The urbanization of Latin America has also lead to the urbanization of its poor. Today about half of the region's poor live in cities. Yet the phenomenon of urban poverty is not one that is well studied or well understood and policy makers across Latin America are increasingly interested in policy advice on how to design programs and policies to tackle poverty. 'Urban Poor in Latin America' argues that the causes of poverty, the nature of deprivation, and the policy levers to fight poverty are to a large extent site-specific. As such, the book looks at strategies to assist the urban poor in...

This book reviews Latin America's experience with infrastructure reform over the last fifteen years. It argues that the region's infrastructure has suffered from public retrenchment and unrealistic expectations about private involvement. Poor infrastructure now hampers productivity, growth, and poverty reduction. Addressing this requires more and better spending, and acceptance that governments remain central to infrastructure provision and supervision, although the private sector still has an important role to play.

The region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) is already experiencing the consequences of climate change: increasing variability, warmer temperatures, altered hydrology. Events such as droughts, floods, heat waves, windstorms, and forest fires are increasing in number and severity. The concentration of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere guarantees that similar or greater changes are yet to come even if the world were to completely stop emitting CO2 today. This region is particularly vulnerable because of its legacy of socioeconomic issues, environmental mismanagement, aging...

Pour les 89 millions de jeunes non scolarises et descolarises (NSD), soit pres de la moitie de tous les jeunes d'Afrique subsaharienne, les perspectives economiques et sociales sont consternantes. Dans les dix prochaines annees ou cette cohorte composera l'essentiel de la population active, 40 autres millions de jeunes auront probablement quitte l'ecole pour se retrouver confrontes a un avenir incertain, sans travail et sans competences pratiques Ce rapport decortique les facteurs qui incitent les jeunes a poursuivre leur scolarite et a privilegier les etudes ou le travail. Il met en evidence...

Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. Shock Waves also provides guidance on how to create a "win-win" situation so that climate change policies contribute...

Latin America and the Caribbean does not have the infrastructure it needs, or deserves, given its income. Many argue that the solution is to spend more; by contrast, this report has one main message: Latin America can dramatically narrow its infrastructure service gap by spending efficiently on the right things.