The Sustainable and Participatory Energy
Management project - PROGEDE was implemented by the
government between 1997 and 2004. From project preparation
to supervision the World Bank worked in close collaboration
with Dutch Co-operation (DGIS). At the time of project
preparation, forest-based traditional fuels (firewood and
charcoal), mainly used for household cooking purposes,
represented 53 percent of Senegal's final energy

The Northeast region of Brazil has long
been the single largest pocket of rural poverty in Latin
America. With a combined area of 1.6 million square
kilometers-16 percent of Brazil's total-the Northeast
is home to 45 million people, 28 percent of Brazil's
total population , of whom 5.4 million people live on about
$1 a day and a total of 10.7 million on $1.60 or less per
day. Nearly half of all rural communities are in the

This report makes several policy
conclusions related to urban poverty and development in
Uruguay and potentially the rest of Latin America. First,
policies which prioritize improvements in access to quality
basic services, particularly education, health,
transportation, social assistance, more flexible land use
policies, as well as public information for those in
marginal areas could help to provide an important link to

Food production is not keeping pace with
Africa's rapidly growing needs. Aid programs in the
1970s and 1980s were considered a temporary solution to the
most appalling famines, but Africa's food shortage
appears to be worsening. This paper discusses the reasons
for this situation and ways to address it. African
policymakers should consider intensifying and diversifying
local production and establishing systems for marketing and

In Sri Lanka, ayurveda (a holistic
system of medicine and health care which originated in
India-in Sanskrit, "Ayu" means " life'
and "veda" means " the knowledge of ")
and the traditional system of health care have been
systematically used for over two thousand years to treat
illnesses. When last listed, 1,414 plant species have been
used for this purpose. These species include several endemic

Accounting for around a third of the
1996 Goss Domestic Product (GDP) of US$ 9 billion (second
only to oil), and almost three-fourths of all employment,
agriculture is a dominant sector of the Cameroonian economy.
Also, as in most African countries, poverty in Cameroon is
concentrated in rural areas, with more than 80 percent
(approximately 5.5 million) of all poor people living in
such areas. The Government of Cameroon's objectives

Environmental degradation primarily
affects the poor, both in rural and urban areas. Reversing
the downward spiral of this degradation is essential to any
strategy for reducing poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa. This
study outlines the World Bank's strategy for improving
its assistance to SSA countries as they move toward
environmentally sustainable development (ESD). It assesses
the environmental situation and long-term trends in Africa,

A social assessment was done during the
preparation of Tajikistan's Pilot Poverty Alleviation
Project to answer several key questions: What are the poor
people's priority needs and wants? Why are they poor?
What are their own strategies for improving their lives?
And how can they be helped to improve their circumstances?
By answering these questions, the social assessment helped
the project team incorporate poor people's priorities

Countries in transition from centrally
planned to market economies face several challenges when
planning investments. These include a lack of information
about beneficiary groups, particularly those in rural areas;
and the collapse of institutions maintained by the state
prior to transition. During preparation of the Estonia
Agriculture Project, the government sought World Bank
technical assistance to undertake a social assessment (SA)

The continued decline in global poverty
over the past 100 years particularly in the past three
decades is a remarkable achievement. In 1981, 52 percent of
the world population lived on less than $1.25 a day. By
2005, that rate had been cut in half, to 25.0 percent, and
by 2008 to 22.2 percent (World Bank 2012). Preliminary
estimates for 2010 indicate that the extreme poverty rate
has fallen further still; if follow-up studies confirm this,

The field for application of biomass is rising. The demand for food and feeding stuff rises while at the same time energy, chemicals and other materials also need to be produced from biomass because of decreasing fossil resources. However, the biorefinery ideas and concepts can help to use the limited renewable raw materials more efficiently than today. With biorefineries, valuable products, such as platform chemicals, can be produced from agricultural feedstock, which can subsequently be further processed into a variety of substances by the chemical industry.

Half of humanity about 3 billion people
are still relying on solid fuels for cooking and heating. Of
that, about 2.5 billion people depend on traditional biomass
fuels (wood, charcoal, agricultural waste, and animal dung),
while about 400 million people use coal as their primary
cooking and heating fuel (UNDP and WHO 2009). The majority
of the population relying on solid fuels lives in
Sub-Saharan Africa and in South Asia. In some countries in