The objective of this report is to
examine the linkages between rural economic activity, food
insecurity and poverty in Haiti as a means of determining
the barriers to rural development. The analysis draws on a
newly available set of house-hold level living standards
measurement data collected in 2012 (ECVMAS). About 70.7
percent of all rural households are poor, and education
levels are low with an average of 2.8 years of education for

This paper seeks to provide evidence on
the extent of household vulnerability to exogenous economic
shocks in the Pacific region and consider policy options
that help to manage this risk. Characteristics of the region
such as remoteness, small size, dispersion, and urbanizing
populations lead to pronounced vulnerabilities. The paper
presents macroeconomic and distributional analysis and
complements it with results of a micro-simulation model

Cities are hubs of global change, and
their global influence continues to grow. Cities contribute
significantly to global challenges like climate change and
biodiversity loss. At the same time, cities experience
impacts like climate change first and with greatest
intensity. Further, cities are becoming leaders worldwide in
efforts to address global environmental and social problems.
Some of the most important smaller-scale agreements and

A healthy ocean is fundamental to human
wellbeing and an indispensable part of the Earth's
life-support system, which sustains the species and the
ecosystems upon which we depend. The ocean regulates our
climate and, as part of the hydrological cycle, drives
weather patterns that determine rainfall, droughts, and
floods. The ocean has also reduced the impact of
human-induced climate change by absorbing 25 percent of the

This report identifies the key drivers
of rapid poverty reduction in Bhutan over the recent years,
explaining why some dzongkhags are stuck in poverty or
reducing poverty is not significant while others prospered,
and whether female headed households have a harder time
reducing poverty. The exercise draws mainly on data from the
two rounds of Bhutan Living Standards Survey (2007 and 2012)
supplemented with focus group discussions carried out for

The Government of Sierra Leone (GosL)
and the World Bank (WB) have agreed upon the design and
implementation of a growth poles program (GPP) in support of
the agenda for prosperity (A4P), the GoSL's third
poverty reduction strategy paper (PRSPIII). With support
from the European Union competitive industries and
innovation practice trust fund, the WB has been undertaking
a series of scoping and diagnostic analyses on the GPP since

The purpose of this report is to
document some of the aforementioned achievements over the
2000-2010 decade and to illustrate their collective impact
on poverty in Bangladesh. Analysis is undertaken to identify
which factors contributed to the rapid decline in poverty
over time. The main limitation of this report is that the
analysis is based on a limited number of data sources, which
do not cover all aspects of the poverty reduction process.

Bhutan has recently made significant
progress in sustaining economic growth and reducing poverty.
Bhutan also has valuable deposits of primary materials
including dolomite, lime stone, gypsum, quartzite, stone,
and marble, which are useful for fabrication of other
materials. Thus, a significant part of Bhutan's current
and prospective economic gains come from use of natural
resources called, green sectors. The basic message in this

Despite its vast agriculture potential,
Africa is increasingly dependent on food imports from the
rest of the world to satisfy its consumption needs. Food
output has not kept pace with population growth, and more
than 80 percent of production gains since 1980 have come
from the expansion of cropped areas rather than from greater
productivity of areas already cultivated. This paper looks
at the current requirements for seed trade in Africa, the

This paper uses a stochastic dynamic
programming model to characterize the optimal
savings-consumption decisions and the role of livestock
inventories as a buffer stock in rural Ethiopia. The results
show that relatively land-rich households use accumulation
and liquidation of cattle and other animal inventories for
partial consumption smoothing, while low-income households
appear not to do so. The results highlight the need for

This paper documents a significant
impact of climate variation on urbanization in Sub-Saharan
Africa, primarily in more arid countries. By lowering farm
incomes, reduced moisture availability encourages migration
to nearby cities, while wetter conditions slow migration.
The paper also provides evidence for rural-urban income
links. In countries with a larger industrial base, reduced
moisture shrinks the agricultural sector and raises total

This report presents the World Bank
Group's experience in climate and disaster resilient
development and contends that it is essential to eliminate
extreme poverty and achieve shared prosperity by 2030. The
report argues for closer collaboration between the climate
resilience and disaster risk management communities through
the incorporation of climate and disaster resilience into
broader development processes. Selected case studies are