The World Bank Group (WBG) has a long
experience in engaging in biodiversity with world-class
expertise in the field. It has been the single largest
funder of biodiversity investments since the late 1980s. The
WBG investments have largely been of two kinds: (1)
investments in biodiversity, aimed at the conservation and
sustainable use of species, habitats, and ecosystems that
sustain healthy ecosystems, while enhancing people's

Urban agriculture contributes to local
economic development, poverty alleviation, the social
inclusion of the urban poor and women, as well as to the
greening of the city and the productive reuse of urban
wastes. Urban agriculture encompasses a wide variety of
production systems in both urban as well as peri-urban
areas. This study examines the contribution of urban
agriculture to livelihoods, food security, health, and the

The urgent need to limit anthropogenic
carbon emissions has led to a global initiative to Reduce
Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+).
But designing national architectures for REDD+ that
integrate local actions on forests with national-level
outcomes and do so effectively, efficiently, and equitably
continues to be challenging. One option to facilitate the
design and implementation of REDD+ is to learn from the

This report has been prepared by the
World Bank for the Government of Romania as an output of the
World Bank advisory services program on climate change and
low-carbon green growth in Romania. In response to the
request, the World Bank quickly mobilized a team of sectoral
and climate change (CC) specialists and conducted rapid
assessments in six sectors - energy, transport, urban,
water, agriculture, and forestry, which were pre-identified

A fundamental challenge for Vietnam is
to improve the affordability and efficiency of
infrastructure investment. The fragmentation of public
infrastructure investment results in duplication and waste,
and is a major underlying cause of investment inefficiency.
Bond issuance has been the most prominent form of debt
financing at the sub-national level. At the provincial
level, significant disconnects exist between total planned

Serbia's economy is out of balance
and performing below its potential. Since the post,
Yugoslavian transition, Serbia's economy has been
running on one engine, the non-tradable sector and expansion
of domestic demand. This was financed with ample capital
inflows, which were sharply reduced since 2008 as the global
economic crisis escalated. While this consumption-led growth
produced some improvements in living standards, it was not

This study, Indus basin of Pakistan: the
impacts of climate risks on water and agriculture was
undertaken at a pivotal time in the region. The weak summer
monsoon in 2009 created drought conditions throughout the
country. This followed an already tenuous situation for many
rural households faced with high fuel and fertilizer costs
and the impacts of rising global food prices. Then
catastrophic monsoon flooding in 2010 affected over 20

Yet the current situation differs from
2007-2008 in critical respects. First, recent international
price increases are more widespread across agricultural
commodities than in 2008, when price spikes were led by few
grains such as wheat and rice. Second, natural resources are
affecting food production: land and water constraints are
more binding than in the past and weather induced production
shortfalls are more of a factor now than it was 2008.

Romania relies on the European
Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) to achieve its
commitments to the European Union (EU) 2020 targets. The use
of the European Agriculture and Rural Development Fund
(EARDF) requires that at least 30 percent of the budget
allocated for rural development as part of the National
Rural Development Plan (NRDP) be spent on the environment
and addressing climate change. The forest sector rapid

Nepal needs a new economic model to
achieve faster and sustained growth as well as further
improvements in human development and poverty outcomes.
Economic growth, while ro¬bust at around 4 percent annual
average since 2005, is far from the level needed to achieve
the government s ambitious targets. The economy, highly
dependent on remittances, lacks the nec¬essary dynamism.
While substantial gains have been made to reduce poverty and

The Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN)
and the World Bank have agreed to carry out a Climate Change
Assessment (CCA) within the framework of the Bank's
Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) for Nigeria (2010-13).
The CCA includes an analysis of options for low-carbon
development in selected sectors, including power, oil and
gas, transport, and agriculture. The goal of the low-carbon
analysis is to define likely trends in carbon emissions up

Disease risks to humans, animals, and
plants are determined by interconnected environmental
variables that affect incidence, transmission, and outbreak.
Climate change affects many of the environmental variables
that lead to disease. Regardless of the species involved,
the impacts can ultimately affect the health, livelihood,
and economic security of humans. The objective of this World
Bank economic and sector work is to build on scientific and