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This book presents a heavily disruptive, inclusive, and resilient solution to Africa’s wide-ranging food security challenges. Specifically, it assesses the benefits and costs of using the frontier agriculture technologies to create a circular food economy in Africa, particularly in Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV)-affected countries. This book focuses on two types of frontier agriculture technologies: insect farming and hydroponic crop farming. Both technologies quickly produce nutritious human food and animal feed and could provide tremendous health, social, economic, climatic, environmental, and food security benefits in Africa. Insect and hydroponic farming can create a circular food economy by reusing society’s organic waste, including agricultural and certain industrial waste, to produce foods for humans, fish, and livestock without the need for vast amounts of arable land or water resources. This book finds that frontier agriculture is a viable complement to conventional agriculture in Africa and could meet many of the continent’s social, economic, environmental, and food security challenges. The book also shows that frontier agriculture can be economically competitive with conventional agriculture in the resource constrained environments of African FCV countries, while generating a fraction of the climate and environmental damage. These frontier agriculture technologies show great potential for growth and scalability as the market is rapidly increasing for novel protein sources from farmed insects and for nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables from hydroponic crops.

This paper analyses gender differences in vulnerability and resilience to shocks, including climate change and climate variability, for Peru, Brazil and Mexico, which together account for more than half the population in Latin America. Vulnerability and resilience indicators are measured by a combination of the level of household incomes per capita and the degree of diversification of these incomes. Thus, households which simultaneously have incomes which are below the national poverty line and which are poorly diversified (Diversification Index below 0.5) are classified as highly vulnerable, whereas households which have highly diversified incomes above the poverty line are classified as highly resilient. The analysis shows that female headed households in all three countries tend to be less vulnerable and more resilient than male headed households, despite the fact that the former usually have lower education levels. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

There are significant differences in labor market outcomes by gender in Tunisia. These gender differences differ substantially in the richer coastal and eastern regions and the poorer southern and western regions. This chapter uses the 2014 Tunisia Labor Market Panel Survey (TLMPS) to examine the characteristics of male and female labor market participants in the lagging southern, western, and central regions, and in the leading regions. The chapter also discusses results from an econometric analysis of the factors that influence monthly wages and the probability of employment for men and women respectively. Our results show that gender plays a huge role in labor market outcomes: women are less likely to participate in the labor force, are more likely to be unemployed, and receive lower wages. In addition, youth and educated women in lagging regions are particularly disadvantaged because they are less likely to find a job and may not have the option of moving to places where employment prospects are better. Moreover, our results suggest that wage discrimination against women is prevalent outside the leading region in Tunisia.

Climate change and recurrent climate events are making water-scarce countries like Tunisia and its agricultural lands drier and more vulnerable to drought. These recurrent climate events are also known as teleconnections and include natural climatic events such as the El Nino Southern oscillation (ENSO), the North Atlantic oscillation (NAO), and the Mediterranean oscillation (MO). These climate phenomena contribute to droughts, which negatively affect key rain-fed crops, suchas wheat and barley, and livestock. As a result, farmers are becoming more vulnerable as climate change and teleconnections make temperatures rise and rainfall become more sporadic. Agriculture is important for rural communities and the overall Tunisian economy. Twenty percent of the population is employed in agriculture, which accounts for 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 10 to 12 percent of total exports, on average. Wheat and other rainfedcrops are critical to food security and livestock survival and are the crops most affected by climate variability. Climate change’s adverse impacts on agriculture are a contingent liability for the Tunisian economy, including for the country’s GDP, trade balance, and balance of payments. As agricultural and agro-industrial outputs fall, food and fodder imports must rise to meet domestic demand. Therefore, this report suggests additional action on implementing integrated drought management (IDM) on top of what the government is already doing. Food and agriculture value chains are affected by climate events. This report includes detailed analyses of two key value chains, namely wheat and dairy. The analyses were done in representative lagging regions, including Jendouba for the dairy value chain and Siliana and Beja for the wheat value chain.Currently, wheat and dairy are the main subsectors in the lagging regions, and in the short term, strengthening these subsectors will increase jobs, incomes, and food security. This study finds that the El Nino Southern oscillation (ENSO) was a less important contributor to the 2015–16 drought in Tunisia than other teleconnections. ENSO drought impacts are more pronounced in other parts of the world than in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This report also examines wheat and dairy agriculture to determine how well they are adapting to climate change and climate variability. Current adaptation pathways to increase agricultural incomes and productivityfocus on increasing tree crops, which generally are more resilient to drought than field crops. Still, improving water management is also an essential part of this adaptation plan.

Climate change is the defining development challenge of our time. More than a global environmental issue, climate change is also a threat to poverty reduction and economic growth and may unravel many of the development gains made in recent decades. Latin America and the Caribbean account for a relatively modest 12 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions,1 but communities across the region are already suffering adverse consequences from climate change and variability (De la Torre, Fajnzylber, and Nash 2009). As highlighted in “Reducing Poverty, Protecting Livelihoods, and Building Assets in a Changing Climate” (Verner 2010), climate change is likely to have unprecedented social, economic, environmental, and political repercussions.

Though recently challenged, the dual economy view has affected development economics and development policy, either explicitly or implicitly, for more than half a century. According to this view, agriculture merely serves to build the industrial sector — in particular, agriculture has no role as an engine of growth in the long term. Examining agriculture, industry and service sector growth in Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Zimbabwe over more than three decades, we find little empirical support for this view. On the contrary, our analyses find a large degree of interdependence in long-run sectoral growth, implying that the sectors ‘grow together’ or, similarly, that there are externalities or spillovers between sectors. Policy implications are also discussed; these include directing more attention towards the interdependencies in sectoral growth broadly defined. In particular, our findings have implications for the design of education and health programs, as well. This improved understanding of inter-sectoral dynamics at all levels may facilitate policy implementation aimed at increasing economic growth — and thereby ultimately improving peoples' livelihoods — in Africa and elsewhere.

The article uses a matched employer-employee data set for Ghana and adopts a quantile regression approach that allows the effects of unionization to vary across the conditional wage distribution. It is shown that if there are intrafirm differences in unionization, there does appear to be a premium among poorer paid workers in the formal sector. Although this cannot be given a causal interpretation, it suggests important issues about how unions may affect one part of the labor market.

This Economics of Climate Change in the Arab World is presents detailed case studies on the impacts of climate change in the Syrian Arab Republic, Tunisia, and the Republic of Yemen that were summarized. The Arab region is already being impacted by climate change through more frequent cyclones, floods, and prolonged droughts. Thousands of rural producers have seen their crops and herds devastated by extreme conditions, and have been forced to abandon their traditional way of life and migrate to crowded urban areas. Those who stay behind in rural areas struggle to cope with shortages of food and water. Climate change affects countries' economies and households through a variety of channels. Rising temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns affect agricultural yields of both rainfed and irrigated crops, and thus global and local food markets. Adaptation is a process that will take place over decades as new information makes policy makers reevaluate their climate vulnerabilities. Still, by seizing the opportunity to act now and act together, the Arab region can not only meet the immense challenges of climate change but advance the development of its entire people.

The paper uses data from 5,507 municipalities in Brazil to estimate the relationships between climate and income as well as climate and health, and then uses the estimated relationships to gauge the effects of past and future climate change on income levels and life expectancy in each of these municipalities. The simulations indicate that climate change over the past 50 years has tended to cause an overall drop in incomes in Brazil of about four percent, with the initially poorer and hotter municipalities in the north and northeast Brazil suffering bigger losses than the initially richer and cooler municipalities in the south. The simulations thus suggest that climate change has contributed to an increase in inequality between Brazilian municipalities, as well as to an increase in poverty. The climate change projected for the next 50 years is estimated to have similar, but more pronounced effects, causing an overall reduction in incomes of about 12 percent, holding all other things constant. Again, the initially poorer municipalities in the already hot northern regions are likely to suffer more from additional warming than the initially richer and cooler municipalities in the south, indicating that projected future climate change would tend to contribute to increased poverty and income inequality in Brazil.

This paper uses municipality level data to estimate the general relationships between climate, income and child mortality in Mexico. Climate was found to play only a very minor role in explaining the large differences in income levels and child mortality rates observed in Mexico. This implies that Mexico is considerably less vulnerable to expected future climate change than other countries in Latin America.

Indigenous peoples across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) already perceive and experience negative effects of climate change and variability. Although the overall economic impact of climate change on gross domestic product (GDP) is significant, what is particularly problematic is that it falls disproportionately on the poor including indigenous peoples, who constitute about 6.5 percent of the population in the region and are among its poorest and most vulnerable (Hall and Patrinos 2006). This book examines the social implications of climate change and climatic variability for indigenous communities in LAC and the options for improving their resilience and adaptability to these phenomena. By social implications, the authors mean direct and indirect effects in the broad sense of the word social, including factors contributing to human well-being, health, livelihoods, human agency, social organization, and social justice. This book, much of which relies on new empirical research, addresses specifically the situation of indigenous communities because our research showed them to be among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. A companion book (Verner 2010) provides information on the broader social dimensions of climate change in LAC and on policy options for addressing them. This book will help to place these impacts higher on the climate-change agenda and guide efforts to enhance indigenous peoples' rights and opportunities, whether by governments, indigenous peoples' organizations and their leaders, or non-state representatives.

Many of the poorest Argentines are invisible in official statistics. Four million rural residents and another 12 million in small urban areas lie outside the reach of the Permanent Household Survey (EPH), which is the basis for poverty figures and most data on social conditions in the country. According to the best estimate, roughly a third of rural residents, more than a million people, live in poverty. The urban bias common too many countries have been accentuated by the lack of data on the rural poor. With little information on their condition, it is exceedingly difficult for policy makers to design policies and programs to help move people out of poverty. The report is organized as follows: chapter one profiles rural poverty base on the limited existing data, including the first in-depth analysis of rural poverty ever conducted with the 2001 population census. Chapter two presents findings from the new qualitative study of the rural poor conducted in the first half of 2007. Finally, chapter three concludes with a discussion of methodology for rural poverty analysis, focusing on the issues related to expanding the EPH to full national coverage.

This paper uses municipality level data to estimate the general relationship between climate, income, and life expectancy in Chile. The analysis finds that incomes are negatively related to temperature, while life expectancy is not significantly related to average temperatures. Both incomes and life expectancy are greater in areas with either very little rain or a lot of rain. The authors use the estimated relationships to simulate the effects of both past (1958-08) and future (2008-58) climate change. The findings indicate that past climate change has been favorable for the central, and most populous, part of Chile, and it has contributed to reduced poverty and reduced inequality of health outcomes. Whereas temperatures in the past have shown a downward trend for most of the Chilean population, climate models suggest that they will increase in the future, and that there will be a reduction in precipitation in the central part of Chile. The analysis simulates the likely effects of these projected climate changes over the next 50 years. The findings suggest that expected future climate will tend to reduce incomes across the whole country, with an average reduction of about 7 percent, all other things equal.

This paper analyzes the direct evidence of climate change in Bolivia during the past 60 years, and estimates how these changes have affected life expectancy and consumption levels for each of the 311 municipalities in Bolivia. Contrary to the predictions of most general circulation models, the evidence shows a consistent cooling trend of about 0.2°C per decade over all highland areas, slight and scattered evidence of warming in the lowlands, and no systematic changes in precipitation. The estimations indicate that the 1°C cooling experienced in the already cold highlands over the past five decades likely has reduced consumption possibilities by about 2-3 percent in these areas. Since the much richer population in the lowlands have benefitted slightly from recent climate change, the simulations suggest that recent climate change has contributed to an increase in inequality and poverty in Bolivia. Poor and indigenous peoples in the highlands are among the most severely affected populations. No statistically significant effect on life expectancy was found.

This paper addresses labor markets in Haiti, including farm and nonfarm employment and income generation. The analyses are based on the first Living Conditions Survey of 7,186 households covering the whole country and representative at the regional level. The findings suggest that four key determinants of employment and productivity in nonfarm activities are education, gender, location, and migration status. This is emphasized when nonfarm activities are divided into low-return and high-return activities. The wage and producer income analyses reveal that education is key to earning higher wages and incomes. Moreover, producer incomes increase with farm size, land title, and access to tools, electricity, roads, irrigation, and other farm inputs.

This paper analyzes poverty in Haiti based on the first Living Conditions Survey of 7,186 households covering the whole country and representative at the regional level. Using a USD1 a day extreme poverty line, the analysis reveals that 49 percent of Haitian households live in absolute poverty. Twenty, 56, and 58 percent of households in metropolitan, urban, and rural areas, respectively, are poor. At the regional level, poverty is especially extensive in the northeastern and northwestern regions. Access to assets such as education and infrastructure services is highly unequal and strongly correlated with poverty. Moreover, children in indigent households attain less education than children in nonpoor households. Controlling for individual and household characteristics, location, and region, living in a rural area does not by itself affect the probability of being poor. But in rural areas female headed households are more likely to experience poverty than male headed households. Domestic migration and education are both key factors that reduce the likelihood of falling into poverty. Employment is essential to improve livelihoods and both the farm and nonfarm sector play a key role.