This country note for Armenia is part of a series of country briefs that summarize information relevant to climate change and agriculture for three pilot countries in the Southern Caucasus Region, with a particular focus on climate and crop projections, adaptation options, policy development and institutional involvement. The note series has been developed to provide a baseline of knowledge on climate change and agriculture for the countries participating in the regional program on reducing vulnerability to climate change in Southern Caucasus Agricultural systems.

This paper revisits the decades-old puzzle of the inverse plot-size productivity relationship, which states that land productivity decreases as plot size increases. Existing empirical studies on the inverse plot-size productivity relationship define land productivity or yields as self-reported production divided by plot size. This paper considers an alternative approach to estimating yields based on crop cuts.

There have been few efforts to evaluate whether the positive land use changes induced by conservation interventions such as Payments for Environmental Services (PES) persist once the interventions end. Since gains achieved by conservation interventions may be lost upon termination of the program, even apparently successful interventions may not result in longterm conservation benefits, a problem known as that of permanence. This paper examines the permanence of land use changes induced by a short-term PES program implemented between 2003 and 2008 in Matiguas-Rio Blanco, Nicaragua.

Over the past 25 years, Uganda has experienced sustained economic growth, supported by a prudent macroeconomic framework and propelled by consistent policy reforms. Annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth averaged 7.4 percent in the 2000s, compared with 6.5 in the 1990s. Economic growth has enabled substantial poverty reduction, with the proportion of people living in poverty more than halving from 56 percent in the 1992 to 23.3 percent in 2009. However, welfare improvements have not been shared equally; there is increasing urban rural inequality and inequality between regions.

Research has provided robust evidence for the use of GPS technology to be the scalable gold standard in land area measurement in household surveys. Nonetheless, facing budget constraints, survey agencies often seek to measure with GPS only plots within a given radius of dwelling locations. Subsequently, it is common for significant shares of plots not to be measured, and research has highlighted the selection biases resulting from using incomplete data.

Urbanization and climate change will define much of the 21st century. Urbanization leads to improvement in standards of living, and through the increased density and service delivery efficiency of cities, higher growth can be achieved with lower greenhouse gas emissions. Cities and urban agglomerations house more than 50 percent of the global population and contribute more than 70 percent of Global greenhouse (GHG) emissions. As the share of urban population grows, sustainable urban development emerges as an essential component in addressing climate change.

In 2005, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA, 2005) provided the first comprehensive report on global ecosystems, the dependence of human societies on the services provided, current state, and likely future trajectory. The MA identified the failure to value ecosystem services as a major contributing cause. The 2001 environment strategy did not explicitly address environmental valuation, although the focus on poverty and environment implies a need for valuing natural resources and environmental services.

This report presents the results of extensive work of the smart green infrastructure task force commissioned by the World Bank under the Global Tiger Initiative (GTI). The report benefited from advice, ideas, and information about tigers and tiger-friendly infrastructure development from staff at the World Bank, and from several institutions that promote tiger and biodiversity conservation throughout the world.

The purpose of this report is to examine development trends in the Southern Gobi Region (SGR) as they affect livestock and wildlife. It provides an overview of the environment and natural resources of the region, discusses existing relationships and interactions among humans, livestock, large herbivore wildlife, and the natural resources on which they are dependent. It then explores the impact that economic development of the region is likely to have if that development does not consider the needs of the current users.

This report presents a concise review of the major environmental and natural resources issues at the global and national level over the coming two decades. The environmental issues reviewed include air pollution and deterioration of air quality, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, water quality, scarcity and access, land and soil degradation, deforestation and forest degradation, natural disaster, loss of biodiversity and protected areas, and governance and institutions for environmental and natural resource management.

The world development report 2010 estimates that an additional $200 billion per year of climate-related financing is needed in developing countries between now and 2030 to keep global average temperature rise within 2 degrees Celsius. Developing countries face increased financing challenges over coming decades as they seek to pursue economic development along a lower emission trajectory.

This report discusses the key findings and recommendations emerging from a pilot Citizen Report Card (CRC) on water, sanitation, and sewerage services in Karachi. This initiative comes, on one hand, in the wake of deteriorating services, weakened community interfaces and accountability structures, poor revenue generation and dysfunctional governance structures and, on the other, an emergent consensus to bring in far-reaching institutional reforms that should move beyond financial and technical imperatives.