Innovation systems and science and technology (S&T) projects supported by the World Bank have taken on many forms in the past several years. The Bank's involvement in industrial technology projects started in the 1970s, with Israel and Spain numbering among the first countries to receive support in the form of industrial technology development. This paper reviews the lessons learned in S&T projects that have been supported by the Bank, with an emphasis on the examples of the past decade (1989-2003).

Uganda pioneered the use of budget support operations known as Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs) in the World Bank. PRSCs were designed to channel programmatic lending to support policy and institutional reforms in support of a country's Poverty Reduction Strategy, usually presented in the form of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). In the case of Uganda the PRSCs were designed as a series of annual credits supporting a three year rolling program of reforms, based on Uganda's version of a PRSC, which is known as the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) .

Beyond the City evaluates the contribution of rural development and policies to growth, poverty alleviation, and environmental degradation in the rest of the economy, as well as in the rural space. This title brings together new theoretical and empirical treatments of the links between rural and national development. New findings and are combined with existing literature to enhance our understanding of the how rural economic activities contribute to various aspects of national development.

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.

The objective of this paper is to: (a) review World Bank's pest management activities during 1999-2004; (b) assess those in view of the changes in the external and internal contexts; (c) identify appropriate opportunities of engagement on pest and pesticide issues; and (d) suggest means to further promote sound pest management in the World Bank operations. The importance of sound pest management for sustainable agricultural production is being recognized by many developing countries.

This report summarizes and consolidates the findings of three Bank studies on poverty issues in Mexico, written as part of the second phase of this work: Urban Poverty, Rural Poverty, and Social Protection. It also expands on how Mexico will seek to use social protection policy as a vehicle for redistribution. Discussed in Chapter 1, the state has a clear role in providing risk-pooling mechanisms where private insurance markets fail (e.g., old age and health insurance), but the role of social protection policy in promoting redistribution is more an issue of national choice.

Local innovation refers to the dynamics of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) - the knowledge that grows within a social group, incorporating learning from own experience over generations but also knowledge gained from other sources and fully internalized within local ways of thinking and doing. Local innovation is the process through which individuals or groups discover or develop new and better ways of managing resources - building on and expanding the boundaries of their IK.

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This Economic and Sector Work paper, “Enhancing Agricultural Innovation: How to Go Beyond the Strengthening of Research Systems,” was initiated as a result of the international workshop, “Development of Research Systems to Support the Changing Agricultural Sector,” organized by the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of the World Bank in June 2004 in Washington, DC.

Communities supported by World Bank rural development projects often cite support for the development of income-generating activities (IGAs) as a critical need. This note identifies some of the core problems encountered by Bank task teams that attempt to respond to this need, outlines the issues involved, and offers suggestions on some of the points that should be kept in mind when designing grant programs for this purpose.