Twenty years of rapid economic
development in Ghana has done little, if anything, to reduce
the historical North, South divide in standards of living.
While rural development and urbanization have led to
significant poverty reduction in the South, similar dynamics
have been largely absent from Northern Ghana (or
equivalently the North, defined as the sum of the
administrative regions Upper West, Upper East, and the

To ensure sustainable and optimal use of
its common property natural resources, Mexico will need to
strengthen its focus on enhancing stewardship in three key
sectors-forests, water, and energy resources. The key
objectives include the following: 1) identifying options
that would contribute to Mexico's climate agenda and
build social resilience through forest management; 2)
ensuring economically efficient and environmentally and

The East Asia region is highly prone to
the impacts of natural disasters. Situated in the ring of
fire, countries in the region are regularly hit by typhoons,
earthquakes, floods, and other events. Natural disasters can
have major impacts on the social and economic welfare of a
population, and often pose serious obstacles in the
achievement of sustainable social and economic development.
Moreover, impacts from disasters are not uniformly

The theme of the 2011 Philippines
development report is 'generating inclusive growth,
uplifting the poor and vulnerable'. This theme is
follows from the priorities set in President Aquino's
Social Contract and the emerging 2011-2016 Philippines
Development Plan (PDP). The PDP details the vision of
inclusive growth and poverty reduction that underlies the
social contract (chapter one). Accordingly, the PDP focuses

The European neighborhood and
partnership instrument east countries forest law enforcement
and second governance program will support the participating
countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova,
Russian Federation and Ukraine) in strengthening forest
governance through improving implementation of relevant
international processes, enhancing their forest policy,
legislation and institutional capacity, and developing,

Under the Vanuatu constitution, the
'rules of custom shall form the basis of ownership and
use of land.' Implementing this principle after decades
of land alienation, however, has proved to be challenging.
While the leasing arrangement was originally intended to
restore investor confidence and maintain agricultural
development in newly independent Vanuatu, it soon evolved
into the method of acquiring new leases over previously

Although many studies have explored the
impacts of political quotas for females, often with
ambiguous results, the underlying mechanisms and long-term
effects have received little attention. This paper uses
nation-wide data from India spanning a 15-year period to
explore how reservations affect leader qualifications,
service delivery, political participation, local
accountability, and individuals willingness to contribute

Bolivia benefited from an overall
favorable economic evolution in the last few years,
supported by sound macro-economic indicators. Yet, economic
growth was unevenly distributed between the sectors, with
particularly extractive industries, construction and
financial services showing higher real growth rates, while
agriculture and manufacturing fell behind. This is an area
of concern for the government which-as manifested in the new

Approaches to urban slums are a
multimedia sourcebook that comprises 14 self-running
audiovisual presentations and 18 video interviews. It is
organized into four broad sections: adaptive approaches,
proactive approaches, case profiles, and thematic
interviews. The sourcebook itself, which contains more than
nine viewing hours of content on CD-ROM, does not exist in
printed format. This guide provides an overview of the

Over the past decade, faster growth and
smarter social policy have reversed the trend in Latin
America's poverty. Too slowly and insufficiently, but
undeniably, the percentage of Latinos who are poor has at
long last begun to fall. This has shifted the political and
policy debates from poverty toward inequality, something to
be expected in a region that exhibits the world's most
regressive distribution of development outcomes such as

Brazil low carbon country case study was
two years in the making based on a study by the World Bank
assisted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)
and the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP).
It supports Brazil's integrated effort towards reducing
national and global-emissions GHG while promoting long-term
development. It builds on the best available knowledge and
is underpinned by a broad consultative process and survey of

The effects of policy interventions on
women are of increasing concern to policy makers in all
fields, and trade is no exception. This note reviews recent
World Bank projects and studies that 'gender
inform' trade-related interventions, and it uses the
Bank's experience to promote gender-equal opportunities
by highlighting entry points at which trade projects,
studies, and policies can effectively address gender issues.