If sustainable management of tropical forests is to be accomplished and deforestation brought under control, the on-the-ground performance of existing forest concessions, along with the allocation of new concessions, will have to be strengthened. This study examines the failures of forest concessions and the loss of tropical forests due to mismanagement during the last two decades. It also emphasizes the potential gains resulting from strengthening the allocation, management, and supervision of concessions by concentrating on improving procedures, introducing performance incentives, and monitoring key performance elements

India's irrigated agriculture sector has been basic to India's economic development and poverty alleviation. One of India's major achievements is its rapid expansion of irrigation and drainage infrastructure. However, the major emphasis on development has been achieved at a cost. The importance put on new construction has diverted attention away from the need to ensure the quality, productivity, and sustainability of the services. Further, a governmental subsidy based approach has been used and this has resulted in irrigation and drainage services which, while enabling significantly higher productivity than from non-irrigated lands, are well below their potential. 'The Irrigation Sector' discusses directions for future growth, the framework for reform, and the reform agenda.

This report calls on policy makers to recognise the issues at stake in water resource management in agriculture and gives them the tools to do so, offering a wealth of information on recent trends and the outlook for water resource use in agriculture.

This publication examines issues of water sector reform and performance from the perspectives of institutional economics and political economic studies. The authors develop an alternative quantitative assessment methodology based on the principle of 'institutional ecology', as well as data collected from 127 water experts from 43 countries and regions around the world using a cross-country review of recent water sector reforms within an institutional transaction cost framework.