All publications and documents

The U.S. faces significant and diverse economic risks from climate change. The signature effects of human-induced climate change—rising seas, increased damage from storm surge, more frequent bouts of extreme heat—all have specific, measurable impacts on our nation’s current assets and ongoing economic activity. To date, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the economic risks…

While nearly 80 percent of food consumed in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia is produced by smallholder farmers, the Bank negates the importance of small-scale farming for sustainable rural development and food security. Family farmers account for 80 percent of all holdings in the developing world, therefore smallholders’ own investments—not FDIs—are the main force sustaining agriculture and should be…

The Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP) is a collaborative initiative to understand and show how individual countries can transition to a low-carbon economy and how the world can meet the internationally agreed target of limiting the increase in global mean surface temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius (°C). Achieving the 2°C limit will require that global net emissions of…

Why the need to link landscapes and livelihoods? It is common practice that environmental and social issues are dealt with separately by companies. A company may include environmental considerations in operational decisions while ‘community relations’ are dealt with by a completely separate part of the company. Nonetheless there is an increasing need for companies to understand environmental and…

This paper explores the land footprint related to EU bioenergy consumption and aims to contribute to the discussion on how EU bioenergy targets impact on scarce global land resources, both cropland and forest areas. In the last decade, demand for EU bioenergy has risen significantly, largely driven by political targets and subsidies. Our calculations show that the total land footprint related to…

This report examines the latest progress towards achieving the MDGs. It reaffirms that the MDGs have made a profound difference in people’s lives. Global poverty has been halved five years ahead of the 2015 timeframe