This paper takes a critical view of the
challenges that lie ahead for land?related development
projects in Central America. Drawing upon several sources of
information and types of analysis, including literature
reviews, field visits and rapid participatory assessments,
along with decades of professional experience, the authors
examine land-related development policies and projects over
the past two decades in Central America (although monitoring

The goal of this report is to take stock
of the existing evidence on the impact of the Comprehensive
Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) on poverty, to examine the
current challenges that an extension of CARP would face, and
to suggest directions toward achieving progress on land
reform given the financial and policy constraints faced by
the program. The report starts by examining the nature and
relevance of the challenges that an extension of the land

The main objective of the Egypt Public
Land Management Strategy is to provide the Government of
Egypt (GOE) with practical and politically feasible policy
recommendations to reform existing public land management
policies and practices in the aim of improving the business
climate in Egypt. This study is presented in two volumes:
Volume one with the main policy note, supported by Volume
two with background notes on access to public land by

The Malawi Urbanization Review aims to
provide fresh perspectives on urbanization in Malawi, by
analyzing the current and potential contribution of
urbanization to long-term national development and the
current institutional and financial capacity of local
governments to manage the process. Analyses presented in
this report are particularly timely as Malawi is planning
for the coming half decade through the Malawi Growth and

The project ( 1996-2001 - US$22 million
credit ) was uniquely designed as a risk management
instrument - it conceived the establishment of a viable,
government-run system of drought management, through early
warning systems, contingency plans, mitigation and quick
response. The design also devolved responsibility to the
district and community level, encouraging civil servants and
other district development actors to empower local

Shifting Kenya’s private sector into
higher gear: a trade and competitiveness agenda’ was born
out of the World Bank’s Trade and Competitiveness (T&C)
Global Practice recent stock taking of its work in Kenya.
This was part of a Programmatic Approach that aimed to
organize T&C’s knowledge, advisory, and convening
services to address Kenya’s development challenges in the
private sector space. By Sub-Saharan African standards,

This note centers on the Honduras Access to Land Pilot Project (PACTA). PACTA's objectives are twofold, to: (1) facilitate access to land for landless households through the land market; and (2) promote the development of sustainable rural enterprises. PACTA's achievements, thus far, can be summarized as follows: 1) It established a working model for rural enterprise formation that leverages private sector financing. 2) Grants made to families are used to establish productive projects, leverage a proportionally large private investment, and improve access to land.

Access to adequate housing is critically
important to the health and wellbeing of the world’s
population. Yet, despite the fact that this statement is
part of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and has been on the global policy agenda for many
years, hundreds of millions of people continue to live in
inadequate conditions with little or no access to decent
housing. The demand for housing solutions will increase as

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)

This report represents a further chapter
in the dialogue between the World Bank and the People's
Republic of China about how to promote economic growth and
protect China's environment. There are three
cross-cutting issues that keep recurring throughout the
analysis. These issues characterize the environmental
management challenge over the next decade: First, the
environmental agenda is becoming so complex and large that

The objective of this paper is to synthesize the findings of six individual case studies (Bucaramanga, Colombia; Coimbatore, India; Kigali, Rwanda; Gaziantep, Turkey; Changsha, China; and Tangier, Morocco) by analyzing the similarities and dissimilarities among them and identifying common, cross-cutting themes. The intent is to highlight what institutions and strategies successful cities have relied on to spur
economic development, under what conditions such success has occurred, and what lessons of this experience might be applicable to decision makers in other cities.

China has undergone a profound economic and social transformation as it moves from a centrally-planned to a market-oriented economy. Land issues are implicated in this ongoing transformation in numerous important ways - as key factors in China's quest for economic growth, national food security and social stability; as important influences in the rapid growth of China's cities as well as the future of its agriculture; and as central features in local government finance and in the growth and stability of the financial and banking sector.