The World Bank commissioned this report as part of a set of studies concerned with the Uganda Demobilization and Reintegration Program and the Amnesty Commission. The study represents one element of the set of studies which included the Final Independent Evaluation of the Uganda Emergency Demobilization and Reintegration Project (UgDRP), Reporter Reintegration Survey and Community Dynamics Survey, and a study on the relationship between the Amnesty Commission and its DDR Implementing Partners study.

This IFC SmartBook is a compilation of sixteen IFC SmartLessons that presents practical lessons learned by staff from across the IFC and the World Bank on approaches for engaging in agriculture that have led to success. Agribusiness is a crucial economic sector, for food security of course, for managing water stress and ecosystem services, but also as a source of employment in emerging markets. The report includes the following lessons.

The highlands of mainland Southeast Asia have famously been the locus of “Zomia,” polities resistant to control by lowland nation-states, but this relative resilience has been due to their marginality.

In the two decades since the 1992 Rio Conference, Land-Use Planning (LUP) has become recognized as a key instrument in putting discourses on sustainable development into practice. In Lao PDR, despite the implementation problems, it is still seen as a lever for securing land tenure, rationalizing extension services provision, and more recently, for implementing ‘Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation’ (REDD) schemes. Impact assessments of past LUP have revealed weaknesses of local institutions in the effective implementation of land policies.

Since the emergence of the sustainable development paradigm in the late 1980s, land-use planning has become a key arena for political debates over society-environment interactions and, in practice, an important means for territorialisation projects. The paper reviews the main planning approaches that have been employed over the past three decades in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, a country that has long been viewed as a valuable policy testing ground for the proponents of sustainable development.

En pocas palabras, la escasez de agua tiene lugar cuando la demanda supera el suministro de agua dulce en un área determinada. Escasez de agua = un exceso de demanda de agua para el suministro disponible Esta situación aparece como consecuencia de una elevada demanda agregada por parte de todos los sectores que consumen agua respecto al suministro disponible, bajo las condiciones de infraestructuras y las disposiciones institucionales existentes.

This study focuses on three main groups of organisms: soil invertebrates, biological control agents (BCAs) and pollinators. These groups play key roles in agricultural systems, and have the potential to be used, moved or manipulated for the benefit of agriculture. Soil invertebrates are a key component of agricultural landscapes. They participate in essential soil processes that maintain healthy productive soils in the face of changing environmental conditions.