The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2017 reviews progress made towards the 17 Goals in the second year of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The report is based on the latest available data. It highlights both gains and challenges as the international community moves towards full realization of the ambitions and principles espoused in the 2030 Agenda.

The great 21st-century migration into cities will present both a great challenge for humanity and a significant opportunity for global economic growth. This paper describes the diverse patterns that define this metropolitan migration. It then lays out a framework for understanding the costs and benefits of new arrivals through migration's externalities and the challenges and policy tradeoffs that confront city stakeholders.

In the decade leading to the recent commodity boom, which peaked in 2007-08, several resource-rich, low-income countries displayed high rates of gross domestic product (GDP) growth while social indicators did not improve significantly. It is well known that, in itself, the widely tracked GDP may not be the most relevant summary of aggregate economic performance in all places at all times.

Extension services are a keystone of information diffusion in agriculture. This paper exploits a large randomized controlled trial to track diffusion of a new technique in the classic Training and Visit (T&V) extension model, relative to a more direct training model. In both control and treatment communities, contact farmers (CFs) serve as points-of-contacts between agents and other farmers. The intervention (Treatment) aims to address two pitfalls of the T&V model: i) infrequent extension agent visits, and ii) poor quality information.

The Little Green Data Book 2005 is based on the World Development Indicators 2005, and represents an abbreviated collection of information. Its production is a collaboration between the Development Economics Data Development Group, and the Environment Department of the World Bank. Development and poverty alleviation-the World Bank's mission-call for a long-term vision. Enhancing environmental quality, improving natural resource management, and maintaining global ecosystems are all important steps toward this goal.

The North Eastern Region (NER) in India is endowed with rich energy resources but faces significant bottlenecks in electricity access and availability levels. The per capita power consumption in NER is one-third of the national average. The region has a shortfall of about 500MW installed capacity against peak demand of about 1950 MW. No significant generation capacity has been added in the recent past. Therefore, inadequate power supply continues a critical constraint to sustainable growth and economic development in the NER.

Land policies are of fundamental importance to sustainable growth, good governance, and the well-being of, and the economic opportunities open to, both rural and urban dwellers - particularly the poor. To this end, research on land policy, and analysis of interventions related to the subject, have long been of interest to the Bank's Research Department, and other academic, and civil society institutions.

In the past 50 years, Indian agriculture has undergone a major transformation, from dependence on food aid to becoming a consistent net food exporter. The gradual reforms in the agricultural sector (following the broader macro-reforms of the early 1990s) spurred some unprecedented innovations and changes in the food sector driven by private investment. These impressive achievements must now be viewed in light of the policy and investment imperatives that lie ahead.

Urbanization deserves urgent attention from policy makers, academics, entrepreneurs, and social reformers of all stripes. Nothing else will create as many opportunities for social and economic progress. The urbanization project began roughly 1,000 years after the transition from the Pleistocene to the milder and more stable Holocene interglacial. In 2010, the urban population in developing countries stood at 2.5 billion. The developing world can accommodate the urban population growth and declining urban density in many ways.

This paper explores the challenges and opportunities that government officials face in designing coherent 'rules of the game' for achieving urban sustainability during times of growth. Sustainability is judged by three criteria. The first involves elements of day-to-day quality of life, such as having clean air and water and green space. The provision of these public goods has direct effects on the urban public's health and productivity. The second focuses on the city's greenhouse gas emissions.

Cameroon is a lower-middle income country with social indicators and levels of poverty which are below those for comparator countries. Large and rising inequalities between north and south, inefficiencies in public resource allocation and an adverse business environment explain this. While insecurity due to Boko Haram activities and rapidly rising public debt constrain efforts at poverty reduction, there exists a huge potential for economic growth and poverty reduction. This potential remains mostly untapped.

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) is a constitutionally recognized semiautonomous region in northern Iraq. Its government, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), based in Erbil, has the right, under the Iraqi constitution of 2005, to exercise legislative, executive, and judicial powers according to the constitution, except in what is listed therein as exclusive powers of the federal authorities. The Iraqi constitution defines the Kurdistan Region as a federal entity of Iraq. KRG has a parliamentary democracy with a regional assembly that consists of 111 seats.