This report for Iraq - country water
resources assistance strategy (CWRAS) addresses these
objectives in two parts. The first part, which is largely
descriptive, reviews existing conditions and summarizes
Iraq's considerable accomplishments over the past
decades in developing and managing water resources. The
second part investigates challenges and priorities-how to
balance the needs of short-term reconstruction and the

Agricultural water management is a vital
practice in ensuring reduction, and environmental
protection. After decades of successfully expanding
irrigation and improving productivity, farmers and managers
face an emerging crisis in the form of poorly performing
irrigation schemes, slow modernization, declining
investment, constrained water availability, and
environmental degradation. More and better investments in

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

Population growth combined with economic growth will increasingly stress water resources and this has the potential to be the dominant environmental and possibly the most important development issue facing Bangladesh in the coming half century.

Many countries are reforming their economies and setting macroeconomic policies that have direct and indirect impact on the performance of the irrigation sector. One reason for the movement toward reform in the water sector across countries is that water resources are increasingly becoming a limiting factor for many human activities. Another reason for increased pressures to address water policy issues is that many countries are in the process of removing barriers to trade, particularly in agricultural commodities.

Reliable supplies of water for
agriculture have helped meet rapidly rising demand for food
in developing countries, making farms more profitable,
reducing poverty, and helping vast regions of the world
develop more dynamic and diversified economies. Can these
successes be sustained with demand for food rising and water
resources waning? That is the challenge now facing policy
makers, planners, and practitioners in agricultural water

Drought is a normal part of climate for
virtually every country. This paper notes that in response,
a risk-based management approach is more cost effective
because it emphasizes improved monitoring and early warning
systems; development of strong decision-support systems;
identification and implementation of mitigation actions;
education and training of policy makers, natural resources
managers, and the public; and drought mitigation plans that

This report focuses on one specific
interaction: the role of forests, and particularly protected
forests, in maintaining quality of drinking water for large
cities. There are many reasons for this focus: many city
dwellers already face a crisis of water quality, and
contaminated water spreads a vast and largely unnecessary
burden in terms of short and long-term health impacts
including infant mortality, with knock-on effects on ability

This paper tells a story about
conditions in Tanzania's hidden economy, the parts of
the natural resource sector often ignored in conventional
economic analyses and studies, and makes recommendations for
future policy actions. The paper draws primarily from
extensive background studies undertaken of the forestry,
fishery, wildlife, mining, and tourism sub sectors (COWI
2005) as well as a wide range of complementary studies

This report analyzes some key aspects of
food security, namely production, trade, markets and food
aid at the national level, and consumption at the household
level. In doing so it aspires to make a contribution to the
on-going work in Afghanistan regarding the attainment of the
poverty and hunger Millennium Development Goal. The major
findings of the report can be summarized as follows: Food
security (at the national level) does not necessarily

The purpose of this study is to update
the review of World Bank experience in Irrigation (IEG 1994)
and to broaden the scope of evaluation to include all water
lending for agricultural development. Since that first
study, the proportion of World Bank lending for agricultural
water management continued to decline, a trend that started
in the late 1970s when the sub-sector received 11 percent of
the lending, is falling to less than 2 percent in 2001-03.

This report attempts to fill that gap
for two of the most important water-related issues facing
the effects of climate variability and the steady
degradation of the nation's water resources. The study
reported here concluded that the El Niño-La Niña episode
from 1997-2000 cost the country Ksh 290 billion (about 14
percent of GDP during that period). During El Niño-induced
floods, this cost primarily arises from destruction of