Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes

589 items available

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

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Five Facts about Shocks in the Sahel

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-12) Brunelin, Stephanie ; Ouedraogo, Aissatou ; Tandon, Sharad

The high level of exposure to shocks, in particular climate-related and conflict induced shocks, across the Sahel region exacerbates the vulnerability of the population. It also increases the risk of non-poor falling into poverty. In 2018-2019 a new set of harmonized household surveys were conducted by each of the countries in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) and in Chad. The surveys included Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger, and Senegal (Mauritania was not included). These surveys help identify the distributional impact of shocks in much greater detail for the region than before. This note presents the key findings of the surveys summarized in five facts. These findings can help inform the development of adaptive social protection systems across the Sahel.
Adaptive Safety Nets for Rural Africa: Drought-Sensitive Targeting with Sparse Data

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-07) Baez, Javier E. ; Kshirsagar, Varun ; Skoufias, Emmanuel

This paper combines remote-sensed data and individual child, mother, and household-level data from the Demographic and Health Surveys for 5 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to design a prototype drought-contingent targeting framework for use in scarce-data contexts. To accomplish this, the paper: (i) develops simple and easy-to-communicate measures of drought shocks; (ii) shows that droughts have a large impact on child stunting in these five countries, comparable, in size, to the effects of mother’s illiteracy or a fall to a lower wealth quintile; and (iii) shows that, in this context, decision trees and regressions predict stunting as accurately as complex machine learning methods that are not interpretable.2 Taken together, the analysis lends support to the idea that a data-driven approach may contribute to the design of a transparent and easy-to-use drought-contingent targeting framework
Who Wins and Who Loses from Staple Food Price Spikes?: Welfare Implications for Mozambique

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-06) Baez, Javier E. ; Caruso, German ; Pullabhotla, Hemant

Changes in food prices – triggered frequently by natural disasters, macroeconomic shocks or regional market disruptions– can lead to large household welfare effects. At over 60 and 40 percent, food budget shares remain high in rural and urban Mozambique, respectively. Furthermore, nearly 70 percent of the population depends on agriculture for their livelihoods. To determine the net impact of food price changes on consumption and poverty, we performed incidence analysis combining household and farmer survey data with disaggregated, market-level price data on major staples (maize, rice, and cassava). Overall, we find evidence for a large net negative welfare effect of price rises in rural areas, and a small, negative effect in the urban areas. For instance, A 10 percent increase in maize prices is associated with an average reduction of 1.2 percent in consumption per capita in rural areas and 0.2 percent in urban areas. Not all households are affected equally. Overall, the negative impacts are larger for the bottom half of the distribution. As a result, the sharp food price spike observed in 2016–17 may have translated into a poverty increase of 4-6 percentage points, with some of the poorest provinces bearing much of the brunt. These findings underscore the importance of improving the functioning of agricultural input and output markets, developing early food security warning systems, and increasing the availability of rapidly scalable safety nets.
Strengthening Regional Collaboration and Integration

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-04) World Bank Group

West Africa’s coastal area is critical to the region, home to a third of its people and the source of about half of its gross domestic product (GDP). Because most of it is composed of mangroves and sand formations, the area’s coastline is also highly vulnerable to erosion caused by coastal currents and storm surges. Erosion is evident from Mauritania to Gabon - and the rates of erosion are increasing. Around the port of Lome, for example, Togo’s coastline is estimated to have receded by as much as 12 to 15 meters a year. Regional integration will improve the sustainability of shared coastal waters, the protection of environmental services, and the livelihoods that rely on coastal ecosystems. Cooperation will also contribute to the development of regional principles or guidelines for coastal infrastructure investments.
The Effects of Climate Change on Coastal Erosion in West Africa

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11) World Bank Group

The effects of climate change, from changing precipitation patterns to rising seas, will exacerbate the coastal erosion already affecting West Africa, increasing the exposure and vulnerability of the people and assets located there. Given the importance of the coastal zone to the region as a whole, it is critical that policy makers consider the effects of future climate change in the decisions they make today. Regional cooperation is challenging, but it has been successful in many places, particularly where the issue addressed presented an existential challenge to the coun¬tries affected. Efforts to build trust and coordinate efforts will help policy makers protect the lives and livelihoods of the people in the region and allow their countries to build on the development gains made in recent years rather than see them rolled back as a result of climate change.
Managing Coastal Risks in West Africa

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-01) World Bank Group

Coastal erosion is a naturally occurring process that is accelerated by human impacts. Artificial stabilization of the shoreline, the deterioration of natural formations, the construction of infrastructure, the extraction of materials, and the proliferation of dams deprive fragile coastal areas of important sediment deposits, which leads to erosion. Degradation of the shoreline reduces the natural protection of coastal areas to storm surges, which, together with heavy precipitation, exposes low-lying areas to flooding. Given the trans boundary nature of the region’s ecosystems, the potential downstream effects of infrastructure, and the importance of the coastline for all sectors, optimal solutions to reduce the risk along West Africa’s coasts can be reached only through multi sectoral action and multinational cooperation. Every national and regional development plan in West Africa should take coastal risks and adaption to climate change into consideration.