Use of conditional cash transfers has become widespread in development policy given their success in boosting health and education outcomes. Recently, conditional cash transfers are being used to promote pro-environmental behavior. While many of these Payments for Environment Services (PES) programs have been successful, it has been hypothesized that those with less favorable outcomes have been subject to low additionality, whereby landholders already conserving their land self-select into the program.

To meet carbon emissions targets, more than 30 countries have committed to boosting production of renewable resources from biological materials andconvert them into products such as food, animal feedand bioenergy. In a post-fossil-fuel world, an increasingproportion of chemicals, plastics, textiles, fuels and electricity will have to come from biomass, which takesup land. To maintain current consumption trends theworld will also need to produce 50–70 percent more foodby 2050, increasingly under drought conditions and onpoor soils.

Lack of identity documents is an important obstacle to the protection of people forced to leave their homes by conflict, persecution, or natural disaster. At the most basic level, a person lacking identity documents cannot travel through the legal channels. Lack of identification can make people more vulnerable to trafficking, for example by making it more difficult to prove a person’s age or family relationships. Those who lack identity documents may face greater difficulties proving their entitlement to nationality or to refugee status.

The high cost of extending Internet service beyond urban areas and the relatively low number of potential subscribers has combined to stall the expansion of this enabling technology in much of the developing world (and even in some advanced economies). Installing cables over land by exploiting existing infrastructure to carry the line eliminates most of the construction costs of domestic Internet networks—but that colocation option is much less available for remote or thinly populated areas.

Big data can sound remote and lacking a human dimension, with few obvious links to development and impacting the lives of the poor. Concepts such as anti-poverty targeting, market access or rural electrification seem far more relevant – and easier to grasp. And yet some of today’s most groundbreaking initiatives in these areas rely on big data. This publication profiles these and more, showing how data on an unprecedented scale has the potential to improve lives in unprecedented ways. The featured case stories illustrate the diverse range of big data applications in development.