This country note for Armenia is part of a series of country briefs that summarize information relevant to climate change and agriculture for three pilot countries in the Southern Caucasus 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 the countries participating in the regional program on reducing vulnerability to climate change in Southern Caucasus Agricultural systems.

Biologically diverse ecosystems in countries served by the World Bank provide an array of valuable economic services. While the benefits of conserving ecosystems frequently outweigh the costs, conversion of these ecosystems to other uses occurs anyway, because many ecosystem benefits are of a public good nature, without markets that would reflect their real value.

In Ethiopia, village surveys were conducted in six villages and two expert workshops were organized to discuss the organization of the study and to evaluate the draft results. Based on household surveys, focus group discussions, and institutional stakeholder interviews, we assessed household vulnerability, analyzed the strategies households adopt to reduce the hazards faced, and evaluated the assistance households receive from institutions. Vulnerability profiles were formulated, which show that household vulnerability differs substantially among and within villages.

This report synthesizes the findings for the energy sector of a broader study, the Brazil low carbon study, which was undertaken by the World Bank in its initiative to support Brazil's integrated effort towards reducing national and global emissions of greenhouse gases while promoting long term development. The main aim of the study is to examine the potential for abating Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in Brazil in the energy area and to assess the relative costs of doing so for the time frame 2010-2030.

There is no longer any serious debate about whether greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are altering the earth's climate. There is also a broad consensus that efficient mitigation of emissions will require carbon pricing via market based instruments (charges or auctioned tradable permits). The remaining controversies stem mostly from economic and technological forecasting uncertainties, disputes about global and intergenerational equity, and political divisions over collective measures to combat climate change.

Climate change presents a profound challenge to food security and development. Negative impacts from climate change are likely to be greatest in regions that are currently food insecure and may even be significant in those regions that have made large gains in reducing food insecurity over the past half-century. Adaptation in the agricultural sector is being given a high priority within this effort because of the inherent sensitivity of food production to climate and the strong inter-linkages that exist between climate, agriculture, and economic growth and development.

The Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) for Timor-Leste identifies environmental priorities through a systematic review of environmental issues in natural resources management and environmental health in the context of the country's economic development and environmental institutions. Lack of data has been the main limitation in presenting a more rigorous analysis. Nevertheless, the report builds on the best available secondary data, presents new data on the country's wealth composition, and derives new results on the costs of water and air pollution.

This paper empirically explores the political-economic determinants of why governments choose to tax or subsidize trade in agriculture. The authors use a new data set on nominal rates of assistance (NRA) across a number of commodities spanning the last five decades for 64 countries. NRAs measure the effect on domestic (relative to world) price of the quantitative and price-based instruments used to regulate agricultural markets. The data set admits consideration of both taxes and subsidies on exports and imports.

The world faces unprecedented opportunities to reduce global poverty and improve human welfare. Strong global growth and better economic policies in recent years have substantially reduced poverty in many developing countries. However, with the recent financial turmoil in the United States and rising prices for food, oil, and other commodities, the world economy faces heightened risks and volatility. Policymakers around the world face the challenge of maintaining momentum in growth, as well as of improving the quality of growth.

The operations policy on Development Policy Lending (DPL), approved by the Board in August 2004, requires that the Bank systematically analyze whether specific country policies supported by an operation are likely to have "significant effects" on the country's environment, forests, and other natural resources. The implicit objective behind this requirement is to ensure that there is adequate capacity in the country to deal with adverse effects on the environment, forests, and other natural resources that the policies could trigger, even at the program design stage.

This strategic framework serves to guide and support the operational response of the World Bank Group (WBG) to new development challenges posed by global climate change. Unabated, climate change threatens to reverse hard-earned development gains. The poorest countries and communities will suffer the earliest and the most. Yet they depend on actions by other nations, developed and developing. While climate change is an added cost and risk to development, a well-designed and implemented global climate policy can also bring new economic opportunities to developing countries.

Increasing energy demands and concerns about global warming call for an increase in energy generation from renewable sources. Small hydropower plants represent a significant contribution to meet this demand. But the optimal use of this resource in a sustainable manner still remains a challenge. A cascade of small dams may have detrimental impacts on the environment and water use without implementation of proper mitigation measures and planning.