This paper summarizes the World Bank assistance strategy for rural development in the ECA region. The rural sector includes the people; economic; development activities; institutional, economic, and social infrastructure; and natural resources in rural areas and is thus not confined to agriculture....

Groudwater is of major importance in providing mains water supply, and is intensively exploited for private, domestic, and industrial use in many urban centers of the developing world. At the same time, the subsurface has come to serve as the receptor for much urban and industrial wastewater and...

This discussion paper: a) proposes a new approach of targeted collaboration among different sectors; b) devises new tools or enhances existing ones to facilitate the contributions of different sectors to help relieve health problems; and c) puts theory into practice through a pilot in Ghana. The...

Conserving biodiversity faces complex problems when the natural resources from the land also provide income and substance to its local inhabitants. Finding a balance between biodiversity conservation and the socio-economic development of a community near protected areas is the goal of integrated...

It is generally accepted, both within Poland and abroad, that structural transformation, modernization and increased market efficiency are key to increase competitiveness and raise farm incomes ina country's rural sector. Parallel investments in physical infrastructure and human capital as the...

This report assesses the changes in social welfare and policy that have taken place in Poland during the economic transition. It aims to test the main hypotheses concerning changes in the role of the welfare state, workings of the labor market, the distributional consequences of transition, and...

This analysis uses firm-level data to measure how the largest industrial firms in five Central and Eastern European countries restructured during 1992-94 and to make projections through 2000.

Rapid urbanization in developing countries is fueling the demand for automobiles and consequently for rubber tires. Therefore it is a critical period for the industry, where fundamental changes are taking place in the way rubber is produced and marketed for competitive survival. This report...

The main focus of this study is on improving the policy regime in Africa to stimulate agricultural growth. It examines the state of agricultural incentives in Sub-Saharan Africa, taking stock of the current policy environment and its recent evolution, to update knowledge and to help develop a...

This technical paper is a review of eight intensified systems of land use on unirrigated farms in developing countries. The study proposes three complementary sets of conditions necessary for farming systems to be sustainable in the long run: public sector policies and investments; private...