In this paper, the authors seek to answer three questions about poverty and forests in Malawi: (1) What is the extent of biomass available for meeting the energy needs of the poor in Malawi and how is this distributed? (2) To what extent does fuelwood scarcity affect the welfare of the poor? (3) How do households cope with scarcity? In particular, do households spend more time in fuelwood collection and less time in agriculture in response to scarcity? The authors attempt to answer these questions using household and remote-sensing data.

Conservation of high-biodiversity tropical forests is sometimes justified on the basis of assumed hydrological benefits - in particular, the reduction of flooding hazards for downstream floodplain populations. However, the "far-field" link between deforestation and distant flooding has been difficult to demonstrate empirically. This simulation study assesses the relationship between forest cover and hydrology for all river basins intersecting the world's tropical forest biomes.

The World Bank's revised forest
policy came into being in 2002 and covers all types of
forests. It has the following key objectives: (i) harnessing
the potential of forests to reduce poverty in a sustainable
manner; (ii) integrating forests effectively into
sustainable development; and (iii) protecting vital local
and global environmental services and values. The policy
enables the bank to fully engage in forestry throughout the

The study develops a new method to
measure the impacts of climate change on agriculture called
the Agro-Ecological Zone (AEZ) Model. A multinomial logit is
estimated to predict the probability of each AEZ in each
district. The average percentage of cropland and average
crop net revenue are calculated for each AEZ. Then an
estimate of the amount of cropland in Africa and where it is
located is provided. Using current conditions, the model

Although private forest use in Brazil has been regulated at least since the Forest Code of 1965, cumulative deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached 653,000 k

This report focuses on one specific
interaction: the role of forests, and particularly protected
forests, in maintaining quality of drinking water for large
cities. There are many reasons for this focus: many city
dwellers already face a crisis of water quality, and
contaminated water spreads a vast and largely unnecessary
burden in terms of short and long-term health impacts
including infant mortality, with knock-on effects on ability

A "forest-hydrology-poverty
nexus" hypothesis asserts that deforestation in poor
upland areas simultaneously threatens biodiversity and
increases the incidence of flooding, sedimentation, and
other damaging hydrological processes. The authors use rough
heuristics to assess the applicability of this hypothesis to
Central America. They do so by using a simple rule of thumb
to identify watersheds at greater risk of hydrologically

A tradable development rights (TDR)
program focusing on biodiversity conservation faces a
crucial problem defining which areas of habitat should be
considered equivalent. Restricting the trading domain to a
narrow area could boost the range of biodiversity conserved
but could increase the opportunity cost of conservation. The
issue is relevant to Brazil, where TDR-like programs are
emerging. Current regulations require each rural property to

How effective are public interventions in addressing significant regional disparities in formal manufacturing concentration in a developing economy? The authors examine the aggregate and sectoral geographic concentration of manufacturing industries for Indonesia, and estimate the impact of factors influencing location choice at the firm level. They distinguish between natural advantage, including infrastructure endowments, wage rates, and natural resource endowments, and production externalities, arising from the co-location of firms in the same or complementary industries.

A major section of over 720 million
rural poor in India continue to depend on biomass sources
for meeting their energy requirements. Most of these poor
people continue to burn biomass in energy-inefficient
devices, locally called Chulhas. This study report is based
on an evaluation of the National Program for Improved
Chulhas (NPIC) conducted as part of a larger Bank study
entitled India : household energy, indoor air pollution and

Dry tropical woodlands provide around 80
percent of the energy needs of both urban and rural
populations in Africa and are of similar importance on a
more localized scale in other areas. They also provide
livestock fodder, building poles and many of the daily needs
of the rural people living in and around them. Concern about
the degradation and depletion of these woodlands date back a
long time. Large numbers of woodfuel projects were launched

Human welfare and development are
heavily influenced by climatic factors. As many as 95
percent of all disaster-related casualties occur in
developing countries, and after an event the recovery often
takes years. Natural disasters can significantly derail the
process of social and economic development. The Bank has
always supported reconstruction in countries affected by
natural disasters. A forward-looking approach to disaster