for those who remain in the land, needs to
increase significantly. This report examines the constraints
to promoting more rapid agricultural, and rural non-farm

The process by which different
ecological conditions and historical trajectories interacted
to create different social and cultural systems resulted in
major differences in economic development performance within
Southeast Asia. In the late 19th century, Indonesia, the
Philippines, and Thailand commonly experienced
vent-for-surplus development through exploitation of unused
lands. Nevertheless, different agrarian structures were

Accounting for around a third of the
1996 Goss Domestic Product (GDP) of US$ 9 billion (second
only to oil), and almost three-fourths of all employment,
agriculture is a dominant sector of the Cameroonian economy.
Also, as in most African countries, poverty in Cameroon is
concentrated in rural areas, with more than 80 percent
(approximately 5.5 million) of all poor people living in
such areas. The Government of Cameroon's objectives

Agrarian reform, or AR, is the redistribution of public and private agricultural lands, regardless of produce and tenurial arrangement, to landless farmers and regular farm workers, to include support services and other arrangements alternative to distribution of land such as production/profi t sharing, labor organization, or distribution of shares of stock.

El caso aborda la historia de tres mujeres que ante el deceso de sus cónyuges, pierden la garantía para validar sus derechos sobre las posesiones de tierra. La lucha por sus tierras se hizo desde el liderazgo, la toma del control de sus tierras o por acuerdos familiares. Estas estrategias les han permitido garantizar su acceso a la tierra, su empoderamiento y reconocimiento dentro de la comunidad.

Se trata de un aporte técnico para entender el contexto político, reivindicativo, pero principalmente legislativo del acceso a la tierra de sectores populares en el medio rural del Uruguay actual. El estudio parte de la intervención del Estado sobre el acceso a la tierra a través de las leyes e instrumentos complementarios a las mismas y la trama de sus aplicaciones concretas. Por lo tanto es un documento…