Assessing the Environmental, Forest, and Other Natural Resource Aspects of Development Policy Lending
The operations policy on Development Policy Lending (DPL), approved by the Board in August 2004, requires that the Bank systematically analyze whether specific country policies supported by an operation are likely to have "significant effects" on the country's environment, forests, and other natural resources. The implicit objective behind this requirement is to ensure that there is adequate capacity in the country to deal with adverse effects on the environment, forests, and other natural resources that the policies could trigger, even at the program design stage.
Development and Climate Change
This strategic framework serves to guide and support the operational response of the World Bank Group (WBG) to new development challenges posed by global climate change. Unabated, climate change threatens to reverse hard-earned development gains. The poorest countries and communities will suffer the earliest and the most. Yet they depend on actions by other nations, developed and developing. While climate change is an added cost and risk to development, a well-designed and implemented global climate policy can also bring new economic opportunities to developing countries.
Development and Climate Change
This strategic framework serves to guide and support the operational response of the World Bank Group (WBG) to new development challenges posed by global climate change. Unabated, climate change threatens to reverse hard-earned development gains. The poorest countries and communities will suffer the earliest and the most. Yet they depend on actions by other nations, developed and developing. While climate change is an added cost and risk to development, a well-designed and implemented global climate policy can also bring new economic opportunities to developing countries.
Water resource research and education in mountain communities
High elevation páramo (wetland) ecosystems in the Andes are important water sources for local communities and downstream agricultural and urban users. These headwater catchments, however, are often impacted by human activities (eg agricultural production) that affect both stream water quality and flow. Knowledge about water availability, quality, and use is essential for effective management but is often lacking, particularly in smaller mountain communities.
Who knows, who cares?
Linkages between land management, land degradation, and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Agriculture is vital to the economies of Sub-Saharan Africa: two-thirds of the region’s people depend on it for their livelihoods. Nevertheless, agricultural productivity in most of the region is stagnant or declining, in large part because of land degradation. Soil erosion and soil nutrient depletion degraded almost 70 percent of the region’s land between 1945 and 1990; 20 percent of total agricultural land has been severely degraded. If left unchecked, land degradation could seriously threaten the progress of economic growth and poverty reduction in Africa.
The relation between geometry, hydrology and stability of complex hillslopes examined using low-dimensional hydrological models
Key words: Hillslope geometry, Hillslope hydrology, Hillslope stability, Complex hillslopes, Modeling shallow landslides, HSB model, HSB-SM model.
Revegetação com plantas de cobertura em solos arenizados sob erosão eólica no Rio Grande do Sul
The degradation of soils with high sand content, in the southwest of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, is due to the vegetal cover withdrawal, forming sandy areas called "areais", which pose a risk to animal husbandry and the prairie ecosystem. A technique of revegetation with cover crops such as Avena strigosa Schieb. and Lupinus albescens H. et Arn., was developed to reduce the soil particle movement by eolic erosion.
La nouvelle génération de programmes et projets d’aménagement des bassins versants
Durant l’Année internationale de la montagne en 2002, la FAO et ses partenaires ont lancé une évaluation à grande échelle et un examen mondial de l’état actuel et des tendances futures de l’aménagement intégré et participatif des bassins versants. Les objectifs généraux étaient de promouvoir l’échange et la diffusion d’expériences dans la mise en œuvre de ces projets durant la décennie 1990–2000, et d’aider à identifier une vision pour une nouvelle génération de programmes et projets.
Un questionnaire pour la cartographie de la dégradation et de la gestion durable des terres
L’outil cartographique WOCAT-LADA-DESIRE est fondé sur le questionnaire original WOCAT sur la cartographie (WOCAT, 2007). Celui-ci a été développé de façon à accorder plus d’attention aux problèmes de dégradation biologique et de l’eau. Il met davantage l’accent sur les causes directes et socio-économiques de ces phénomènes incluant leurs impacts sur les fonctionnements des écosystèmes.