If sustainable management of tropical forests is to be accomplished and deforestation brought under control, the on-the-ground performance of existing forest concessions, along with the allocation of new concessions, will have to be strengthened. This study examines the failures of forest concessions and the loss of tropical forests due to mismanagement during the last two decades. It also emphasizes the potential gains resulting from strengthening the allocation, management, and supervision of concessions by concentrating on improving procedures, introducing performance incentives, and monitoring key performance elements
India's irrigated agriculture sector has been basic to India's economic development and poverty alleviation. One of India's major achievements is its rapid expansion of irrigation and drainage infrastructure. However, the major emphasis on development has been achieved at a cost. The importance put on new construction has diverted attention away from the need to ensure the quality, productivity, and sustainability of the services. Further, a governmental subsidy based approach has been used and this has resulted in irrigation and drainage services which, while enabling significantly higher productivity than from non-irrigated lands, are well below their potential. 'The Irrigation Sector' discusses directions for future growth, the framework for reform, and the reform agenda.
This report calls on policy makers to recognise the issues at stake in water resource management in agriculture and gives them the tools to do so, offering a wealth of information on recent trends and the outlook for water resource use in agriculture.
Agricultural water management is a vital practice in ensuring reduction, and environmental protection. After decades of successfully expanding irrigation and improving productivity, farmers and managers face an emerging crisis in the form of poorly performing irrigation schemes, slow modernization, declining investment, constrained water availability, and environmental degradation. More and better investments in agricultural water are needed. In response, the World Bank, in conjunction with many partner agencies, has compiled a selection of good experiences that can guide practitioners in the design of quality investments in agricultural water. The messages of 'Shaping the Future of Water for Agriculture: A Sourcebook for Investment in Agricultural Water Management' center around the key challenges to agricultural water management, specifically: - Building policies and incentives - Designing institutional reforms - Investing in irrigation systems improvement and modernization - Investing in groundwater irrigation - Investing in drainage and water quality management - Investing in water management in rainfed agriculture - Investing in agricultural water management in multipurpose operations - Coping with extreme climatic conditions - Assessing the social, economic, and environmental impacts of agricultural water investments 'Shaping the Future of Water for Agriculture' is an important resource for those interested and engaged in development with a focus on agricultural water.
This publication examines issues of water sector reform and performance from the perspectives of institutional economics and political economic studies. The authors develop an alternative quantitative assessment methodology based on the principle of 'institutional ecology', as well as data collected from 127 water experts from 43 countries and regions around the world using a cross-country review of recent water sector reforms within an institutional transaction cost framework.
This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND license. This book addresses the issue of how a country, which was incorporated into the world economy as a periphery, could make a transition to the emerging state, capable of undertaking the task of economic development and industrialization. It offers historical and contemporary case studies of transition, as well as the international background under which such a transition was successfully made (or delayed), by combining the approaches of economic history and development economics. Its aim is to identify relevant historical contexts, that is, the ‘initial conditions’ and internal and external forces which governed the transition. It also aims to understand what current low-income developing countries require for their transition. Three economic driving forces for the transition are identified. They are: (1) labor-intensive industrialization, which offers ample employment opportunities for labor force; (2) international trade, which facilitates efficient international division of labor; and (3) agricultural development, which improves food security by increasing supply of staple foods. The book presents a bold account of each driver for the transition.
