The purpose of this report is to provide information and analysis to government, civil society, and donors interested in improving the well-being of the rural population of Mon State. Specifically, the report analyzes the different sources of income for rural households, as well as their socioeconomic characteristics, with a view to identifying potential pathways to improving incomes, especially for poor households, and stimulating inclusive rural growth.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This is one of four thematic studies on customary tenure in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam. These studies seek to present an analysis of customary tenure arrangements in each country and identify key challenges and opportunities for strengthening the legal recognition and protection of customary tenure. The present study on Myanmar focuses on customary tenure among upland ethnic nationalities, where colonial and state land administration systems have been poorly integrated, allowing customary systems to be sustained over time.

This Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) looks at why a country with such great potential has not been able to materialize it. The SCD analysis has identified several knowledge gaps. The analysis in this report focuses on the 2000 to 2014 period, covering the boom years before 2008 and the global financial crisis and recovery years up to 2014. It is based on a rich household data set from the National Living Standards Measurement Survey (ENCOVI) as well as on data on malnutrition from the 2014 National Survey of Maternal and Child Indicators (ENSMI).

The agricultural and food production sector plays a key role in fighting poverty and food insecurity in Moldova, but is facing critical challenges to modernize and integrate into the international market. This paper focuses on smallholder farms, which make up 95 percent of all farms, and explores their potential for growth and the poverty links. Findings reveal that structural change is slow and smallholder farm growth in Moldova is an exception, not the rule.

This report summarizes the results of the analytical work on housing market finance carried out by the World Bank Group at the request of the Ministry of Finance. The purpose of the work was to inform the policy dialogue about how best to develop a sustainable housing finance market in Nigeria, and improve the effectiveness of interventions aimed at stimulating the housing market and providing quality housing to the population. The work was funded by DFID and carried out over 2013 and 2014.

The study aims to assess the market for low and middle income housing finance in Bangladesh and identify the demand trajectory of this segment over the next 4 years. In addition, the report identifies factors that constrain the housing finance from serving low and middle income households.

An International Conference was held in Rome, Italy 27-29 April 2015 to launch the IFAD and EU supported Project ‘Linking agrobiodiversity value chains, climate adaptation and nutrition: Empowering the poor to manage risk’. The event brought together people with different expertise to discuss the role of agricultural biodiversity in fostering more resilient livelihoods and solicit their guidance to refine the methodological framework for the Project.

The absence of either state regulations or markets to coordinate the operation of individual wells has focussed attention on community level institutions as the primary loci for sustainable groundwater management in Rajasthan and Gujarat, India. The reported research relied on theoretical propositions that livelihood strategies, groundwater management and the propensity to cooperate are associated with the attitudinal orientations of well owners in the Meghraj and Dharta watersheds, located in Gujarat and Rajasthan respectively.

We analyse the threats of global environmental change, as they relate to food security. First, we review three discourses: (i) ‘sustainable intensification’, or the increase of food supplies without compromising food producing inputs, such as soils and water; (ii) the ‘nexus’ that seeks to understand links across food, energy, environment and water systems; and (iii) ‘resilience thinking’ that focuses on how to ensure the critical capacities of food, energy and water systems are maintained in the presence of uncertainties and threats.