Environment Department Papers
52 items available
Permanent URI for this collection
These discussion papers are produced primarily by the Environment Department, on occasion jointly with other departments. Papers in this series are not formal publications of the World Bank. They are circulated to encourage thought and discussion. The use and citation of this paper should take this into account. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the World Bank.
Items in this collection
1 - 10 of 14
-
Publication
Reducing Disease Risk in Aquaculture
(Washington, DC, 2014-06)There are thousands of rickettsial, viral, bacterial, protozoan, and metazoan parasites that cause disease in farmed aquatic animals. While the basics of farm-level disease management are known, the interconnectedness among aquaculture installations and between aquaculture and the external environment means that only a few careless farms can ruin an industry. Considering the gravity and frequency of fish disease outbreaks, guidelines on the development and implementation of national policies for their prevention, detection, and management are urgently needed. Hampering this is the lack of a comprehensive overview of the practical ways and means of regulating aquaculture that will permit both governments and aqua culturists to: (1) calculate the cost-benefit ratio of investments in disease control, and (2) find a cost-effective strategy for the implementation of best practices. The study is based on review of published and unpublished data supplied by the Chilean, Vietnamese, Malagasy, and Mozambican authorities, researchers, and local aquaculture investors and other stakeholders. The selection of case studies was guided by the need to explore disease outbreaks in a range of geographical and industrial development scenarios. The three case studies capture the breadth and depth of experience among farmers and governments confronted with catastrophic disease outbreaks in aquaculture. The overarching lesson is that successful aquaculture depends on the capacity of biological systems to support it. Defining the capacities of bodies of water is essential in order to regulate the number of farms and to set limits on the maximum production in farming areas. -
Publication
Watershed Development in India : An Approach Evolving through Experience
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-03)This report analyses the experiences and lessons from three World Bank-Supported watershed development projects in the Indian states of Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand.5 The primary reason for the analysis was to guide the development and execution of new watershed programs in India, including new Bank-supported state-level operations in Uttarakhand and Karnataka, and a proposed national project now under preparation. Accordingly, it was important to deepen the knowledge base about large-scale, community-led watershed development in order to share that knowledge with key stakeholders both inside and outside of the World Bank. Another important reason was the immediate and growing concern over water resources and their management in India and the question of how well watershed development programs internalize these concerns. A third impetus was the nexus between rural poverty and rainfed agriculture and the important role that watershed development programs are to fulfill in the development of sustainable rural livelihoods. -
Publication
Mitigating Climate Change through Restoration and Management of Coastal Wetlands and Near-shore Marine Ecosystems : Challenges and Opportunities
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-03)There is overwhelming consensus amongst climate scientists that the Earth's warming in recent decades has been caused primarily by human activities that have increased the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. To mitigate the most serious impacts of climate change a range of different strategies to lower carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere are required. Building on outcomes and recommendations from various coastal carbon activities, this report explains the GHG dynamics of coastal wetlands and marine ecosystems (chapter two). The importance of coastal wetland and near-shore marine ecosystem carbon pools for climate change mitigation are described in chapter three, with a brief overview of the status of these systems, including drivers of change and implications of degradation of carbon pools, provided in Chapter four. Chapter five gives an overview of policy opportunities under ongoing United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations and through revision of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) carbon accounting methodologies and eligible mitigation activities for developing as well as developed countries. The main recommendations for action are summarized in chapter six. -
Publication
Mainstreaming Environment and Climate Change in the Implementation of Poverty Reduction Strategies
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-06)Poverty reduction strategies (PRSs) provide a central framework for macroeconomic, structural, and social policies in developing countries. Because of the numerous and complex links between environment and poverty, it is important that environmental issues are taken into account in the PRS process. This paper follows six previous assessments of the degree of mainstreaming environment in the PRS process using a similar methodology to present trends and provide an understanding of the effectiveness of environmental interventions in reducing poverty. However, it goes beyond previous assessments in three important ways. In-depth country case studies of the evolution of environmental mainstreaming in the PRS process over time. Many countries have now gone through several iterations of their poverty reduction strategies and have received a sequence of credits designed to implement key aspects of these strategies, making it possible to see how the process of mainstreaming environment in the strategies has evolved over time. In this assessment, the authors conduct detailed case studies of this evolution in Ghana, Albania, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. The choice of countries was based on the maturity of each country's PRS process, taking into consideration country size, lending volume, and vulnerability to climate change. An assessment of climate change mainstreaming in the PRS process in the same four countries. Like environment as a whole, the potential impacts of climate change have often been considered separately, if at all rather than as an integral part of development policies. An evaluation of environmental development policy loans (DPLs) in several middle income countries (Brazil, Gabon, and Mexico). DPLs represent an important opportunity to mainstream environment and climate change into middle-income countries' growth and development. This review assesses the process by which environmental DPLs have been prepared and the effectiveness with which they have been implemented. -
Publication
Climate Change and Sea Level Rise : A Review of the Scientific Evidence
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-05)Sea-level rise (SLR) due to climate change is a serious global threat: the scientific evidence is now overwhelming. The rate of global sea level rise was faster from 1993 to 2003, about 3.1 mm per year, as compared to the average rate of 1.8 mm per year from 1961 to 2003 (IPCC, 2007); and significantly higher than the average rate of 0.1 to 0.2 mm/yr increase recorded by geological data over the last 3,000 years. Anthropogenic warming and SLR will continue for centuries due to the time scales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized. This paper reviews the scientific literature to date on climate change and sea level rise. There appears to be a consensus across studies that global sea level is projected to rise during the 21st century at a greater rate than during the period 1961 to 2003 and unanimous agreement that SLR will not be geographically uniform. Ocean thermal expansion is projected to contribute significantly, and land ice will increasingly lose mass at an accelerated rate. But most controversial are the mass balance loss estimates of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets and what the yet un-quantified dynamic processes will imply in terms of SLR. Recent evidence on the vulnerability of Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets to climate warming raises the alarming possibility of SLR by one meter or more by the end of the 21st century. -
Publication
Strategic Environmental Assessment : Improving Water Resources Governance and Decision Making - Case Studies
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-04)The overall goal of this report is to help water resources and environment professionals within the Bank and client countries use strategic environmental assessment (SEA) to effectively implement the principles of integrated water resources management (IWRM). The report contains four elements: (1) a review of SEA support for IWRM; (2) an analysis of 10 case studies and four water policies; (3) an in-depth pilot study of water sector reform in a developing country; and (4) a framework for enhancing the use of SEAs in integrated water resources management. This SEA provides important lessons on the usage of SEA rather than on the technical aspects of conducting them. It illustrates how an environmental instrument can be used to further development and poverty alleviation as well as environmental protection by putting its findings and recommendations in terms that are meaningful to politicians and senior decision makers. This includes use of economic and financial arguments and linkages to national goals such as poverty reduction and millennium development goals (MDGs). It also illustrates the importance of building support among a wider constituency than just the lead agency and working patiently over a number of years to implement reforms. The influence of an SEA can be felt a number of years as opportunities arise to implement components of a reform program. Finally, it clearly illustrates that an SEA need not be costly or time consuming to be influential if it is focused on the core questions, builds a constituency, and presents its findings in a way that is relevant to decision makers. -
Publication
Environmental Flows in Water Resources Policies, Plans, and Projects : Case Studies
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-04)The overall goal of this report and the accompanying report summarizing the findings and recommendations, both based on the economic and sector work (ESW), is to advance the understanding and integration in operational terms of environmental water allocation into integrated water resources management. The specific objectives of the reports are the following: 1) document the changing understanding of environmental flows, both by water resources practitioners and by environmental experts within the Bank and in borrowing countries; 2) draw lessons from experience in implementing environmental flows by the Bank, other international development organizations with experience in this area, and a small number of developed and developing countries; 3) develop an analytical framework to support more effective integration of environmental flow considerations for informing and guiding: (a) the planning, design, and operations decision making of water resources infrastructure projects; (b) the legal, policy, institutional, and capacity development related to environmental flows; and (c) restoration programs; and 4) provide recommendations for improvements in technical guidance to better incorporate environmental flow considerations into the preparation and implementation of lending operations. -
Publication
National and Regional Legislation for Promotion and Support to the Prevention, Control, and Eradication of Invasive Species
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-02)One of the most difficult issues to be addressed in enabling, and conducting invasive control measures, is simply the need to apply practical legislative reasoning to the process. It is difficult because of the fact that introduction of new species cannot simply be prohibited; and, due to lack of current scientific ability to know in advance which species will become invasive. The report addresses these issues, and stipulates legislation of invasive species issues must always involve a balancing of interests-the interests mandating introduction, balanced against the interests involved in protecting natural, and agricultural ecosystems from destruction by such species. This paper is designed to consider questions of "motivation, capability, and reality," and to consider possible legislative approaches for developing countries. It comprises five parts as follows. Part I provides a conceptual and scientific summary and introduction, and Part II provides a very brief overview of some of the key global developments in the field, while Part III examines in greater detail the legislative tools available for use in the control of specie introduction, and invasive species. Part IV discusses some of the special concerns relating to the process of building one, or more legislative frameworks utilizing the legislative tools described in Part III, and, provides, in some cases, a brief identification of how the selection and use of those tools might differ within the developing country context from their use in other places. -
Publication
Assessing the Economic Value of Ecosystem Conservation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-10)This paper seeks to clarify how valuation should be conducted to answer specific environmental policy questions. In particular, it looks at how valuation should be used to examine four distinct aspects of the value of ecosystems: 1) Determining the value of the total flow of benefits from ecosystems; 2) Determining the net benefits of interventions that alter ecosystem conditions: 3) Examining how the costs and benefits of ecosystems are distributed; and, 4) Identifying potential financing sources for conservation. These four approaches are closely linked, and build on each other. They represent four different ways to look at similar data regarding the value of an ecosystem: its total value, or contribution to society, the change in this value if a conservation action is undertaken, how this change affects different stakeholders. Each of these approaches to valuation uses similar data, yet in very different ways, that is, sometimes at a subset, sometimes looking at a snapshot, and sometimes looking at changes over time. Each approach has its uses and its limitations. -
Publication
Paying for Biodiversity Conservation Services in Agricultural Landscapes
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-05)This paper describes the contract mechanism developed for the Regional Integrated Silvopastoral Ecosystem Management Project, which is being implemented with financing from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The project is testing the use of the payment-for-service mechanism to encourage the adoption of silvopastoral practices in three countries of Central and South America: Colombia, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. The project has created a mechanism that pays land users for the global environmental services they are generating, so that the additional income stream makes the proposed practices privately profitable.