The Latin America and Caribbean (LAC)
region has a unique mix of qualities and challenges when it
comes to the environment. It is exceptionally endowed with
natural assets, with globally significant biodiversity and
valuable crops, and also harbors the world s greatest carbon
sink in the Amazon. The purpose of the series is to
contribute to the global knowledge exchange on innovation in
environmental and water resources management and the pursuit

Sustainable forest management (SFM)
certification emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as a mechanism
to promote responsible forest use and as an alternative to
boycotts of forest products amid growing concerns about
forest degradation and destruction. Since then, forest
certification has evolved into a multifaceted market-based
mechanism to promote compliance with sets of ecological,
social, and economic criteria to enhance sustainability.

This workbook is intended to help policy
makers in developing countries plan for a safer future in
urban areas in the face of natural disasters and the
consequences of climate change. It is based on the
experiences of three cities in Vietnam, Can Tho, Dong Hoi,
and Hanoi, that worked with international and local experts
under World Bank supervision to develop local resilience
action plans (LRAPs) in 2009-10. An LRAP is a detailed

The new environment strategy for the
World Bank Group lays out an ambitious action agenda that
seeks to respond to calls from our client countries for a
new kind of development path, one that supports growth while
focusing more on sustainability and ensuring that the
environment is a key enabler for green, more-inclusive
growth. This strategy recognizes the importance of our
convening power, access to policy makers, analytical work,

This year's edition of the little green data book includes a focus story on oceans and its ecosystem services, as well as estimates of global marine fisheries wealth accounts, a first step in capturing the value of this important resource stock. A new set of ocean-related indicators are also introduced, highlighting the role of oceans in economic development and providing policy makers the information to make better decisions for the sustainable management of oceans.

A Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) was
undertaken to assess the returns to land management
practices of major land use types, namely forests,
rangelands, and selected crops (rice, maize, cotton, and
millet). Also the public expenditure on SLM was reviewed
and an assessment carried out how the expenditure is aligned
to land policies and how it is targeted to land degradation
hotspots. The results show that, without some form of

A Kosovo CEA is a World Bank analytical
tool used to integrate environmental issues into development
assistance strategies, programs, and projects. To that end,
the CEA synthesizes environmental issues, highlights the
environmental and economic implications of development
policies, and evaluates the country's environmental
management capacity. Kosovo is landlocked and possesses many
mineral resources, mainly coal, lead, zinc, chromium, and

Many experts believe that low-cost
mitigation opportunities in agriculture are abundant and
comparable in scale to those found in the energy sector.
They are mostly located in developing countries and have to
do with how land is used. By investing in projects under the
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), countries can tap these
opportunities to meet their own Kyoto Protocol obligations.
The CDM has been successful in financing some types of

Today, 370 million people live in cities
in earthquake prone areas and 310 million in cities with
high probability of tropical cyclones. By 2050, these
numbers are likely to more than double. Mortality risk
therefore is highly concentrated in many of the world s
cities and economic risk even more so. This paper discusses
what sets hazard risk in urban areas apart, provides
estimates of valuation of hazard risk, and discusses

This paper reviews recent developments
in biofuel markets and their economic, social and
environmental impacts. Several countries have introduced
mandates and targets for biofuel expansion. Production,
international trade and investment have increased sharply in
the past few years. However, several existing studies have
blamed biofuels as one of the key factors behind the
2007-2008 global food crisis, although the magnitudes of

There are two common problems in flood
hydrology: 1) estimate the return period for a given flood;
and 2) estimate the flood for a given return period. A
commonly used procedure to solve these problems is to fit a
probability density function such as the Gumbel, Pearson
type three or the generalized extreme value distributions to
the historical data. The Pearson probability distribution
was named after the statistician Pearson, it is also called

In Africa, most development strategies
include efforts to improve the productivity of staple crops
grown on smallholder farms. An underlying premise is that
small farms are productive in the African context and that
smallholders do not forgo economies of scale -- a premise
supported by the often observed phenomenon that staple
cereal yields decline as the scale of production increases.
This paper explores a research design conundrum that