This paper examines poor households in
the city of Mumbai and their exposure, vulnerability, and
ability to respond to recurrent floods. The paper discusses
policy implications for future adaptive capacity,
resilience, and poverty alleviation. The study focuses
particularly on the poor households, which tend to have
greater exposure and vulnerability to floods and limited
ability to respond given the constraints on physical and

The major role tropical forests play in
biodiversity and climate change has led the world to search
for effective ways to slow down deforestation. Community
forest management (CFM) is an example of the broader concept
of community-based natural resources management (CBNRM). As
part of the decentralization policy in many countries,
mainly in Africa and Asia, CFM was expected to promote: (i)
a more effective stewardship of the resources by involving

This report is comprised of two volumes:
(i) volume one: risk assessment; and (ii) volume two: risk
management strategy. Volume one continues with chapter one,
which characterizes the recent performance of the
agriculture sector, including agro-climatic and market
conditions. It also identifies the productive systems used
for this analysis. Chapter two describes the main risks in
the agricultural sector, capturing market, production, and

The present study is part of an effort
by the World Bank and the State of Bahia to assess
agriculture sector risks as a contribution to the strategic
economic development and poverty reduction agenda of the
state government. It is composed of two phases: an
agricultural sector risk identification and prioritization
(volume one) and a risk management strategy and action plan
(volume two). The study provides practical elements for the

Tajikistan’s economy exceeded
expectations during the first six months of 2015 despite a
challenging external environment. According to official
data, GDP growth slowed only moderately from 6.7 percent in
the first half of 2014 to 6.4 percent year on year (y/y) in
the first half of 2015, even as remittances from Russia
fell, global demand weakened, and prices for the country’s
key export commodities such as aluminum and cotton dropped

A large number of governance interventions are being developed in order to reduce deforestation and enhance the sustainability of commodity

supply chains across the tropics. The extent to which individual agricultural commodity supply chain interventions can achieve scale, and

environmental or social objectives, depends in part on the ways in which those interventions interact with other interventions. We use a casestudy

of the new Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) cattle certification program in Brazil to explore the different ways in which governance

Climate change is a core development
challenge in Tanzania, and the potential costs of inaction
are significant. Current climate variability (including
extreme events such as droughts and floods), already leads
to major economic costs in mainland Tanzania and in
Zanzibar. Individual annual events have economic costs in
excess of 1 percent of GDP, and occur regularly, reducing
long-term growth and affecting millions of people and

This note lays out the rationale for
including land administration quality index in the standard
‘registering property’ indicator by doing business and
discusses initial evidence from the global sample, showing
that many countries, including some that have performed well
on Doing Business’s traditional ranking, have a long way to
go to establish a system of land administration that is
reliable and transparent, achieves sufficient coverage, and

Megacity Dhaka encounters various kinds
of natural disasters quite frequently owing to its
geographical location and a number of other physical and
environmental conditions including low topography, land
characteristics, multiplicity of rivers and the monsoon
climate. Climate and disaster resilience is not the same in
all parts of a city. Spatial variations in resilience
patterns result from differences in the strengths and

Cities are vulnerable to many types of
shocks and stresses, including natural hazards like storms
and sea level rise, but also man-made ones like economic
transformation and rapid urbanization. These shocks and
stresses have the potential to bring cities to a halt and
reverse years of socio-economic development gains. Cities
that are to grow and thrive in the future must take steps to
address these shocks and stresses. Simply put, a resilient

What do Bangkok, Cairo, Lagos, Mumbai,
and Nairobi have in common? These megacities, like others in
burgeoning emerging market economies, are magnets for people
seeking better opportunities. They also suffer from serious
traffic congestion, high levels of greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions, and heavy air pollution. These urban areas face a
stark dilemma: economic expansion attracts more people and
vehicles; but the resulting traffic and pollution hinder

The new scenario framework facilitates the coupling of multiple socioeconomic reference pathways with climate model products using the representative concentration pathways. This will allow for improved assessment of climate impacts, adaptation and mitigation. Assumptions about climate policy play a major role in linking socioeconomic futures with forcing and climate outcomes. The paper presents the concept of shared climate policy assumptions as an important element of the new scenario framework.