This paper quantifies hurricane damage
caused by climate change across the US. A damage function is
estimated from historic hurricane data to measure the
impacts at each location given the storm's strength.
The minimum barometric pressure of each storm turns out to
be a better indicator of damages than the traditional
measure of maximum wind speed. A hurricane generator in the
Atlantic Ocean is then used to create 5000 storms with and

This first World Bank for Results report
provides the Bank's shareholders, partners, and
external stakeholders with an integrated view of results and
performance in recent years. It serves as a companion to the
World Bank Corporate Scorecard. Aggregating results that
countries have achieved with Bank support against the
backdrop of global development results, the report also
assesses operational and organizational performance at the

As natural disasters hit with increasing
frequency, especially in coastal areas, it is imperative to
better understand how much natural disasters affect
economies and their people. This requires disaggregated
measures of natural disasters that can be reliably linked to
households, the first challenge this paper tackles. In
particular, a methodology is illustrated to create natural
disaster and hazard maps from first hand, geo-referenced

East Asia has recovered from the
economic and financial crisis. Largely thanks to China, the
region's output, exports and employment have mostly
returned to the levels before the crisis. Leading the global
economy, real gross domestic product (GDP) growth in
developing East Asia is poised to rise to 8.7 percent in
2010 after slowing from 8.5 percent in 2008 to 7.0 percent
in 2009. This report also identifies two common regional

Climate resilient cities a primer on reducing vulnerabilities to disasters is prepared as a guide for local governments in the East Asia Region to better understand the concepts and consequences of climate change; how climate change consequences contribute to urban vulnerabilities; and what is being done by city governments in East Asia and around the world to actively engage in learning, capacity building, and capital investment programs for building sustainable, resilient communities.

Climate change is already a reality.
This is evidenced by the acceleration of global temperature
increases, the melting of ice and snow covers, and rising
sea levels. Latin America and the Caribbean region (LCR) are
not exempt from these trends, as illustrated by the changes
in precipitation patterns that are already being reported in
the region, as well as by observations of rising
temperatures, the rapid melting of Andean tropical glaciers,

The Country Environmental Analysis,
presents a review of environmental priorities, public
environmental expenditures and the supporting institutional
framework and makes recommendations to improve the
efficiency and effectiveness of public environmental
expenditure in Azerbaijan. The focus is to identify areas
for improvement and changes to ensure that the process of
establishing environment-related priorities is sufficiently

Economic growth in Solomon Islands since
the end of civil conflict in 2003 has been driven by rapid
expansion of the forestry sector and large increases in
international aid flows. Stocks of natural forest logs are
nearing exhaustion and, as the security situation improves,
aid flows are likely to flatten off. The Solomon Islands
Government asked the World Bank to investigate future growth
prospects. This note summarizes the findings and presents a

This study aims to provide the guiding
principles to the government of Mongolia (GOM) towards
creating comprehensive ex-ante risk management strategy
based on the assessment of the pros and cons of historical
approach of livestock risk management as well as best
practices around the world. For instance, it proposes an
option for the National Disaster Indemnification Program
(NDIP) that acts as a state insurance enterprise and

This paper develops a methodology for
regional disaggregated estimation and mapping of the areas
that are ex-ante the most vulnerable to the impacts of
climate change and variability and applies it to Tajikistan,
a mountainous country highly vulnerable to the impacts of
climate change. The authors construct the vulnerability
index as a function of exposure to climate variability and
natural disasters, sensitivity to the impacts of that

In order to inform the 2010 Strategy,
and suggest what role the World Bank Group (WBG) can
realistically play in strengthening environmental
institutions and governance, this paper takes stock of WBG
operations in this area since the 2001 Strategy. Looking
across the spectrum of lending and nonlending operations,
the first task is to identify the approaches which have been
used to engage with clients. The analysis then evaluates

This report addresses the large flood
exposures of Central Europe and proposes efficient financial
and risk transfer mechanisms to mitigate fiscal losses from
natural catastrophes.. The report is primarily addressed to
the governments of the region which should build into their
fiscal planning, the necessary contingent funding
mechanisms, based on their exposures. While there exist
pan-European mechanisms such as the EU Solidarity Fund to