Recognizing the importance and
uniqueness of the Sundarbans, the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
declared the Indian portion of the forest a World Heritage
Site in 1987, and the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Program
has included the Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve in the Global
Network of Island and Coastal Biosphere Reserves
Contributing to Action on Climate Change and Sustainable

The Government of Ceará has asked for
the Bank s support in implementing its multi-year plan
(Plano Plurianual or PPA) for 2012-15. The objectives of the
Plan are to promote equitable social development,
sustainable economic development and to contribute to the
emergence of a more efficient and participatory public
sector.The activities to be supported have been chosen on
the basis of the importance to these goals, the state s

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

Background: Like many countries in Southeast Asia, Vietnam’s rapid population and economic growth has met challenges in infrastructure development, especially sanitation in rural areas.

This report for Iraq - country water
resources assistance strategy (CWRAS) addresses these
objectives in two parts. The first part, which is largely
descriptive, reviews existing conditions and summarizes
Iraq's considerable accomplishments over the past
decades in developing and managing water resources. The
second part investigates challenges and priorities-how to
balance the needs of short-term reconstruction and the

The case in Mexico City offered an
opportunity to observe the advantages, and disadvantages of
gradualist reform. Unfortunately, the authors find that the
long-term nature of an incremental approach does not match
well with the generally shorter-term horizons of elected
politicians. Difficult decisions in implementation are left
to later years, which pushes potentially unpopular actions
onto the shoulders of future administrations, while allowing

Water security is influenced by the complex interplay between ecological, socio-political, governance and water management systems. Achieving water security is essential for ensuring sustainable development, and challenges with water security are closely linked to the overall experience of poverty that many countries throughout the world, including South Africa, confront. These problems can broadly be understood through three main factors: water availability, access and usage; water governance and management underpin these factors.

Using family balance (i.e., combined net farm and non-farm incomes less family expenses), an output from an integrated model, which couples water resource, agronomic and socio-economic models, its sensitivity and uncertainty are evaluated for five smallholder farming groups (AeE) in the Olifants Basin. The crop management practiced included conventional rainfed, untied ridges, planting basins and supplemental irrigation.

Like other regions of the world, Africa
is beginning to experience the impacts of human-induced
climate change. These observed changes in climate parameters
have not occurred uniformly across Africa. Mitigation is
concerned with reducing the level of greenhouse gas
emissions in the Earth's atmosphere that are the
principal causes of climate change. Adaptation is concerned
not with prevention but, in the words of the