Pakistan experienced severe flooding
after torrential monsoon rains hit southern Sindh and the
adjoining areas of Punjab and north-eastern Balochistan in
August 2011. Flash floods triggered by the monsoon rain
caused severe damage to infrastructure in the affected
areas. Entire villages and urban centers have been flooded,
homes have been destroyed, and over a million acres of crops
and agricultural lands have been damaged. A Damage and Needs

The report is divided into two volumes.
The first volume includes the fundamental content of the
report. It is organized as follows. Chapter one provides a
conceptual framework to analyze risk and vulnerability and
provides a definition of social protection. Chapter two
assesses the main risks faced by the Malagasy population as
well as its vulnerability profile. Chapter three reviews
Madagascar's social protection policies, the

This is a Regional Program Review (RPR)
of the World Bank's support for the MBC. The review is
framed around an assessment of five Global Environment
Facility (GEF)-financed World Bank implemented projects in
Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama that had
the common objective of consolidating the Mesoamerican
Biological Corridor (MBC). It also reports on the
achievements of trust fund activities, financed by the Bank

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,

In the years ahead, development efforts
aiming at reducing vulnerability will increasingly have to
factor in climate change, and social protection is no
exception. This paper sets out the case for
climate?responsive social protection and proposes a
framework with principles, design features, and functions
that would help Social Protection (SP) systems evolve in a
climate?responsive direction. The principles comprise

The study includes a conceptual overview
of the link between climate impacts and human rights,
focused on the relevant legal obligations underpinning the
international law frameworks governing both human rights and
climate change. As such it makes a significant contribution
to the global debate on climate change and human rights by
offering a comprehensive analysis of the international legal
dimensions of this intersection. The study helps advance an

GFDRR was established in September 2006
as a global partnership of the World Bank, UN agencies and
bilateral donors, located in World Bank headquarters in
Washington, DC. Its missions are (a) to mainstream disaster
reduction and climate change adaptation (CCA) in country
development strategies, and (b) to foster and strengthen
global and regional cooperation among various stakeholders
under the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction

This study aims to strengthen the
understanding of the vulnerability of Kolkata from increased
precipitation caused by climate change effects with a
specific goal to: compile a data base with past weather
related information and damage caused by extreme weather
related episodes; develop hydrological, hydraulic, and storm
drainage models to identify vulnerable areas and determine
physical damage estimates resulting from climate change

As the world recovers only slowly from
the 2008 financial crisis and Europe is facing a looming
debt crisis, concerns have increased that the "new
normal" -- a period of high unemployment, low returns
on investment, high risks, and low growth -- may become
protracted in advanced economies. If growth remains weak,
unemployment rates and debt levels will be slow to recede.
Consequently, the global recovery may continue to be fragile

Tajikistan is highly vulnerable to the
adverse impacts of global climate change, as it already
suffers from low agricultural productivity, water stress,
and high losses from disasters. Public awareness of the
multiple consequences of climate change is high, with
possible impacts on health, natural disasters, and
agriculture of greatest public concern. Climate change can
potentially deepen poverty by lowering agricultural yields,

The East Asian and Pacific region has
achieved tremendous progress in poverty reduction in recent
years. However, further progress in poverty reduction may be
undermined by the high levels of vulnerability in many
countries across the region. The term vulnerability is
viewed from an economic context, where it is conceived as
the likelihood of suffering from future deteriorations in
standard of living which may result in a state of poverty,

This study provides estimates of social
and financial costs of environmental damage in India from
three pollution damage categories: (i) urban air pollution;
(ii) inadequate water supply, poor sanitation, and hygiene;
and (iii) indoor air pollution. It also provides estimates
based on three natural resource damage categories: (i)
agricultural damage from soil salinity, water logging, and
soil erosion; (ii) rangeland degradation; and (iii)