"Most economists think of common property as physical-a body of water, a forest-and as bounded within geographic space. In this paper, building on work in social theory, the author argues that common property can also be social-defined within symbolic space. People can be bound by well-defined...

Vietnam made remarkable progress in poverty reduction in the 1990s. Poverty rates decreased from 58% to 37% between 1993 and 1998. The reduction in poverty rates among indigenous people (who constitute 13% of the population and mostly live in remote areas) has been less remarkable. During the...

The Gabon Urban Development Project is being conducted through a series of pilot projects in the poorest, most densely populated neighborhoods in three cities. Reducing poverty hinges on increasing the access of the poor to employment opportunities. This requires improving infrastructure, which...

The purpose of this Briefing Note is to provide background information and analysis on the new legal requirement and relevant information and experience pertaining to community development funds in the mining sector internationally and in Lao PDR. This Briefing Note is intended to inform...

The World Bank began a three-year pilot initiative to develop a framework for enhancing development benefits to local communities in hydropower projects. There has been a wide array of approaches in the past two decades that all have in common the objective of designing and implementing means...

The technical workshop on enhancing development benefits to local communities in hydropower projects was held in Washington, D.C., on June 26, 2008. It was hosted by the Social Development Department (SDV) and Water Anchor (ETWWA) of the World Bank. The workshop aimed to provide a platform for a...

The World Bank oil, gas and mining unit, in its capacity as a driver for best practice related to extractive industry contributions to poverty alleviation, has a strong interest in the sustainable development of mine-impacted communities. As part of the growing global expectation that the...

"This paper explores the social capital impacts of a large-scale, community-driven development project in the Philippines in which communities competed for block grants for infrastructure investment. The analysis uses a unique data set of about 2,100 households collected before the project...

This report summarizes the governance work undertaken by the World Bank in the last two years. It provides an overview of governance activities in lending, economic and sector work, and in research and dialogue. Progress across regions is reported under the four major components of governance...