This report, Building Response
Strategies to Climate Change in Agricultural Systems in
Latin America, reports the results of action research to
identify and prioritize stakeholder driven, locally relevant
response options to climate change in Latin American
agriculture. The study has three primary objectives. The
first is to develop and apply a pilot methodology for
assessing agricultural vulnerability to climate change and

This is a summary report of the South
Asia Region and the East Asia Pacific regions training
workshop from April 28-30, 2008 on the importance of
disaster risk reduction and risk transfer including major
concepts, models, and various applications of disaster risk
reduction around the globe. This report represents an
analysis and summary of the main presentations made during
the course of the workshop. It provides a comprehensive

Panama is experiencing spectacular
economic growth, averaging 7.5 percent during 2004-06; a
construction boom; and emerging new opportunities and
growing export markets. Despite this impressive growth
performance, at the national level poverty remained almost
unchanged during 1997-2006 at around 37 percent (masking a
decline in rural poverty and an increase in urban and
indigenous areas). Key development challenges for Panama

The present report was prepared upon the
request of the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic to inform
policy decisions on reforming the existing safety net. The
report aims at providing analytical underpinning of the
country's ongoing safety net reform, along with venue
for policy discussions with the Government and stakeholders
on the immediate as well as on the longer-term challenges
related to designing and implementing of a modern national

During the 2007 spring meetings, the
development committee endorsed the World Bank Group's
action plan on the Clean Energy Investment Framework (CEIF).
This progress report is a response to the committee's
request for an update on the implementation of the action
plan for the annual meetings in October 2007. It summarizes
accomplishments in the three areas of the action plan: 1)
energy for growth, with a particular emphasis on access to

This study explores the complex process
of transit and land-use integration in rapidly growing
cities in developing countries. It first identifies barriers
to and opportunities for effective coordination of transit
infrastructure and urban development. It then recommends a
set of policies and implementation measures for overcoming
these barriers and exploiting these opportunities.
Well-integrated transit and land development create urban

This report provides Mayors and other policymakers with a policy framework and diagnostic tools to anticipate and implement strategies that can avoid their cities from locking into irreversible physical and social structures. At the core of the policy framework are the three main dimensions of urban development.
· Planning— where the focus is on making land transactions easier, and making land use regulations more responsive to emerging needs especially to coordinate land use planning with infrastructure, natural resource management, and risks from hazards;

The state of national labor markets has
always been a concern for governments and development
agencies such as the World Bank. Key labor market
indicators, such as the rate of unemployment, send signals
about the health of an economy and mirror citizens'
attitudes. Being gainfully employed is an important aspect
of an individual's well-being both financially and
socially, as 'initial failures in finding a job can

Adapting to climate change is not a new
phenomenon for the Arab world. For thousands of years, the
people in Arab countries have coped with the challenges of
climate variability by adapting their survival strategies to
changes in rainfall and temperature. Their experience has
contributed significantly to the global knowledge on climate
change and adaptation. But over the next century global
climatic variability is predicted to increase, and Arab

This paper argues that climate change
poses two distinct, if related, sets of challenges for poor
rural households: challenges related to the increasing
frequency and severity of weather shocks and challenges
related to long-term shifts in temperature, rainfall
patterns, water availability, and other environmental
factors. Within this framework, the paper examines evidence
from existing empirical literature to compose an initial

The study assessed the sensitivity of hydrology and water resources to climate variation in Kikuletwa Catchment, Pangani Basin, northern Tanzania using 30 years of river level and climate data as well as questionnaire, focused group discussion (FGD) and participant observation. It concludes that there is a significant association between mean annual river level for Kikuletwa River and mean annual rainfall over the tree decades.

The interfaces between high-altitude rangelands and other ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region such as forests, wetlands, and agricultural land are suffering from degradation, desertification, and soil erosion, which are further aggravated by climatic and anthropogenic factors. However, more information is needed on the ecological role of high-altitude rangelands and their interfaces as a basis for developing and implementing plans for conservation and sustainable management of these fragile ecosystems.