Reports and Documents

This document focuses on the role of local institutions in adaptation to climate change. It does so under the belief that climate impacts will affect disadvantaged social groups more disproportionately, and that local institutions centrally influence how different social groups gain access to and are able to use assets and resources.

For better management and improved access, there are several tools and instruments available to the water manager. This training manual focuses on economic and financial instruments. Economic instruments provide incentives for more efficient water use, either in terms of reduction of water quantity or increasing

After 30 years of dynamic growth and substantial poverty reduction in Asia, do agriculture and rural development still have a role to play in that region?

This study set out to identify and understand the extent to which, and ways in which, information from climate change models is being integrated into agricultural development practice and decision making in Africa. Adaptation to climate variability is not new, but climate change is expected to present heightened risk, new combinations of risks and potentially grave consequences.

Rural electrification can have many benefits-not only bringing lighting, but improving the quality of health care, spreading information and supporting productive enterprises. The extent of these benefits has been questioned, arguing that they may be insufficient to justify the investment costs. This report quantifies these benefits.

An important new resource by the Centre for Social Markets bringing together emerging initiatives on climate change in India. Intended to promote awareness-raising, partnership development and a collective sense of movement building, the report is destined to become a 'must-have' for those working on the issues in India.

This report contains the "Natural Resource Accounting of Goa State' and the valuation of environment and forest ecosystem of Goa state. In this report basic concepts on environmental accounting and different approaches of valuation are described. More specifically report covers the valuation in the specific sectors viz., air, water, municipal solid waste, and forestry.

This report explains the concept of integrated risk management, a strategic and proactive approach to anticipating, assessing and managing natural events. By analysing the main risks and investing in prevention and mitigation, societies become less vulnerable. Financial, social and environmental damage and rehabilitation and reconstruction costs are reduced.

This policy note analyses current European agrofuel policies in terms of their effects on nature and poverty. It argues that agrofuels are exacerbating climate change and that their development is infringing on the land rights of the poor, thus exacerbating poverty. Agrofuels are infringing on the intrinsic existence right of nature, as well as on the right of the poor to sufficient land to produce food.

Most firms that process rubber in Sri Lanka do not comply with national water pollution control standards. This study seeks to estimate a pollution tax that could motivate firms to meet these
standards. The authors use data from 62 rubber producing firms in Sri Lanka over three years to estimate a marginal cost function for pollution abatement. They then estimate the taxes that would