Since the early 1980s, the Government of
Niger and its development partners have invested more than
200 billion West African Francs (FCFA) in programs will
promote sustainable land management (SLM) and other
activities to reduce poverty and vulnerability. Overall,
more than 50 programs have promoted SLM in Niger. Despite
large investments in SLM programs, their impacts on land
management, agricultural production, poverty, and other

Livelihoods, food security, and
development processes in Sub-Saharan Africa are highly
dependent on land management practices to generate natural
ecosystem goods and services. Out of a total population of
about 717 million people, almost 60 percent depend for their
livelihood on agriculture, hunting, fishing, or forestry.
However, unsustainable land management already is leading to
large-scale land degradation trends, which pose a threat to

This study's objectives are: (i) to
present the pros and cons of existing and alternative brick
technologies in Bangladesh with specific focus on pollution
and energy efficiency; (ii) to estimate the private and
social benefits of these technologies (iii) to summarize
China's experience in the development of the brick
industry, as the world leader brick producer and (iv) to
provide concrete recommendations for adopting cleaner

Proyecto de la Declaracion de Cochabamba sobre "Seguridad Alimentaria con Soberanía en las Américas" presentado por la Delegación del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, en la sesión extraordinaria del Consejo Permanente, celebrada el 7 de marzo de 2012.

A Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) was
undertaken to assess the returns to land management
practices of major land use types, namely forests,
rangelands, and selected crops (rice, maize, cotton, and
millet). Also the public expenditure on SLM was reviewed
and an assessment carried out how the expenditure is aligned
to land policies and how it is targeted to land degradation
hotspots. The results show that, without some form of

Many experts believe that low-cost
mitigation opportunities in agriculture are abundant and
comparable in scale to those found in the energy sector.
They are mostly located in developing countries and have to
do with how land is used. By investing in projects under the
Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), countries can tap these
opportunities to meet their own Kyoto Protocol obligations.
The CDM has been successful in financing some types of

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

Indigenous peoples across Latin America
and the Caribbean (LAC) already perceive and experience
negative effects of climate change and variability. Although
the overall economic impact of climate change on gross
domestic product (GDP) is significant, what is particularly
problematic is that it falls disproportionately on the poor
including indigenous peoples, who constitute about 6.5
percent of the population in the region and are among its

Poverty, environment, social
development, and gender are important cross-cutting themes
of the World Bank and government investment programs,
especially within the Sustainable Development Network (SDN).
For developing sectoral strategies and programs, economic,
environment and social assessments are undertaken, however,
these are usually done separately, and most often gender
issues are not included. This is a missed opportunity,

Urban flooding is an increasingly
important issue. Disaster statistics appear to show flood
events are becoming more frequent, with medium-scale events
increasing fastest. The impact of flooding is driven by a
combination of natural and human-induced factors. As recent
flood events in Pakistan, Brazil, Sri Lanka and Australia
show, floods can occur in widespread locations and can
sometimes overwhelm even the best prepared countries and

Large-scale disasters regularly affect
societies over the globe, causing large destruction and
damage. After each of these events, media, insurance
companies, and international institu-tions publish numerous
assessments of the "cost of the disaster." However
these assessments are based on different methodologies and
approaches, and they often reach different results. Besides
methodological differences, these discrepancies are due to

Environmental degradation is costly, to
individuals, to societies, and to the environment. This
book, edited by Lelia Croitoru and Maria Sarraf, makes these
costs clear by examining a number of studies carried out
over the past few years by the World Bank's Middle East
and North Africa region. Even more important than estimating
the monetary cost of environmental degradation (COED),
however, are the clear guidance and policy implications