Climate change is the defining
development challenge of our time. More than a global
environmental issue, climate change is also a threat to
poverty reduction and economic growth and may unravel many
of the development gains made in recent decades. Latin
America and the Caribbean account for a relatively modest
twelve percent of the world's greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions, but communities across the region are already

Lesotho began a structural economic
transformation in the early 1990s. The transformation has
brought higher, more secure incomes to households while the
government succeeded in dramatically improving access to
services such as education, health, water, and
transportation. Yet today, Lesotho faces a number of serious
development challenges, including a high rate of chronic
poverty, entrenched income inequality, and most troubling

This Country Environmental Analysis
(CEA) has been developed by the World Bank in cooperation
with the Government of Jordan. It aims to integrate
environment into development and poverty reduction
priorities. The CEA will be a vital instrument for designing
Jordans future policies, by integrating the economic policy
tools in our decision making processes. As the latest
economic crises and its implications have shown, an economic

Policy makers and development
practitioners who are responsible for developing investment
strategies to promote economic growth find many challenges
in the changing face of agriculture in the twenty-first
century. In addition to its productive role of providing
food, clothing, fuel, and housing for a growing world
population, agriculture assumes other roles, the importance
of which has more recently been recognized. In addition to

The West African Mineral Sector
Strategic Assessment (WAMSSA) is a strategic environmental
and social assessment intended to identify policy,
institutional, and regulatory adjustments required to
integrate environmental and social considerations into
mineral sector development in Africa. The study focused on
three Mano River Union (MRU) countries, Guinea, Liberia, and
Sierra Leone, all categorized as mineral-rich countries

The Country Environmental Analysis,
presents a review of environmental priorities, public
environmental expenditures and the supporting institutional
framework and makes recommendations to improve the
efficiency and effectiveness of public environmental
expenditure in Azerbaijan. The focus is to identify areas
for improvement and changes to ensure that the process of
establishing environment-related priorities is sufficiently

This country note briefly summarizes
information relevant to both climate change and agriculture
in El Salvador, with focus on policy developments (including
action plans and programs) and institutional make-up. Like
most countries in Latin America, El Salvador has submitted
one national communication to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with a second one
under preparation. According to the national greenhouse

In order to inform the 2010 Strategy,
and suggest what role the World Bank Group (WBG) can
realistically play in strengthening environmental
institutions and governance, this paper takes stock of WBG
operations in this area since the 2001 Strategy. Looking
across the spectrum of lending and nonlending operations,
the first task is to identify the approaches which have been
used to engage with clients. The analysis then evaluates

This country note briefly summarizes
information relevant to both climate change and agriculture
in Haiti, with focus on policy developments (including
action plans and programs) and institutional make-up. Haiti
has submitted its National Adaptation Plan of Action to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC). Land use change and forestry are the largest
contributors to green house gas (GHG) emissions in the

Biomass is the most important source of
energy in Rwanda, especially for domestic cooking. Today
approximately 86 percent of primary energy comes from
biomass, mainly in the form of wood that is either used
directly as a fuel (57 percent), or converted into charcoal
(23 percent) together with smaller amounts of crop residues,
and peat (6 percent). In the past, the production of
charcoal in Rwanda was one of the factors that contributed

This country note briefly summarizes
information relevant to both climate change and agriculture
in Nicaragua, with focus on policy developments (including
action plans and programs) and institutional make-up. Like
most countries in Latin America, Nicaragua has submitted one
national communication to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) with a second one
under preparation. Land use change and forestry are by far

This country note for Macedonia is part
of a series of country briefs that summarize information
relevant to climate change and agriculture for four pilot
countries in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Region, with
a particular focus on climate and crop projections,
adaptation options, policy development and institutional
involvement. The note series has been developed to provide a
baseline of knowledge on climate change and agriculture for