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Publication
Quality Unknown: The Invisible Water Crisis
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-08-20)Water quantity—too much in the case of floods, or too little in the case of droughts—grabs public attention and the media spotlight. Water quality—being predominantly invisible and hard to detect—goes largely unnoticed. Quality Unknown: The Invisible Water Crisis presents new evidence and new data that call urgent attention to the hidden dangers lying beneath water’s surface. It shows how poor water quality stalls economic progress, stymies human potential, and reduces food production. Quality Unknown examines the effects of water quality on economic growth and finds upstream pollution lowers growth in downstream regions. It reveals that some of the most ubiquitous contaminants in water, such as nitrates and salt, have impacts that are larger, deeper, and wider than has been acknowledged. And it traces the damage to crop yields and the stark implications for food security in affected regions. An important step toward tackling the world’s water quality challenge is recognizing its scale. The world needs reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information so that policy makers can have new insights, decision making can be evidence based, and citizens can call for action. The report calls for a paradigm shift that emphasizes safer, and often more cost-effective remedies that prevent pollution by combining smarter policies with newer technologies. A key message of Quality Unknown is that such solutions exist and change is possible. -
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Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-10-24)The 21st century will witness the collision of two powerful forces – burgeoning population growth, together with a changing climate. With population growth, water scarcity will proliferate to new areas across the globe. And with climate change, rainfall will become more fickle, with longer and deeper periods of droughts and deluges. This report presents new evidence to advance understanding on how rainfall shocks coupled with water scarcity, impacts farms, firms, and families. On farms, the largest consumers of water in the world, impacts are channeled from declining yields to changing landscapes. In cities, water extremes especially when combined with unreliable infrastructure can stall firm production, sales, and revenue. At the center of this are families, who feel the impacts of this uncertainty on their incomes, jobs, and long-term health and welfare. Although a rainfall shock may be fleeting, its consequences can become permanent and shape the destiny of those who experience it. Pursuing business as usual will lead many countries down a “parched path” where droughts shape destinies. Avoiding this misery in slow motion will call for fundamental changes to water policy around the globe. Building resilience to rainfall variability will require using different policy instruments to address the multifaceted nature of water. A key message of this report is that water has multiple economic attributes, each of which entail distinct policy responses. If water is not managed more prudently—from source, to tap, and back to source—the crises observed today will become the catastrophes of tomorrow. -
Publication
Securing Forest Tenure Rights for Rural Development :: Lessons from Six Countries in Latin America
(Washington, DC: PROFOR, 2017-03-22)Secure land tenure in rural landscapes is widely recognized as an essential foundation for achieving a range of economic development goals. However, forest areas in low and middle-income countries face particular challenges in strengthening the security of land and resource tenure. Forest peoples are often among the poorest and most politically marginalized communities in their national contexts, and their tenure systems are often based on customary, collective rights that have insufficient formal legal protection. This study on Securing Forest Tenure Rights for Rural Development aims to contribute to efforts worldwide to reduce poverty and strengthen sustainable management in forest areas. It does so by reviewing the progress of tenure reforms in six countries in Latin America, and drawing lessons to help advance the realization of these reforms and inform similar initiatives in other countries. The target audience of this work includespolicy-makers who have responsibility for forests, climate change, land tenure, agricultural development and poverty reduction programs in rural areas, as well as for civil society organizations and international partners working on land tenure and natural resource governance. The study also aims to assist and inform the work of World Bank programs in rural development, environment and natural resources, agriculture, social development, climate change, and carbon finance, by increasing attention and support to indigenous and community forest tenure as it relates to these areas of work. -
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Earth Observation for Water Resources Management: Current Use and Future Opportunities for the Water Sector
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-04-12)This book describes some key global water challenges, perspectives for remote sensing approaches, and their importance for water resources-related activities. It presents eight key types of water resources management variables, a list of sensors that can produce such information, and a description of existing data products with examples. This book provides a series of practical guidelines that can be used by project leaders to decide whether remote sensing may be useful for the problem at hand and suitable data sources to consider if so. The book concludes with a review of the literature on reliability statistics of remote-sensed estimations. -
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Vietnam 2035: Toward Prosperity, Creativity, Equity, and Democracy
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016)The year 2015 marks 70 years since Vietnam’s Declaration of Independence, 40 years since reunification, and just short of 30 years from the launch of Doi Moi reforms, which catapulted the nation from the ranks of the world’s poorest to one of the great development success stories. Critical ingredients of success have been visionary leaders, a sense of shared societal purpose, and a focus on the future. Starting in the late 1980s, these elements were fused with the embrace of markets and the global economy, setting the nation on the path to becoming the middle-income country that it is today, raising tens of millions of people out of poverty. Energized by past success but by no means content, Vietnam now aspires, by the year 2035, to modernity, industrialization, and a higher quality of life – aspirations that stand on three major pillars: economic prosperity, balanced with environmental sustainability; equity and social inclusion; and state capacity and accountability. The Vietnam 2035 report – a joint undertaking by experts from Vietnam and the World Bank – evaluates Vietnam’s possibilities and options in this endeavor. -
Publication
Confronting Climate Uncertainty in Water Resources Planning and Project Design: The Decision Tree Framework
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2015-08-25)The Decision Tree Framework described in this book provides resource-limited project planners and program managers with a cost-effective and effort-efficient, scientifically defensible, repeatable, and clear method for demonstrating the robustness of a project to climate change. At the conclusion of this process, the project planner will be empowered to confidently communicate the method by which the vulnerabilities of the project have been assessed, and how the adjustments that were made (if any were necessary) improved the project’s feasibility and profitability. The framework adopts a “bottom-up” approach to risk assessment that aims at a thorough understanding of a project’s vulnerabilities to climate change in the context of other nonclimate uncertainties (for example, economic, environmental, demographic, or political). It helps to identify projects that perform well across a wide range of potential future climate conditions, as opposed to seeking solutions that are optimal in expected conditions but fragile to conditions deviating from the expected. -
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The Africa Competitiveness Report 2015
(Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2015-06-01)The Africa Competitiveness Report 2015 comes out at a promising time for the continent: for 15 years growth rates have averaged over 5 percent, and rapid population growth holds the promise of a large emerging consumer market as well as an unprecedented labor force that - if leveraged - can provide significant growth opportunities. Moreover, the expansion of innovative business models, such as mobile technology services, is indicative of the continents growth potential. However, Africa continues to be largely agrarian, with an economy that is underpinned by resource-driven growth and a large and expanding informal sector. Indeed, more than a decade of consistently high growth rates have not yet trickled down to significant parts of the population: nearly one out of two Africans continue to live in extreme poverty, and income inequality in the region remains among the highest in the world. What is more, across sectors - from agriculture to manufacturing and services - productivity levels remain low. It will be necessary to raise productivity across all sectors of the economy to achieve higher growth and create quality employment, and turn this progress into sustainable inclusive growth. -
Publication
Turn Down the Heat : Confronting the New Climate Normal
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2014-11-23)This report focuses on the risks of climate change to development in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and parts of Europe and Central Asia. Building on earlier Turn Down the Heat reports, this new scientific analysis examines the likely impacts of present day (0.8°C), 2°C and 4°C warming above pre-industrial temperatures on agricultural production, water resources, ecosystem services, and coastal vulnerability for affected populations. Data show that dramatic climate changes, heat, and weather extremes are already impacting people, damaging crops and coastlines, and putting food, water, and energy security at risk. Across the three regions studied in this report, record-breaking temperatures are occurring more frequently, rainfall has increased in intensity in some places, while drought-prone regions are getting dryer. The poor and underprivileged, as well as the elderly and children, are found to be hit the hardest. There is growing evidence that even with very ambitious mitigation action, warming close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century is already locked into the Earth’s atmospheric system, and climate change impacts such as extreme heat events may now be unavoidable. If the planet continues warming to 4°C, climatic conditions, heat, and other weather extremes considered highly unusual or unprecedented today would become the new climate normal—a world of increased risks and instability. The consequences for development would be severe as crop yields decline, water resources change, diseases move into new ranges, and sea levels rise. The task of promoting human development, ending poverty, increasing global prosperity, and reducing global inequality will be very challenging in a 2°C world, but in a 4°C world there is serious doubt whether this can be achieved at all. Immediate steps are needed to help countries adapt to the climate impacts being felt today and the unavoidable consequences of a rapidly warming world. The benefits of strong, early action on climate change -- action that follows clean, low carbon pathways and avoids locking in unsustainable growth strategies -- far outweigh the costs. Many of the worst projected climate impacts could still be avoided by holding warming to below 2°C. But the time to act is now. -
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Turn Down the Heat : Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-06-19)A Report for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Analytics. This report focuses on the risks of climate change to development in Sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and South Asia. Building on the 2012 report, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided, this new scientific analysis examines the likely impacts of present day, 2°C and 4°C warming on agricultural production, water resources, and coastal vulnerability. It finds many significant climate and development impacts are already being felt in some regions, and that as warming increases from present day (0.8°C) to 2°C and 4°C, multiple threats of increasing extreme heat waves, sea-level rise, more severe storms, droughts and floods are expected to have further severe negative implications for the poorest and most vulnerable. The report finds that agricultural yields will be affected across the three regions, with repercussions for food security, economic growth, and poverty reduction. In addition, urban areas have been identified as new clusters of vulnerability with urban dwellers, particularly the urban poor, facing significant vulnerability to climate change. In Sub-Saharan Africa, under 3°C global warming, savannas are projected to decrease from their current levels to approximately one-seventh of total land area and threaten pastoral livelihoods. Under 4°C warming, total hyper-arid and arid areas are projected to expand by 10 percent. In South East Asia, under 2°C warming, heat extremes that are virtually absent today would cover nearly 60-70 percent of total land area in northern-hemisphere summer, adversely impacting ecosystems. Under 4°C warming, rural populations would face mounting pressures from sea-level rise, increased tropical cyclone intensity, storm surges, saltwater intrusions, and loss of marine ecosystem services. In South Asia, the potential sudden onset of disturbances to the monsoon system and rising peak temperatures would put water and food resources at severe risk. Well before 2°C warming occurs, substantial reductions in the frequency of low snow years is projected to cause substantial reductions in dry season flow, threatening agriculture. Many of the worst climate impacts could still be avoided by holding warming below 2°C, but the window for action is closing rapidly. Urgent action is also needed to build resilience to a rapidly warming world that will pose significant risks to agriculture, water resources, coastal infrastructure, and human health. -
Publication
Implementing the Poznan Strategic and Long-term Programs on Technology Transfer
(Washington, DC, 2012-11)Promoting the transfer of environmentally sound technologies (ESTs) and best practices to developing and transition countries is a key priority for all countries that seek to mitigate climate change impacts and build resilience. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is one of the entities entrusted to provide financial resources to assist developing and transition countries in implementing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The GEF launched the Poznan Strategic Program on Technology Transfer in 2008. This program supports the following activities: 1) conduct technology needs assessments; 2) support pilot priority technology projects linked to technology needs assessments; and 3) disseminate GEF experience and successfully demonstrated ESTs. The Long-Term Program on Technology Transfer seeks to scale up technology transfer activities supported under the original Poznan Program. This long-term program includes the following elements: (i) support for climate technology centers and a climate technology network; (ii) piloting priority technology projects to foster innovation and investments; (iii) public-private partnership for technology transfer; (iv) technology needs assessments; and (v) GEF as a catalytic supporting institution for technology transfer. This document provides an overview of the GEF's approach on promoting technology transfer, with new insights, along with updates on the original Poznan Program and the Long-Term Program.