Sugar exporters of the Caribbean depend on preferential sales of sugar to the European Union and United States at prices that are two to three times the world market price. Without these preferences, sugar export revenues would decline significantly. These preferences are likely to erode in the...

Sugar is one of the most policy distorted of all commodities, and the European Union, Japan, and the United States are among the worst offenders. But internal changes in the E.U. and U.S. sugar and sweetener markets and international trade commitments make change unavoidable and provide the best...

The rapid rise in food prices has been a burden on the poor in developing countries, who spend roughly half of their household incomes on food. This paper examines the factors behind the rapid increase in internationally traded food prices since 2002 and estimates the contribution of various...

A review of the best policy interventions to respond to food price increases in local markets.

Throughout, the history of the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region, natural resource wealth has been critical for its economies. Production of precious metals, sugar, rubber, grains, coffee, copper, and oil have at various periods of history made countries in Latin America-and their...

Climate change is already a reality. This is evidenced by the acceleration of global temperature increases, the melting of ice and snow covers, and rising sea levels. Latin America and the Caribbean region (LCR) are not exempt from these trends, as illustrated by the changes in precipitation...

Based on analysis of recent data on the evolution of global temperatures, snow and ice covers, and sea level rise, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recently declared that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal." Global surface temperatures, in particular, have...

Lessons from six case studies illustrate the complex relationships between international trade, vulnerable ecologies and the poor. The studies, taken from Africa, Asia and Latin America and conducted by local researchers, are set in places where the poor live in close proximity to ecologies that...

The overall finding of this report is that much agricultural policy is made at the regional level, and here the explicit price, and trade policy distortions are significantly worse than at the federal level. The result is patchwork of inconsistent policies, that has fragmented the Russian...