Urban agriculture contributes to local
economic development, poverty alleviation, the social
inclusion of the urban poor and women, as well as to the
greening of the city and the productive reuse of urban
wastes. Urban agriculture encompasses a wide variety of
production systems in both urban as well as peri-urban
areas. This study examines the contribution of urban
agriculture to livelihoods, food security, health, and the

 
Este artículo mereció el primer premio en el Concurso “Juventudes Rurales, Situación y Desafíos” del año 2013. Su autor describe y analiza la participación de los jóvenes en la esfera política de las zonas rurales andinas de Bolivia y Perú, vinculando esa vivencia con las lógicas comunitarias tradicionales y las prácticas modernas. Asimismo muestra el apoyo  que brindan los jóvenes a sus ayllus para el desarrollo comunitario. 
Jóvenes en Los Andes
*Saúl Flores Calderón 

This policy note provides a summary of
extensive analysis carried out on urban poverty in Indonesia
today and a review of main urban poverty programs, with the
objective of providing the basis for an urban poverty
reduction strategy. A second policy note, 'Indonesia:
evaluation of the urban Community-Driven Development, or CDD
program, Program Nasional Pemberdayaan Masyarakat
(PNPM)' summarizes a more detailed process evaluation

Today, the world is at a conjuncture where issues of exclusion and inclusion are assuming new significance for both developed and developing countries. The imperative for social inclusion has blurred the distinction between these two stylized poles of development. Countries that used to be referred to as developed are grappling with issues of exclusion and inclusion perhaps more intensely today than they did a decade ago. And countries previously called developing are grappling with both old issues and new forms of exclusion thrown up by growth.

Reconstruction should include a range of
measures to enhance safety: disaster prevention facilities,
relocation of communities to higher ground, and evacuation
facilities. A community should not, however, rely too
heavily on any one of these as being sufficient, because the
next tsunami could be even larger than the last. Communities
also need to rebuild their industries and create jobs to
keep their residents from moving away. The challenge is to

Risk-sensitive land use planning is
vital for sustainable economic development and effective
Disaster Risk Management (DRM). Urban development programs
should adopt risk-sensitive land use planning to encourage
resilient development guiding the growth of people, assets
and services within and away from hazardous zones. Many East
Asia and the Pacific (EAP) countries have national land use
policy and local plans which incorporate risk assessments;

This Country Economic Memorandum (CEM)
sets a framework for a dialogue on inclusive economic growth
and income convergence in Romania. Generous Foreign Direct
Investment (FDI) and other financial inflows lifted consumer
demand, built up key industries, modernized wholesale trade
and unleashed the movement of labor from low-productivity
activities like agriculture towards high-productivity
activities like manufacturing. Public and private

Natural resource abundance can lead to
strong economic growth if resource rents are well invested
in physical assets and other forms of productive capital.
This paper focuses on the case of the resource-abundant
economies in Eurasia, which has been less documented in the
literature on natural resource-led development than other
parts of the world. The analysis shows that the stock of
productive physical assets is relatively low, contrary to

The unprecedented damage caused by the
Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) affected multiple
locations, posing severe challenges for local governments.
Based on advice from an independent council, the government
acted quickly and issued a basic policy and regulation
framework within four months, laying the foundation for an
inclusive process of recovery and reconstruction. This note
documents the interactive process of reconstruction

Against the backdrop of rapidly rising
urbanization in the developing world and the growing demand
for basic services such as water and power, there is an
increasing need to improve service delivery, particularly in
low-income urban settlements. Output-based aid (OBA)
approaches, with their pro-poor targeting, have been piloted
in cities around the world. This note discusses the benefits
and challenges of using an OBA approach in urban projects

For more than four centuries Japan has
been developing forested green belts to mitigate coastal
hazards such as sandstorms, salty winds, high tides, and
tsunamis. Although Japan's green belts were severely
damaged by the March 11 tsunami, they did reduce the impact
of waves, and protected houses by capturing floating debris.
Local governments are planning to reconstruct the green
belts as a countermeasure against tsunamis. While local

In Central Java, in addition to the traditional view of urban transition as an aspect of urban industrialization, rural industrialization based on small- to medium-sized enterprises has become a concern, at least since the Indonesian economic crisis in 1997. Combinations of typical urban and rural activities have resulted in certain features of rural-urban transition as the urban population has continued to increase notably. The intention of this paper is to examine how rural-urban transition characterizes the industrialization of Central Java.