On December 26 2004, a 9.3 magnitude
earthquake struck the Indian Ocean and unleashed a blast of
energy, creating a tsunami three stories high. The disaster
which claimed more than 228,000 lives had an impact on the
lives of more than 2.5 million people causing close to US$
11.4 billion of damage in 14 countries. The highest price
was paid in Aceh, which had the greatest death toll of
130,000 confirmed dead and a further 37,000 reported

India's Uttar Pradesh Sodic Lands
Reclamation Project has two objectives. First, it seeks to
reverse the decline of productivity through sustainable
reclamation of sodic lands. Second, it is intended to
prevent additional increases in sodicity through
strengthening local institutions and enabling effective
management of such programs with strong beneficiary
participation and nongovernmental organization (NGO)

Rural areas in Cote d'Ivoire
account for 55 percent of the total population. Rural people
rely heavily on export- and food-crop production as their
primary source of livelihood. However, 71 percent of the
rural population live below the poverty line. The government
and the Bank agree that access to land and natural resource
management are critical factors in coping with the rural
crisis. The government invited the Bank to help meet the

The author examine this relationship in
the context of agriculture in Ghana's Eastern Region.
Our work traces the connection from a set of complex and
explicitly negotiable property rights over land to
agricultural investment and, in turn, to agricultural
productivity. Using survey and focus group data, we find
that while the land tenure institutions may have some
benefits, they result in drastically lower productivity for

Gender-poverty-environment links: a
focus on the links between gender disparity, poverty and
environmental degradation is increasingly recognized as a
key strategy for improving the lives of poor women and men.
Acknowledging the ways in which relationships between the
environment, society and the economy are gendered opens
space for new approaches to poverty reduction, environmental
conservation and gender equality. The Social Development

This note builds on the proactive
measures taken by the Government of China as announced in:
(i) the Decree of the state council of the people's
Republic of China, issued on 9 June 2008, providing
regulations on post-Wenchuan earthquake reconstruction; (ii)
the Directive on Counterpart Assistance (Directive) of 11
June 2008; and (iii) the land policies to support the
reconstruction of Wenchuan (land policies) of 11 June 2008

Before 2005, FYR Macedonia did not have
a well-functioning property registration system and citizens
did not have secure property rights. Since the start of the
World Bank-funded Real Estate Cadastre and Registration
Project (RECRP) in Macedonia in 2005, registered property
transactions in the country have increased by 121 percent;
there were 93,240 registered transactions in 2009 compared
with 42,116 in 2005. Annual mortgages registered in the land

The purpose of this note is to raise
awareness of Nigeria's potential as an African
offshoring hub, and it is aimed primarily toward policy
makers, potential private sector investors, and development
partners. This note addresses the following questions: what
can Nigeria do to take advantage of the benefits of global
trade in services; how can the country brand itself as an
offshoring destination for international investors; and what

For the purposes of this note, forced
displacement refers to the situation of persons who are
forced to leave or flee their homes due to conflict,
violence, or persecution. Those displaced can either be
refugees outside their country of nationality or be people
displaced inside their country of nationality (IDPs). This
notwithstanding, the portfolio review of Bank activities
addressing displacement indicates a need for systematically

This approach resulted in the
fragmentation of agricultural holdings, with families owning
noncontiguous plots. Land use was inefficient, owing in part
to the low rate of use of agricultural machinery. Making
land use and farming more efficient will require the
establishment of a functioning land market. Granting farmers
the right to sell, exchange, and lease their land will
enable them to use it as collateral and to consolidate

Carbon finance projects are often
intended to be both a payment for an environmental service
(PES) and an instrument to facilitate sustainable
development in developing countries. To enhance livelihood
objectives, these projects should benefit rural land users,
provided they are willing and able to participate. This
holds particularly true for forest carbon initiatives.
However, high transaction costs and large uncertainties

Global and economic aspects of the
crisis: two aspects of the current crisis are important to
stress. The first is its global nature. As you know, this
crisis started last year in the US and European financial
markets but spread quickly to developing countries. The
second is its economic impact. Before the crisis erupted,
many countries, and many developing countries in particular,
were already suffering from the impact of very substantial