Poverty is a persistent problem throughout Indonesia. With decentralization, local governments had a new direct role in alleviating poverty and local wellbeing. At the same time they could do so in accordance with local realities and development needs. Yet, there is little improvement in the wellbeing of rural people. Local governments may lack the necessary capacity and experience to reduce poverty effectively. This report shows how a local specific monitoring system can be developed and applied.

This report provides a new approach to integrating spatial data on poverty and ecosystems in Kenya. It is endorsed by five permanent secretaries in Kenya and with a foreword by Wangari Maathai (recipient of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize). It provides a new approach to examining the links between ecosystem services (the benefits derived from nature) and the poor. Through a series of maps and analyses, the authors focus on the environmental resources most Kenyans rely on such as soil, water, forest, rangeland, livestock, and wildlife.

This paper investigates preferences for cattle traits among a pastoral community in a trypanosomosis prevalent area in Kenya. Choice experiments and mixed logit models are employed to estimate economic values of preferred traits which could be introduced through systematic breeding in breed improvement programs that utilise trypanotolerance trait. The findings suggest preference for traits linked to drought tolerance, high live weight, trypanotolerance and fecundity.

This paper examines poverty and deforestation in developing countries as linked problems and focuses on policies that can favour poverty alleviation in forested regions. The paper encompasses two elements: analysis of the spatial coincidence between poverty and forests, and proposed policy options for reducing poverty in forested areas.

This paper examines poverty and deforestation in developing countries as linked problems and focuses on policies that can favour poverty alleviation in forested regions. The paper encompasses two elements: analysis of the spatial coincidence between poverty and forests, and proposed policy options for reducing poverty in forested areas.

Northern Bangladesh is a remote region which was excluded from the Green Revolution and today remains “ultra-poor”. There is a saying in the area that the most fortunate people live in Dhaka and Chittagong in the south of the country and the most distressed people live in North Bengal (Northern regions of Bangladesh). North Bangladesh presents a paradox of being too close to the Indian border, which had facilitated trade and commerce in the undivided colonial Bengal, and too far away from Dhaka, the nerve centre of policy, decision-making and politics in Bangladesh.