Azerbaijan’s performance on the twin
goals has been commendable. The middle class has doubled in
size and extreme poverty has almost been eliminated in the
space of a decade. At the same time, regional differences
persist, with significantly higher poverty rates in lagging
regions, and Baku dominating overwhelmingly in terms of
share of GDP. Disparities in welfare also persist between
rural and urban areas as well as across social groups. As

Livelihoods, food security, and
development processes in Sub-Saharan Africa are highly
dependent on land management practices to generate natural
ecosystem goods and services. Out of a total population of
about 717 million people, almost 60 percent depend for their
livelihood on agriculture, hunting, fishing, or forestry.
However, unsustainable land management already is leading to
large-scale land degradation trends, which pose a threat to

There is no doubt that the poorest
people are already and will continue to be most severely
impacted by climatic changes, including shifting trends as
well as more frequent and severe extreme events. Yet, new
insights on the dynamics and distribution of poverty point
to the need to comprehend where the poor and poorest are,
how they are poor, and why their poverty constrains their
abilities to cope with and adapt to occurring and predicted

An issue which has generated much
concern has been the potential link between low incomes and
resource degradation. This report presents the results of a
study which investigated this question. Machakos District is
a relatively low income and agriculturally marginal district
in Kenya. Before World War II the colonial administration
was concerned that land degradation was becoming severe
under the pressure of population, aggravated by drought. The

The aim of this discussion paper is to
ascertain the government of Lao's (GoL) current
practices in negotiating, awarding, and managing land
concessions; enhance GoL understanding and commitments to
develop national capacities targeting improved land
management, that will generate revenues for GoL, and ensure
sustainable development as an urgent priority; and provide a
basis for dialogue within the government to enable its

This report represents a further chapter
in the dialogue between the World Bank and the People's
Republic of China about how to promote economic growth and
protect China's environment. There are three
cross-cutting issues that keep recurring throughout the
analysis. These issues characterize the environmental
management challenge over the next decade: First, the
environmental agenda is becoming so complex and large that

This report summarizes the findings of
the Uganda Sustainable Land Management Public Expenditure
Review (SLM PER). The SLM PER was undertaken to achieve six
main objectives: (i) establish a robust data base on
SLM-related public expenditure that can support credible
empirical analysis; (ii) develop a sound methodology for
conducting SLM PERs, which could guide similar work in the
future; (iii) analyze the level and composition of SLM

The WBG’s Colombia Systematic Country
Diagnostic (SCD) analyzed key constraints and opportunities
that will impact Colombia’s development in the context of
three defining country characteristics. They include uneven
territorial development, a long standing armed conflict and
a growth process led by extractive industries. The Colombia
Country Partnership Framework (CPF) proposes to address
these complex development challenges with a flexible,

Over the last 20 years, poor rural
farmers in Nigeria have seen the benefits of community
organization as a tool for local economic development under
the National Fadama Development Project series. They have
witnessed improvements in rural areas that have embraced a
more inclusive and participatory model of local economic
decision making. Many communities have come together under
the umbrella of new institutional arrangements for

The systematic country diagnostic (SCD)
is designed to identify the most critical binding
constraints and opportunities facing Indonesia in ending
extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. In line with
the World Bank Group’s (WBG’s) new country engagement model,
the findings of the SCD will provide inputs for the
preparation of the country partnership framework (CPF),
which will outline the WBG’s engagement with Indonesia to

After a destructive civil war and
extreme political instability, Uganda began its
reconstruction process in 1987. Within the enabling
environment of macroeconomic stability, most of the progress
on the twin goals was attributable to higher agricultural
incomes. Poverty reduction among households primarily
engaged in agriculture accounted for 53 percent of the
reduction in poverty from 2006 to 2010 and 77 percent of the

The Nile Story is one of immense
challenges and remarkable achievements for the economic
development of the region. It begins in 1999, when the
ministers in charge of water affairs in the Nile countries
agreed to form the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI). Between 2003
and 2015, the Nile Basin Trust Fund (NBTF) supported and
coordinated cooperative work in the region, which has been
delivered mainly through the NBI. This book, commissioned by