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The importance of agriculture in the economies of sub-Saharan African countries cannot be overemphasized. With agriculture accounting for about 65 percent of the region's employment and 75 percent of its domestic trade, significant progress in reducing hunger and poverty across the region depends on the development and transformation of the agricultural sector. Transforming agriculture from largely a subsistence enterprise to a profitable commercial venture is the prerequisite and driving force for accelerated development and sustainable economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. The rationale behind the development of agribusiness indicators (ABIs) is to construct indicators for specific factors to support successful, effective private sector involvement in agriculture. The indicators can be used to benchmark and monitor performance in the agricultural sector over time and across countries. The resulting information can provoke knowledge flows and meaningful dialogue among policy makers, government officials, donors, private sector actors, as well as other stakeholders in the agricultural sector. This study is predicated on the fact that agriculture is the backbone of the economies of most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Kenya. The ultimate aim is to stimulate debate and dialogue among policy makers in specific African countries to engender change and reform in areas where investment is needed to leverage agribusiness and economic development. This study relied heavily on an extensive secondary data collection and literature review, supplemented by informal surveys to solicit information from a broad spectrum of stakeholders and actors in Kenya's agricultural sector. The review and interviews focused on the factors that the agribusiness indicators team determined to be the most critical for agribusiness development across sub-Saharan Africa, based on extensive scoping missions in three pilot countries (Ghana, Ethiopia, and Mozambique). This report is organized into following chapters: chapter one gives introduction; chapter two presents ABI methodology; chapter three presents findings on the success factors and indicators; and chapter four gives concluding remarks.

This issue, which serves as the annual review on the environment, looks at the Bank's work from July 2002 through June 2003, dedicated this year to Water and the Environment, on the occasion of the Fifth World Parks Congress in Durban, South Africa. Following the overview, which reviews progress in the implementation of the Environment strategy, the report presents viewpoints on ways to move forward in delivering water as committed in South Africa, but also reflecting on the need for a more integrated approach to water resources management. Various other articles feature the Bank's new water resources strategy, and environmental flows, that is, from linking catchments to coasts in water resources management, to protected areas as tools for water conservation, and management. Regional articles describe progress in implementing the environment strategy, and supporting client's efforts in promoting appropriate environmental policies, and programs. Highlights from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) scan efforts to promote private sector investment in water supply and sanitation, and environmental improvements, while efforts by the World Bank Institute (WBI) inform on training and learning activities that sponsor policy, and knowledge-sharing as it relates to the environment.

Raising the productivity of smallholders is a necessary condition for increasing incomes and improving livelihoods among the rural poor in most developing countries. This increased productivity is essential to both household food security and to agriculture-based growth and poverty reduction in the larger economy. Smallholder productivity is limited by a variety of constraints including poor soils, unpredictable rainfall, and imperfect markets, as well as lack of access to productive resources, financial services, or infrastructure. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are also vitally important to commercial and large-scale agriculture, and to agriculture-related services and infrastructure such as weather monitoring and irrigation. This note focuses on the sometimes less-obvious importance of ICT in improving the information, communication, transaction, and networking elements of smallholder agriculture in developing countries.

This book is about development and measuring development progress. While precise definitions may vary, development is, at heart, a process of building wealth, the produced, natural, human, and institutional capital which is the source of income and wellbeing. A key finding is that it is intangible wealth, human and institutional capital, which dominates the wealth of all countries, rising as a share of the total as countries climb the development ladder. The book is divided into two parts. The first part provides the big picture of changes in wealth by income group and geographic region, with a focus on natural capital because it is especially important for low-income developing countries. The second part presents case studies that illustrate particular aspects of wealth accounting, including accounting for climate change, the role of intangible capital in growth and development, measuring human capital, and the use of wealth accounting to improve transparency and governance in resource-rich economies. The final chapter reports on the implementation of wealth accounting by countries. The appendixes provide the full wealth accounts for individual countries and for aggregations by income group and geographic region.

This report reviews China's water scarcity situation, assesses the policy and institutional requirements for addressing it, and recommends key areas for strengthening and reform. It is a synthesis of the main findings and recommendations from analytical work and case studies prepared under the World Bank Analytical and Advisory Assistance (AAA) program entitled 'Addressing China's Water Scarcity: from Analysis to Action.' These studies focus on several strategically important thematic areas for China where additional research was needed, as identified by the research team and advisory group based on a review of pressing issues. These areas are governance, water rights, pricing, ecological compensation, pollution control, and emergency response. The approach has been to evaluate Chinese and international experience to identify policy and institutional factors that have proven effective in promoting the adoption of water conservation and pollution reduction technologies. The research was based on literature reviews, qualitative and quantitative policy analyses, household surveys, field trips, and case studies to develop feasible recommendations for a plan of action based on realities on the ground.

The geochemical measurements within the long-lived, crustose coralline red alga Clathromorphum compactum in calibration experiments, and the environmental conditions selected for the controlled laboratory aquaria.

Thanks to its optimal location on the northern Brazilian margin, core MD09-3257 records both ocean circulation and atmospheric changes. The latter occur locally in the form of increased rainfall on the adjacent continent during the cold intervals recorded in Greenland ice and northern North Atlantic sediment cores (i.e., Greenland stadials). These rainfall events are recorded in MD09-3257 as peaks in ln(Ti ∕ Ca). New sedimentary Pa ∕ Th data indicate that mid-depth western equatorial water mass transport decreased during all of the Greenland stadials of the last 40 kyr. Using cross-wavelet transforms and spectrogram analysis, we assess the relative phase between the MD09-3257 sedimentary Pa ∕ Th and ln(Ti ∕ Ca) signals. We show that decreased water mass transport between a depth of ∼1300 and 2300 m in the western equatorial Atlantic preceded increased rainfall over the adjacent continent by 120 to 400 yr at Dansgaard–Oeschger (D–O) frequencies, and by 280 to 980 yr at Heinrich-like frequencies. We suggest that the large lead of ocean circulation changes with respect to changes in tropical South American precipitation at Heinrich-like frequencies is related to the effect of a positive feedback involving iceberg discharges in the North Atlantic. In contrast, the absence of widespread ice rafted detrital layers in North Atlantic cores during D–O stadials supports the hypothesis that a feedback such as this was not triggered in the case of D–O stadials, with circulation slowdowns and subsequent changes remaining more limited during D–O stadials than Heinrich stadials.

Chemicals are used in the production of many items that we depend on every day. Evidence demonstrates that certain organic chemicals are persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic and that these chemicals cause long-term harm to the health of human beings and the planet s environment. Throughout the world, people and their environments are exposed on a daily basis to Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). POPs and their effects on human health and the environment is a global issue of concern. They accumulate in animals and humans, predominantly in fatty tissue. As these chemicals move up the food chain they concentrate to levels that are harmful to humans, wildlife and fish. From the date of its inception, the Canada POPs Trust Fund (CPF) has focused on assisting developing countries and countries with economies in transition (CEITs) in developing their capacity to reduce or eliminate persistent organic pollutants. The Trust Fund has accomplished this through critical financial support, providing technical expertise and access to technology, and by transferring knowledge and know-how.

This report attempts to fill that gap for two of the most important water-related issues facing the effects of climate variability and the steady degradation of the nation's water resources. The study reported here concluded that the El Niño-La Niña episode from 1997-2000 cost the country Ksh 290 billion (about 14 percent of GDP during that period). During El Niño-induced floods, this cost primarily arises from destruction of infrastructure such as roads, water supply infrastructure, and pipe networks. The largest costs incurred during the La Niña droughts (1998-2000) were from loss of industrial production and other costs arising from reduced hydropower generation, as well as from crop and livestock losses. These costs are felt throughout Kenyan society.