The East African Community has long
recognized that regional economic integration can yield
significant welfare gains to its member states. To that
end, the community has been making steady progress towards
the removal of tariffs and quantitative restrictions to
trade. Moreover, in recent years, there has been an
increasing recognition that: (a) even greater welfare gains
could be realized through deeper forms of regional

Many investments in infrastructure are
built on the belief that they will ineluctably lead to
poverty reduction and income generation. This has entailed
massive aid-financed projects in roads in developing
countries. However, the lack of robust evaluations and a
comprehensive theoretical framework could raise questions
about current strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using the
second Cameroonian national household survey (Enquete

The objective of this study is to gain
an overview of current nonenergy projects with rural
electrification components in LCR. The research included
compiling a list of projects, contact information, and
issues regarding the integration of rural electrification
and other services and interviewing the relevant task
managers. This report provides an overview of what effects
are expected theoretically to happen, and what the initial

China has an ancient tradition of
hydraulic engineering but in the past half century the
intensity of exploitation of water resources has accelerated
as a result of population and economic growth. The three
major issues for Chinese water management are water
shortages, flood control and pollution. The World Commission
on Dams noted that since 1949 the number of large dams in
China had increased from 22 to 22,000, almost half the

The prototype carbon fund (PCF) is a
public-private partnership whose mission is to pioneer a
market for project-based greenhouse gas emission reductions
within the framework of the Kyoto protocol to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). PCF
seeks to show how project-based greenhouse gas emission
reduction transactions can lower the cost of compliance with
Kyoto, promote sustainable development, and mobilize new

This report analyzes the experience
of Cambodia with the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)
process3. The focus of the report is on evaluating the
performance of the World Bank in supporting the PRSP
initiative, not on appraising the authorities policies.
Given the early stage of the PRS Process, with the document
only formally launched by government in March 2003, the
report focuses on the process of PRSP formulation in

The World Bank Group (WBG) has a long
experience in engaging in biodiversity with world-class
expertise in the field. It has been the single largest
funder of biodiversity investments since the late 1980s. The
WBG investments have largely been of two kinds: (1)
investments in biodiversity, aimed at the conservation and
sustainable use of species, habitats, and ecosystems that
sustain healthy ecosystems, while enhancing people's

Land and real estate reforms have not
been effective at achieving their objectives, in part
because of how they have been designed and implemented. To
be successful, reforms must become comprehensive in design,
argue the authors, although implementation may be phased
over time and take local conditions into account. Reform
must include three elements: 1) Institutional reforms that
better define property rights, reduce information asymmetry,

Deeper regional integration can be
beneficial especially for regions along international
borders. It can open up new markets on opposite sides of
borders and give consumers wider access to cheaper goods.
This paper uses data from five contiguous districts of
India, Nepal, and Bangladesh in the northeast of the
subcontinent to measure the degrees of trade complementarity
between districts. The paper illustrates that the regions

The authors develop a model of land
leasing with agents characterized by unobserved
heterogeneity in ability and presence of an off-farm labor
market. In this case, decentralized land rental may
contribute to equity and efficiency goals and may have
several advantages over administrative reallocation. The
extent to which this is true empirically is explored using
data from three of China's poorest provinces. The

Cities and the people who live in them
account for more than 80 percent of the world's total
greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, more than 80 percent
of the overall annual global costs of adaptation to climate
change are estimated to be borne by urban areas. This issues
brief looks at potential financing opportunities and costs
of mitigation and adaptation in the urban context.
Wide-ranging potential sources for finance for climate

This policy note reviewed the status of
farm machinery in the Kyrgyz Republic. Agricultural
productivity, particularly in terms of grain yields, is low
because of underinvestment. This note finds that a
significant deficit in agricultural machinery is hindering
sector productivity. The Kyrgyz Republic has fewer tractors
per hectare than any comparable country, with a deficit
estimated at 40 percent. The deficit of combine harvesters,