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Fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCS), environmental degradation, and natural disasters are on the rise and threaten to reverse development gains. In the past decade, violent civil conflicts have tripled and the number of people living in proximity to conflict has nearly doubled, with forced displacement at a record high. The World Bank Group (WBG) Strategy for Fragility, Conflict and Violence (FCV) 2020–2025 marks a shift in the World Bank’s work in fragile and conflict situations, as it adopts a more holistic approach to prevention. The Strategy seeks to enhance the World Bank Group’s effectiveness in supporting countries’ efforts to address the drivers and impacts of FCV and strengthen their resilience, especially for their most vulnerable and marginalized populations. The FCV Strategy explicitly recognizes the importance of climate change as a driver of FCV and as a threat multiplier, as well as the need to address the environmental impacts and drivers of FCV. Delivering on this shift toward preventing conflict underscores the importance of understanding the role the environment and natural resources can have. This report seeks to build a strong narrative on the need for the World Bank Group to engage and invest in environment, natural resource management, and climate change resilience in FCV-affected situations. It further aims at facilitating the integration of a conflict-sensitive lens into World Bank operations and programs addressing natural resource degradation and climate change. The report is divided in six sections: Section 1 sets the Background, Context, and Approach; Section 2 describes the risks associated with the interplay between natural resources, climate change, fragility, and conflict across the conflict cycle; Section 3 connects those causal chains to the delivery of the FCV Strategy across its four pillars; Section 4 showcases a suite of options to improve conflict-sensitive project design and implementation; and Section 5 presents an annotated questionnaire that serves as a complementary tool to the report.

Management of natural resources is pivotal for sustained economic growth—the increasing ecological footprints causing biocapacity deficit threaten the resource conversation agenda. The study identified the potential causes and consequences of natural resource depletion in a broad cross-section of 138 countries. Ecological footprints, international migrant stocks, industrial value-added, and population growth influenced natural resource capital across countries. The results show that ecological footprints, industrial value-added, and population growth are the detrimental factors of resource capital. In contrast, continued economic growth is helpful to conserve natural resources for future generations. The rise and fall in the natural resource degradation are evident in the wake of international migrants’ stocks to support an inverted U-shaped relationship between them. The Granger causality inferences confirmed the one-way linkages, running from international migrant stocks, economic growth, and population growth to natural resource degradation. It verifies migrants-led, affluence-led, and population-led resource degradation. Ecological footprints Granger causes industrial value-added across countries. The forecasting estimates suggested that economic growth would likely to influenced greater in magnitude to resource degradation by its innovation shocks of 4.791%, followed by international migrant stocks, population growth, ecological footprints, and industrial value added by their innovation shocks of 4.709%, 1.829%, 1.247%, and 0.700%, respectively. The study concludes that international migrant stocks should manage smartly, causing more resource degradation via a channel of increasing biocapacity deficit across countries.

The Ugandan economy is recovering from a sharp contraction due to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) shock that had slowed growth to its lowest pace in over three decades. Real GDP growth is estimated to reach above 3 percent during FY21, following the modest recovery of 0.7 percent in the first half of the FY. On a calendar year basis, real GDP had contracted by 1.1 percent in 2020, due to the almost total lockdown that lasted over four months, border closures except for essential cargo, and the spillover effects of the disruption in global demand on Ugandan exports, remittances and foreign direct investments. The services sector was particularly hard hit, contracting by over 3 percent in 2020, with activities in key sectors like education and accommodation and food services largely curtailed for most of the year. As restrictions were loosened, business and trading conditions improved both locally and globally allowing investments to pick up in the last quarter of 2020, with stronger signs of recovery in the manufacturing and construction sectors continuing into the quarter ending March 2021. Growth in agriculture has been sustained through the cash crops sector, which is relatively better than the food crop sector, in the use of improved farming practices to manage weather variability.

Many of the world’s poor people depend on natural resources for their well-being. Four-fifths of the world’s poor people live in rural areas, and most rural poor people depend on natural resources for their livelihoods. The renewable natural resources on which poor people depend are increasingly being degraded, posing significant risks to resource-dependent communities. The World Bank has committed to reducing the vulnerability of resource-dependent people. This evaluation assesses how well the World Bank has addressed natural resource degradation to reduce the vulnerabilities of resource-dependent people.

Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) has a comparative advantage in natural capital, which has fueled economic growth averaging around 8 percent per annum since 2000. The natural resource endowment comprises half of the country's wealth. Although forest cover declined 3.6 percent between 2005 and 2015, Lao PDR still has among the highest forest cover percentage of countries in the region, and the value of timber and non-timber forest products is 10,740 US Dollars per capita. Inefficiencies, including overuse, under-budgeting, and unsustainable and unscientific management, have led to a reduction in forest cover, natural wealth, and public revenues. Lao PDR's recent policy reforms, institution-building and community engagement aim to build a new foundation to sustain the Lao forest estate and the people and sectors that depend on it, including for tourism, agriculture, energy, water, fisheries, and wood products. Lao PDR's ambitious forest sector reforms aim to achieve financially and environmentally sustainable, resilient, and inclusive economic growth, especially through credible private sector investors. This reform agenda accompanies the Government of Lao PDR's (GoL) plan to expand forest cover to 70 percent from the current 58 percent, which will help to reduce poverty, create green jobs and livelihoods, support local industry and expand participatory sustainable forest management (SFM) and forest restoration, as well as to meet Lao PDR's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) to climate action. Auspiciously, credible private sector commercial plantation investors are also starting to scale up investment in the country.

Tribal farming in Kendujhar district of Odisha, India is primarily based on traditional shifting cultivation which is becoming unsustainable - resulting in natural resources degradation, reduced production efficiency, and threatened food security. As maize (Zea mays L.) was the primary field crop grown by the tribal farmers, maize-based Conservation Agriculture Production Systems (CAPS) were taken as an innovative approach for conserving resources, enhancing productivity and sustaining livelihood through minimum soil disturbance, permanent organic soil cover, and adoption of diversified crop rotation. An on-station experiment was conducted in Kendujhar during June 2011 to March 2012 to estimate the effect of CAPS on yield and soil properties. The experiment was laid in a split plot design with four treatments and three replications. The treatment combinations comprised of two factors each at two levels: tillage (minimum and conventional), and cropping system (maize and maize+cowpea (Vigna unguiculata)). The maize seed yield both in conventional and minimum tillage were comparable, though it was highest in maize+cowpea under minimum tillage (5610 kg/ha). Maize+cowpea intercropping produced comparable seed yield (4955 kg/ha) to that of sole maize cropping (4825 kg/ha). As cowpea was an additional output without any reduction in maize seed yield and had high market value, maize+cowpea intercropping under minimum tillage recorded a highest net profit of $655/ha. Though there was no significant effect of CAPS on soil properties in the experimental year, it can be assessed over multiple years. LTRA-11 (CAPS among tribal societies in India and Nepal)

Natural resource degradation is both a cause and a result of poverty in Ethiopia. Therefore it is important to include watershed management into efforts to reduce poverty and food insecurity in the country. In order to see if different interventions are effective in restoring the degraded environment, it is important to have a functioning monitoring and evaluation system that includes natural resource degradation and other environmental factors. This study compares the monitoring and evaluation systems used by five different projects involved in watershed management in the Amhara region, Ethiopia. The objective is to find out whether these systems are providing adequate and scientifically valid information about the projects’ success in decreasing erosion. The study has also two sub-objectives: suggesting additional and/or alternative methods for environmental monitoring, and helping the projects learn from each other by providing information about the indicators other projects are using as well as their successes and shortcomings The environmental monitoring of the examined projects is done mostly with management-based indicators that monitor what is being done and assume environmental effects based on empirical knowledge. These management-based indicators are important in identifying where and how project resources are spent and in finding out the rate of adoption of the promoted methods. They serve an important function in the monitoring and evaluation systems but are not sufficient from an environmental point of view. Direct monitoring of erosion is done by one project. This hydrological monitoring system, possibly accompanied with low-cost estimation methods, could well be modified and applied to other projects as well if funds for the establishment of monitoring stations can be found.

This report is the product of a comprehensive study on Benin. It highlights the country s geographical and economic situation and concentrates in particular on environmental conditions and the challenges facing Benin. This report covers the financing of priority environmental activities, as well as allocations to programs designed to improve the environment and living conditions of the population. The environmental analysis of Benin seeks to help the Government integrate the environment into policy formulation by analyzing cross-cutting aspects and the challenges of implementing sound environmental management, and creating a platform for strengthening the country s capacities in order to facilitate sustainable natural resource and environmental management. To this end, a number of measures have been recommended, among them the establishment of effective policies and institutions based on sound governance and improved effectiveness, and the mobilization of financing for environmental protection and natural resource management. The study includes the analysis of a case study on three cities: Porto-Novo, Cotonou, and Parakou, and examines the impact of environmental problems and environmental management challenges on these cities.

The search for practical solutions in arresting environmental degradation in the developing countries has been the impetus behind catalyzed the creation of development of mechanisms to localize environmental conservation and management efforts on environmental conservation and management. In the Philippines, the inauguration of the 1991 Local Government Code formalized the transfer of environmental management responsibilities from the central to local governments. The passage of Tthis law leads to ushered a significant shift in the design and implementation of community-based environmental research and development projects.

Using an extensive data set collected in the study area this paper develops a Social Accounting matrix model for the Madiama commune within the Mopti region in northern Mali, in order to better understand and analyze: (a) the linkages among different stakeholders and institutions, (b) growth interactions between sectors in the commune, and (c) the impact of potential conflict mitigation policies. Policy scenarios are evaluated in order to provide information to the commune, which is the administrative unit that is empowered to make natural resource management decisions.

A far-reaching restructuring is beginning to take place in West Africa. There is general recognition in the region that central governments are poorly placed to make many decisions appropriate for local levels. Particularly in areas of agriculture and natural resource management (NRM), local populations are being asked to take leadership in deciding appropriate land uses and ownership/usufruct of resources. The continuing and accelerating degradation of the natural resource base and changes in the socioeconomic environment of the region has added urgency to decentralization strategies. However, the current policy of decentralization across West Africa has become largely a matter of deconcentration. Although village-level (terroir) management has demonstrated significant success in community-based NRM, authority and resources resulting from decentralization laws do not reach this level. This paper describes the SANREM CRSP s attempt to organize and support a provincial-level NRM advisory board and orient technical interventions by providing training in Holistic Management.