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Changes in marine net primary productivity (PP) and export of particulate organic carbon (EP) are projected over the 21st century with four global coupled carbon cycle-climate models. These include representations of marine ecosystems and the carbon cycle of different structure and complexity. All four models show a decrease in global mean PP and EP between 2 and 20% by 2100 relative to preindustrial conditions, for the SRES A2 emission scenario. Two different regimes for productivity changes are consistently identified in all models. The first chain of mechanisms is dominant in the low- and mid-latitude ocean and in the North Atlantic: reduced input of macro-nutrients into the euphotic zone related to enhanced stratification, reduced mixed layer depth, and slowed circulation causes a decrease in macro-nutrient concentrations and in PP and EP. The second regime is projected for parts of the Southern Ocean: an alleviation of light and/or temperature limitation leads to an increase in PP and EP as productivity is fueled by a sustained nutrient input. A region of disagreement among the models is the Arctic, where three models project an increase in PP while one model projects a decrease. Projected changes in seasonal and interannual variability are modest in most regions. Regional model skill metrics are proposed to generate multi-model mean fields that show an improved skill in representing observation-based estimates compared to a simple multi-model average. Model results are compared to recent productivity projections with three different algorithms, usually applied to infer net primary production from satellite observations.

Watershed management has come to be recognized as a critical issue in the Nile Basin. Upstream land use can cause degradation and soil erosion, resulting in lower agricultural yields locally and causing sedimentation downstream. The increased sediment load causes economic problems by reducing water quality, and irrigation and hydropower potential, as well as increasing flooding. This note shows how, through Basin-wide cooperation, the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) has led efforts to address these problems, developing successful projects to deliver real results to restore the Nile.

This basic Agriculture Public Expenditure Review (AgPER) documents and analyzes information on the volume and structure of Liberia's past public expenditure on the agriculture sector and draws conclusions that can provide an orientation for future policies in view of the effectiveness of spending. The AgPER's focus is on the sectors of agriculture, including crops, fisheries, and forestry, in line with the New Partnership for African Development's (NEPAD) definition of the sectors of focus. This is in accordance with the Maputo Declaration and its target that governments devote ten percent of public expenditure for agricultural development with an aim towards realizing food security and poverty reduction.

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.

In permafrost areas, seasonal freeze-thaw cycles result in upward and downward movements of the ground. For some permafrost areas, long-term downward movements were reported during the last decade. We measured seasonal and multi-year ground movements in a yedoma region of the Lena River Delta, Siberia, in 2013–2017, using reference rods installed deep in the permafrost. The seasonal subsidence was 1.7 ± 1.5 cm in the cold summer of 2013 and 4.8 ± 2 cm in the warm summer of 2014. Furthermore, we measured a pronounced multi-year net subsidence of 9.3 ± 5.7 cm from spring 2013 to the end of summer 2017. Importantly, we observed a high spatial variability of subsidence of up to 6 cm across a sub-meter horizontal scale. In summer 2013, we accompanied our field measurements with Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (DInSAR) on repeat-pass TerraSAR-X (TSX) data from the summer of 2013 to detect summer thaw subsidence over the same study area. Interferometry was strongly affected by a fast phase coherence loss, atmospheric artifacts, and possibly the choice of reference point. A cumulative ground movement map, built from a continuous interferogram stack, did not reveal a subsidence on the upland but showed a distinct subsidence of up to 2 cm in most of the thermokarst basins. There, the spatial pattern of DInSAR-measured subsidence corresponded well with relative surface wetness identified with the near infra-red band of a high-resolution optical image. Our study suggests that (i) although X-band SAR has serious limitations for ground movement monitoring in permafrost landscapes, it can provide valuable information for specific environments like thermokarst basins, and (ii) due to the high sub-pixel spatial variability of ground movements, a validation scheme needs to be developed and implemented for future DInSAR studies in permafrost environments.

Gordon & Betty Moore FoundationGordon and Betty Moore Foundation [5596]; Canada Research Chairs FoundationCanada Research Chairs; European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant [747946]; Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia I.P. Portugal (FCT); Direcao-Geral de Politica do Mar (DGPM) [2/2017/001-MiningImpact 2]; FCTPortuguese Foundation for Science and TechnologyEuropean Commission [CEECIND005262017, UID/MAR/00350/2013, IF/01194/2013, IF/00029/2014/CP1230/CT0002, Mining2/0005/2017]; RF State Assignment [0149-2019-0009]; Horizon 2020 Agricultural Interoperability and Analysis System (ATLAS) projects [678760]; JM Kaplan Fund; National Science FoundationNational Science Foundation (NSF) [OCE 1634172]; JPI Oceans project Mining Impact -Environmental Impacts and Risks of Deep-Sea Mining Aug 2018-Feb 2022 (NWO-ALW) [856.18.001] info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

Concerns about the sustainability of conventional agriculture have prompted widespread introduction of integrated pest management (IPM), an ecologically-based approach to control of harmful insects and weeds. IPM is intended to reduce ecological and health damage from chemical pesticides by using natural parasites and predators to control pest populations. Since chemical pesticides are expensive for poor farmers, IPM offers the prospect of lower production costs and higher profitability. However, adoption of IPM may reduce profitability if it also lowers overall productivity, or induces more intensive use of other production factors. On the other hand, IPM may actually promote more productive farming by encouraging more skillful use of available resources. Data scarcity has hindered a full accounting of IPM's impact on profitability, health, and local ecosystems. Using new survey data, the authors attempt such an accounting for rice farmers in Bangladesh. They compare outcomes for farming with IPM and conventional techniques, using input-use accounting, conventional production functions, and frontier production estimation. All of their results suggest that the productivity of IPM rice farming is not significantly different from the productivity of conventional farming. Since IPM reduces pesticide costs with no countervailing loss in production, it appears to be more profitable than conventional rice farming. The interview results also suggest substantial health and ecological benefits. However, externality problems make it difficult for farmers to adopt IPM individually. Without collective adoption, neighbors' continued reliance on chemicals to kill pests will also kill helpful parasites and predators, as well as exposing IPM farmers and local ecosystems to chemical spillovers from adjoining fields. Successful IPM adoption may therefore depend on institutional support for collective action.

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 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.

The World Bank Group (WBG) has a long experience in engaging in biodiversity with world-class expertise in the field. It has been the single largest funder of biodiversity investments since the late 1980s. The WBG investments have largely been of two kinds: (1) investments in biodiversity, aimed at the conservation and sustainable use of species, habitats, and ecosystems that sustain healthy ecosystems, while enhancing people's livelihoods and safety nets. These investments have also been providing jobs and economic development in frequently impoverished rural areas for example by supporting protected areas and an increasingly important tourism industry; and (2) investments that add value to projects in other sectors, such as irrigation, hydropower, and infrastructure, by increasing their environmental sustainability. The WBG is a global center of excellence that provides economy wide technical and economic knowledge and expertise on biodiversity and ecosystems. It has the standing and convening power to facilitate participatory dialogue between client countries and networks of other relevant stakeholders on matters of biodiversity and climate change concern, such as loss of ecosystem resilience, forest law enforcement and governance, wildlife trade, and overexploitation of natural resources.