This issue includes the following
headings: mass rapid transit: a tool for urban expansion;
financing: beyond sovereign guarantees; and low-income
housing: lessons from Latin America.

The report is divided into two volumes.
The first volume includes the fundamental content of the
report. It is organized as follows. Chapter one provides a
conceptual framework to analyze risk and vulnerability and
provides a definition of social protection. Chapter two
assesses the main risks faced by the Malagasy population as
well as its vulnerability profile. Chapter three reviews
Madagascar's social protection policies, the

A rather unique panel tracking more than
3,300 individuals from households in rural Kagera, Tanzania
during 1991/4-2010 shows that about one in two
individuals/households who exited poverty did so by
transitioning from agriculture into the rural nonfarm
economy or secondary towns. Only one in seven exited poverty
by migrating to a large city, although those moving to a
city experienced on average faster consumption growth.

This paper seeks to develop estimates of
the net cost of the urban expansion in Tanzania. The paper
focuses on developing estimates of the cost of planning and
servicing land for new residential urban settlement. It does
not attempt to develop detailed estimates of the cost of
addressing infrastructure backlogs which would include the
retrofitting of basic urban infrastructure to unplanned
areas. On the revenue side, estimates of current spending in

Municipal solid waste management
continues to be a major challenge for local governments in
both urban and rural areas across the world, and one of the
key issues is their financial constraints. Recently an
economic analysis was conducted in Eryuan, a poor county
located in Yunnan Province of China, where willingness to
pay for an improved solid waste collection and treatment
service was estimated and compared with the project cost.

East Sudan has received a continuous
influx of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees
over the last forty years. Mass influxes were witnessed
during years when the region experienced natural
catastrophes as droughts and floods, or an escalation of
tensions and conflict in neighboring countries, mainly
Eritrea and Ethiopia. Presently there is still a steady but
smaller in numbers influx of refugees, mostly from Eritrea,

In Japan, the sustainable development of
cities and provinces has been vigorously pursued since the
late 1990s under various programs through the initiative of
the central government and local authorities. In 2009, the
World Bank launched an urban development initiative called
Eco2 Cities: Ecological Cities as Economic Cities (Eco2
Cities Initiative) to help cities in developing countries
achieve greater synergistic ecological and economic

Approaches to urban slums are a
multimedia sourcebook that comprises 14 self-running
audiovisual presentations and 18 video interviews. It is
organized into four broad sections: adaptive approaches,
proactive approaches, case profiles, and thematic
interviews. The sourcebook itself, which contains more than
nine viewing hours of content on CD-ROM, does not exist in
printed format. This guide provides an overview of the

Sea level rise (SLR) due to climate
change is a serious global threat. The scientific evidence
is now overwhelming. Continued growth of greenhouse gas
emissions and associated global warming could well promote
SLR of 1m-3m in this century, and unexpectedly rapid breakup
of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets might produce
a 5m SLR. In this paper, the authors have assessed the
consequences of continued SLR for 84 developing countries.

This paper discusses the progress made
by Cambodia from the early 90s to 2007, in reduction of
poverty incidence. Reduced poverty occurred in both urban
and rural areas, and was experienced by rich and poor, and
by men and women. Households, including those in the poorest
groups, have improved their housing quality, increased
ownership of motorbikes, televisions, and mobile phones, and
are better able to access and afford schools and healthcare.

Structural change is a key driver of
rapid growth: countries diversify into new industries, firms
learn new things, people move to new locations. Anything
that slows this structural change is also likely to slow
growth. Because urbanization is one of the most important
enabling parallel processes in rapid growth, making it work
well is critical. Urbanization's contribution to growth
comes from two sources: the difference between rural and

Fourteen years of civil conflict
(1989-2003) have destroyed Liberia's social and
economic infrastructure and brought the economy nearly to a
halt. Workers who came of age during the conflict are
largely unskilled, and the supply of workers exceeds demand
by a substantial margin. The negative effects of
unemployment, underemployment, and low productivity on
economic growth have made employment the most urgent demand