Reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and
other greenhouse gases that affect climate change is one of
the key challenges facing the international community. The
Bank's Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF) provides a framework
for action, learning, and research to demonstrate how
greenhouse gas emission reduction transactions can
contribute to sustainable development, while lowering the
costs of compliance with the Kyoto Protocol-the 1997

Cooperative management, and development
of Africa's international rivers holds real promise for
greater sustainability, and productivity of the
continent's increasingly scarce water resources, and
fragile environment. Moreover, the potential benefits of
cooperative water resources management, can serve as
catalysts for broader regional cooperation, economic
integration, and development - and even conflict prevention.

This issue, which serves as the annual
review on the environment, looks at the Bank's work
from July 2002 through June 2003, dedicated this year to
Water and the Environment, on the occasion of the Fifth
World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa. Following the
overview, which reviews progress in the implementation of
the Environment strategy, the report presents viewpoints on
ways to move forward in delivering water as committed in

The review focuses on development and
the environment in Yemen, particularly analyzing the
environment resource base, where renewable fresh water is
scarce, mainly ground water, and its over exploitation is
one of the country's major environmental problems.
Fisheries resources are also important, while oil and gas
are significant resources contributing to some eighty five
percent of Yemen's export revenues. Environmental

This has to be accomplished against a
background of high illiteracy rates, rapidly growing
populations, low and erratic rainfall, inherently infertile
soils, and development strategies which have had a strong
urban bias. Under such conditions, traditional production
systems are unable to sustain the population. Without
significant change, land degradation will accelerate and the
natural resource base on which agricultural production

The note reviews the cultural role of
traditional healers in communities in Ghana, and Zambia, as
one of the best hopes for treating, and stemming the spread
of AIDS. However, healers rely on medicinal plants which
have significantly decreased, as their habitats are lost
through deforestation, cultivation, overgrazing, burning
droughts, and desertification among others. This has been
exacerbated by poor management of local, and international

The report reviews the macroeconomic
perspectives of Uruguay, focused on its rural development
and natural resources intensive sectors, to form the basis
for expanding agricultural production, and increasing
productivity. It reviews the country's sectoral
composition, exports of natural resource intensive products,
and labor and capital use, as well as the tax burden.
Although agriculture represents less than ten percent of the

The study reviews Niger's water
resources, and planning process, through its short- and
medium-term water investment program, and priorities in the
water supply, and sanitation sector. Critical challenges are
examined for improving its complex water resources
management to support economic growth, given its landlocked
situation, with diffuse, and mostly rural population, and
immense, untapped fossil aquifer supplies. Despite multiple

This case study is one of six
evaluations of the implementation of the World Bank's
1991 Forest Strategy. This and the other cases (Brazil,
Cameroon, Costa Rica, India, and Indonesia) complement a
review of the entire set of lending and nonlending
activities of the World Bank Group and the Global
Environment Facility. This OED study finds that while
China's forest program was highly successful, much

The world's worst nuclear accident
occurred in Chernobyl on April 26, 1986, releasing at least
100 times as much radiation as the atomic bombs dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The most affected country was
Belarus, for which the environmental, health, and other
consequences of the Chernobyl accident were disastrous. The
present report reveals that notable differences exist
between zones with relatively mild levels of contamination

Since 1991, radical changes have taken
place in the policy and institutional environment governing
the agriculture sector in Zambia. Policies of liberalization
and privatization have entailed the replacement of
previously state-supplied agricultural services (notably
credit, inputs supply and agricultural marketing) by private
sector provision. The Agricultural Sector Investment Program
(ASIP), assisted by the World Bank, provides the context for

The people of Swaziland are its greatest
resource. Yet, social and economic indicators of household
welfare converge to confirm fundamental inequalities in
access to incomes and assets, and the existence of
significant poverty and deprivation. Furthermore, as the
regional economic and social climate is transformed, the
fragile gains of the past are being fast eroded. At this
historic juncture, the Swazi poor need to come to the fore