China is considered one of the most seriously eroded countries in the world. The
many causes of this degradation can be divided into natural, human-induced and root causes.
The consequences of watershed degradation are severe and reach even beyond the country’s
boundaries. Addressing this issue requires a sustainable participatory and integrated watershed
management approach. The Loess Plateau Watershed Rehabilitation Projects, implemented by
the Ministry of Water Resources and co-financed by the World Bank has provided a model that

In 2012 Papua New Guinea undertook a
national Service Delivery Assessment of rural water, rural
sanitation, urban water and urban sanitation services to
identify coverage and targets, how well services are being
delivered and the financing shortfalls in these subsectors.
Immediately following this assessment, stakeholders, through
a national policy task force, have developed a draft of the
country s first National Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

This paper uses evidence from three
Indian states, one of which amended inheritance legislation
in 1994, to assess first- and second-generation effects of
inheritance reform using a triple-difference strategy.
Second-generation effects on education, time use, and health
are larger and more significant than first-generation
effects even controlling for mothers' endowments.
Improved access to bank accounts and sanitation as well as

This paper investigates the
effectiveness of protected areas in slowing tropical forest
clearing in 64 countries in Asia/Pacific, Africa, and Latin
America for the period 2001-2012. The investigation compares
deforestation rates inside and within 10 kilometers outside
the boundary of protected areas. Annual time series of these
deforestation rates were constructed from recently published
high-resolution data on forest clearing. For 4,028 parks,

In this issue: Facilitating labor
migration from the Philippines; Incentives and teacher
effort; Electoral accountability and local public spending
in Indonesia; Why don't poor countries do R&D?; How
effective are efforts to raise voluntary enrollment in
health insurance?; How insecure property rights affect
migration in China; the challenges of public service
delivery in the Pacific Islands.

This report summarizes the just-in-time
advice provided by the World Bank to the government of the
Philippines (GoP) immediately after Typhoon Haiyan. The Bank
helped the National Economic and Development Authority
(NEDA) develop the Reconstruction Assistance on Yolanda
(RAY) plan, providing recommendations and sharing
international good practice on key aspects of recovery and
reconstruction, including institutional arrangements for

Economic growth, job creation, and
development are central to the decade of transformation
(2015-25) and long-term security for the people of
Afghanistan. The Bank and the Government of the Islamic
Republic of Afghanistan (GoIRA) recognize that agriculture
and rural development are a key to inclusive growth, and
hence need renewed vigor and strategic long-term
investments. Further, the Bank and the GoIRA acknowledge

The purpose of this report is to improve
the knowledge base for facilitating investments in land
management technologies that sequester soil organic carbon.
While there are many studies on soil carbon sequestration,
there is no single unifying volume that synthesizes
knowledge on the impact of different land management
practices on soil carbon sequestration rates across the
world. A meta-analysis was carried out to provide soil

Although the potentially negative
impacts of credit constraints on economic development have
long been discussed conceptually, empirical evidence for
Africa remains limited. This study uses a direct elicitation
approach for a national sample of Rwandan rural households
to assess empirically the extent and nature of credit
rationing in the semi-formal sector and its impact using an
endogenous sample separation between credit-constrained and

With limited land, capital, and a fast
growing population, Burundi's main asset is its
youthful population. Its main challenge is also to create
good quality jobs for its youth. With low levels of
educational attainment and poor health status, the quality
of this young population is poor. After more than 13 years
of conflict ending in 2000, and a period of modest recovery,
Burundi has the opportunity to stimulate growth. Burundi is

This paper quantifies the impact of
inundation risk and salinization on the family structure and
economic welfare of coastal households in Bangladesh. These
households are already on the "front line" of
climate change, so their adaptation presages the future for
hundreds of millions of families worldwide who will face
similar threats by 2100. The analysis is based on a
household decision model that relates spatial deployment of

The Nigerian labor force, like that of
many countries in Africa, is heavily concentrated in
agriculture. According to World Bank reports, the
agricultural sector in Nigeria grew by about 6.8 percent
annually from 2005-2009. This report focuses on the
characteristics of the agricultural sector and rural
households in Nigeria, and their implications for poverty.
This report examines the relationships using nationally