"In recent years bioenergy... has drawn attention as a sustainable energy source that may help cope with rising energy prices, address environmental concerns about greenhouse gas emissions, and offer new income and employment to farmers and rural communities around the world. For many countries...

"... There is a clear link between access to energy services and poverty alleviation and development. The first set of critical energy needs are those that satisfy basic human needs: fuel for cooking, heating and lighting, energy for pumping water, and electricity for health and education...

"Much of the technology development for bioenergy to date has been geared toward competing with cheap fossil fuels. Bioenergy technologies have focused on reducing the cost per unit of energy produced, often exclusively by exploiting very cheap feedstocks and processing them on a large scale....

"Bioenergy crop systems can—if properly designed—yield significant benefits, both environmental and social. The right choice of biomass crops and production methods can lead to favorable carbon and energy balances and a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. But bioenergy production...

"This brief delineates two broad categories for bioenergy development — the exploitation of existing agricultural wastes and the establishment of energy plantations—and suggests high-priority steps for developing bioenergy in ways that benefit the poor... Once developing countries have...

"Given Europe's high import demand for fuel and its commitments to reduce CO2 emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, political pressure to implement strategies for the use of renewable energy is ever increasing. Thus, Europe aspires to use substantially more biofuels than it currently produces....

Food security has deteriorated since 1995 and reductions in child malnutrition are proceeding too slowly to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for halving hunger by 2015. Three major challenges threaten to drastically complicate efforts to overcome food insecurity and...

This 2012 Global Food Policy Report is the second in an annual series that provides an in-depth look at major food policy developments and events. Initiated in response to resurgent interest in food security, the series offers a yearly overview of the food policy developments that have...

In this paper we used a dynamic, regionalized computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to analyze the effect of various negative balance of payments shocks on output and employment and the effect of different alternative investment strategies on growth. The model shows clearly how sensitive El...