The document presents research activities on Mitigating Soil Erosion and Water Scarcity, Increasing Farmers’ Adaptation Capacity to Climate Change in the Highland dry areas of Ethiopia

This issue includes the following
headings: Changes in Poverty and Female-Headed Households in
Africa; Growth and Capital Inflows in Africa; Growth and
Capital Inflows in Africa; Vulnerability to Climate Change
in Coastal Bangladesh; Improving Agricultural Data for
Better Policies; Enhancing Transparency of Large-Scale Land
Acquisition; Explaining the Gender Gap in Agricultural
Productivity; Changing Patterns of Growth and Poverty

Groundwater is a vital yet threatened
resource in much of South Asia. This paper develops a model
of groundwater transactions under payoff uncertainty arising
from unpredictable fluctuations in groundwater availability
during the agricultural dry season. The model highlights the
trade-off between the ex post inefficiency of long-term
contracts and the ex ante inefficiency of spot contracts.
The structural parameters are estimated using detailed

This study develops an end-use energy
demand analysis model for Romania to project energy demand
by sector and end-use for 2015-50. The study finds that
Romania's energy demand in 2050 would be 34 percent
higher than the level in 2013. The industry sector would be
the largest final energy-consuming sector, surpassing the
residential sector from 2025 onward. The services sector
would exhibit the fastest growth of energy consumption in

There is no doubt that the poorest
people are already and will continue to be most severely
impacted by climatic changes, including shifting trends as
well as more frequent and severe extreme events. Yet, new
insights on the dynamics and distribution of poverty point
to the need to comprehend where the poor and poorest are,
how they are poor, and why their poverty constrains their
abilities to cope with and adapt to occurring and predicted

Women’s land rights are increasingly advocated as an empowerment tool to spur development outcomes. However, empirical evidence of this relationship is limited. In this study we use data from peasant communities in rural Peru to explore the effect of the intra-household allocation of inherited land on women’s empowerment. Empowerment is modeled as a latent variable measured by different influence indicators using a Generalized Structural Equation approach.

This report looks at the growth poles
policy in Romania to determine ways to increase its
effectiveness and efficiency for the next programming cycle
(2014-2020). The growth poles policy in Romania has been
initiated in 2008, as a means to support a balanced economic
development of the country, while still targeting
investments to maximize economic impact. A total of seven
growth poles have been designated and are currently

Romania faces today the critical need to
enhance the coordination of public investment programs and
projects in order to ‘do more with less,’ maximizing
development impact given limited financial resources
available. In this context, ‘value for money’ is the key
guiding principle of public investments, making this final
report is both critically important and timely. Romania’s
preparations for the 2014-2020 EU programming period are in

The 2014-2015 Romania Regional
Development 2 Program is the continuation of the World
Bank’s technical assistance to the Ministry of Regional
Development and Public Administration (MRDPA). Building on
the previous engagement, the current work addresses a
fundamental question: given Romania’s persistent development
challenges, how can the country do more with less when it
comes to the public infrastructure it needs? The key is to

Author: Robyn Pharoah/ActionAid

The population of Africa’s cities is growing rapidly. But as poor people cram into towns and cities characterised by limited, weak and often under-resourced infrastructure, they are increasingly relegated to marginal, inadequately serviced, informal settlements and low-cost housing areas, leaving them vulnerable to numerous livelihood, health and security risks.

Land rights and the systems that
administer them can vary significantly across the world and
within countries (World Bank 2003). For a number of reasons,
land rights may be unclear or insecure. Securing land rights
plays an important role in driving economic growth and
poverty reduction. In recent years there has been increasing
awareness of the relevance of land tenure issues to food
security, climate change, rapid urbanization, informality,

The Malawi Urbanization Review aims to
provide fresh perspectives on urbanization in Malawi, by
analyzing the current and potential contribution of
urbanization to long-term national development and the
current institutional and financial capacity of local
governments to manage the process. Analyses presented in
this report are particularly timely as Malawi is planning
for the coming half decade through the Malawi Growth and