Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes

648 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/9388

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 24

Water Access and Management
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) UNCTAD; World Bank
This note provides guidance on how to ensure that the impact of agricultural investments on water resources is effectively measured, monitored, and regulated. Water is essential to agricultural production and processing, and has been a driving factor in private and public decisions on where to locate investments. Despite global concerns about water scarcity and pollution, the water use of agricultural investments is in many cases not rigorously measured, monitored, or regulated. Where regulations exist, enforcement is often weak. Some investors improve local water access with community development programs, but such schemes require consultation and careful management.
Creating an Enabling Environment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) UNCTAD; World Bank
This note provides guidance on how to create an investment climate that is conducive to attracting high-quality, responsible investment in agriculture. The investment climate needs to enable investors to survive, to thrive, and to contribute to the local community and the broader economy in a socially and environmentally responsible way. Investors in the agriculture sector noted a variety of factors that inhibit their ability to run successful operations. Failed or struggling investments have consequences that extend well beyond the financial losses that investors incur. An effective enabling environment contributes to the chances of investor success, which is in the interests of all stakeholders.
Screening Prospective Investors
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) UNCTAD; World Bank
This note provides guidance to governments on how to screen and select prospective investment projects to ensure they maximize the social, economic, and environmental benefits while minimizing the risks. It provides investors information on what can be expected in cases of good screening practice. The acceptance of investors that later fail financially or have poor social and environmental outcomes has had damaging impacts on many countries as well as communities. Screening investors is a critical component of a country’s policy framework to mitigate those risks and to improve the likelihood that investments will have a positive effect on sustainable development priorities. This note summarizes available resources on how to screen agricultural investments and calls on donors, international organizations, and civil society to develop more. It is complemented by note 7: tools for screening investors, which provides a detailed toolkit that can be adapted to host countries’ individual circumstances.
Tools for Screening Prospective Investors
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) UNCTAD; World Bank
This note supplements note 6: screening prospective investors. The investment screening process requires suitable tools for assisting government agencies in their work. This note provides examples of tools that government agencies can adapt to their national context and use to develop the technical capacity to screen and select investors.
Outgrower Schemes
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) UNCTAD; World Bank
This note provides guidance on the design and implementation of outgrower schemes to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for investors and smallholders. Outgrower schemes have gained prominence as a business model that can benefit both smallholders and investors. Such schemes can improve smallholders’ access to markets, finance, infrastructure, and improved growing techniques; can enhance investors’ access to land, labor, and quality produce; and can improve investor-community relations. Associated risks include overdependency, exploitation of power differences, entrenchment of inequalities, lower-than-expected production, and side-selling. Achieving the potential benefits and minimizing the associated risks requires careful design and implementation.
Food Security and Nutrition
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) UNCTAD; World Bank
This note provides guidance on how to ensure tan agricultural investment makes a positive contribution to local and national food security and nutrition. Investments can play a critical role by introducing technologies to increase productivity, by providing demonstration effects, by creating quality jobs, by catalyzing modernization of the sector, and by linking small-scale producers with global markets—all of which, in the right circumstances, contribute to food securityand nutrition. Yet, investments can have a negative impact and be detrimental to food security and nutrition, especially where investments reduce local access to land and water. The challenge for policymakers and investors is how to design policy and business models that maximize the positive benefits to food security and nutrition but minimize the associated risks.
Healthy and Safe Working Environment
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) UNCTAD; World Bank
This note provides guidance to investors and governments on good practice in occupational health and safety policies, programs, procedures and processes, a matter of critical importance given thathalf the world’s working population is in agriculture—one of the three most hazardous sectors, with an estimated 170,000 fatalities per year (ILO). To be successful, an agribusiness operationmust rely heavily not only on the skills and competencies of its employees but on their health and wellbeing, requiring an awareness of and adherence to acceptable occupational health and safety standards.
Investment Contracts
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) UNCTAD; World Bank
This note provides guidance on the form and content of contracts between investors and governments pertaining to agricultural investments. The best guarantee of positive benefits from foreign investment is a solid foundation of domestic laws that are properly enforced. In many developing countries, however, the necessary domestic laws may not be in place or may not be sufficiently detailed. Even when they are in place, they may not be implemented or enforced. Contracts can help fill the gaps in domestic laws by providing more detailed guidance on what should be contained in the assessments, and using international standards and best practice as the reference points. However, contracts need to be drafted carefully to maximize benefits and reduce risks.
Empowering Women
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) UNCTAD; World Bank
This note addresses practices for reducing gender inequalities and for empowering women to make a positive contribution to development through agricultural investments. Women make a crucial contribution to the agriculture sector and account for over 40 percent of agricultural labor in developing countries. However, they are frequently marginalized and their contributions under-acknowledged. Agricultural investments may perpetuate or accentuate gender inequalities if proactive gender policies are not adopted. There are significant economic and social gains to be had from closing the gender gap in agriculture. This note provides investors and governments with guidance on how to do so.
Monitoring Investments
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) UNCTAD; World Bank
This note provides guidance on how to monitor the performance and impact of agricultural investments, and on which aspects to observe. Ongoing monitoring of investments is a key way to hold investors accountable for contractual commitments and deliver the expected benefits to the country and surrounding communities. It also facilitates early identification of emerging negative impacts or of failing investments, enabling remedial actions. Monitoring is often deficient because of a lack of resources and systematic procedures, which allows negative impacts to escalate beyond what will otherwise be the case. Internal monitoring is likewise good practice for investors and their financiers, though the field research indicated room for improvement.