It is now widely recognized that
low-income countries in tropical and sub-tropical regions
will be disproportionally affected by the adverse impacts of
climate change. The combination of already fragile
environments, dominance of climate-sensitive sectors in
economic activity, and low autonomous adaptive capacity in
these regions implies a high vulnerability to the harmful
effects of global warming on agricultural production and

Costa Rica's Program of Payments
for Environmental Services (Pago de Servicios Ambientales,
PSA) provides a unique opportunity to evaluate direct
payments as a conservation policy tool. This paper reports
evidence on how much more forest has been conserved in Costa
Rica as a result of PSA contracts with landowners. Such
evidence requires estimating a counterfactual outcome: how
much forest would have been preserved if there had been no

The report analyses the contribution to
date of agricultural water management to poverty reduction
and growth in the in sub-Saharan Africa region, the reasons
for its slow expansion and apparently poor track record, as
well as the ways in which increased investment in
agricultural water management could make a sustainable
contribution to further poverty reduction and growth. The
first chapter places agricultural water management in the

This study was conducted with the main objective of determining the linkages between poverty and land management in Uganda. The study used the 2002/03 Uganda National Household Survey in eight districts representing six major agro-ecological zones and farming systems. Farmers in these districts deplete an average of 179 kg/ha of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, which is about 1.2 percent of the nutrient stock stored in the topsoil.

Liquid biofuels made from biomass are
attracting increasing interest worldwide. Industrial
countries see biofuels as a way of reducing greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions from the transport sector and diversifying
energy sources. Developing countries see biofuels as a way
to stimulate rural development, create jobs, and save
foreign exchange. Both groups view biofuels as a means of
increasing energy security. These concerns, taken together

Economic shocks at birth have lasting
effects on children's health several years after the
shock. The authors calculate height for age z-scores for
children under age five using data from a Rwandan nationally
representative household survey conducted in 1992. They
exploit district and time variation in crop failure and
civil conflict to measure the impact of exogenous shocks
that children experience at birth on their height several

This report presents an update on the
economic challenges facing Ethiopia with a focus on the
shared goal of accelerating equitable growth. The starting
point is the Government's own Plan for Accelerated and
Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP), which is in
the process of finalization, and is designed to cover the
period 2005-2010. This report proposes that the growth
strategy should more explicitly adopt a

This report looks at, and beyond, the management hydrological variability to interventions aimed at decreasing the vulnerability of the economy to these shocks. It helps clarify linkages between the country's economic performance and its water resources endowment and management. It then uses this analysis to recommend both water resource strategies and economic and sectoral policies that will enhance growth and insulate the Ethiopian people and economy from the often devastating, economy-wide effects of water shocks.

The objective of this assignment was to develop a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system for watershed management in the Loess Plateau area. The M&E system for the China Watershed Management Project (CWMP) has been developed on the base of the M&E system that has been implemented during the previous two phases of the World Bank Loess Plateau Project. The final report presents the main outcomes of this process. The major findings of the M&E systems review are summarized in the following chapter two.

The overall objective of the present study is to contribute to the knowledge-base that is urgently required for the implementation of sustainable rural development activities in Haiti.

This study analyzes the
interrelationship between local benefits and global
environment benefits in the Global Environment Facility
(GEF) strategies and projects in order to: Enhance GEF
policies, strategies, and project design and implementation
so these can effectively promote the potential for local
gains in those global environmental programs where actors
need to be mobilized for long-term support of sound

The purpose of the Third Overall
Performance Study (OPS3), commissioned by the Global
Environment Facility (GEF) Council, is "to assess the
extent to which GEF has achieved, or is on its way towards
achieving its main objectives, as laid down in the GEF
Instrument and subsequent decisions by the GEF Council and
the Assembly, including key documents such as the
Operational Strategy and the Policy Recommendations agreed