Other Rural Study

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  • Publication
    Smart Villages in Azerbaijan: A Framework for Analysis and Roadmap
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-03) World Bank
    This paper is the main output of an analytical and research program aimed at identifying policy options to develop technology and social innovation driven smart village approaches that can improve service delivery and local economic development in rural areas. The concept of smart villages focuses on enabling communities - in partnership with local government and the private sector - to identify opportunities and solutions that are right for their own areas based on demand (bottom-up and participatory needs assessment), on transferring knowledge and innovation, and on policy incentives. With these three elements in place, customized smart solutions for rural areas can result in greater local economic development with better connectivity and improved services, increased livelihoods and incomes, and improved quality of life. The paper is presented in six sections, each representing an element of the research and analysis undertaken to define and apply the concept of smart villages in Azerbaijan. The first section presents the context of rural development, particularly aspects which relate to the rural-urban divide, public policies, and programs aimed at advancing rural development, as well as the digital dimensions of development. The second section introduces the concept of smart villages. What does this mean? How do other countries apply this term? What are the core principles and elements? Following from the definition and global examples of smart villages, the paper lays out a framework for assessing the smart village readiness of villages in Azerbaijan, viewing them as spatial clusters and drawing on global big data and national data sources to rank village clusters with common spatial characteristics as the most versus the least ready to apply smart village approaches.
  • Publication
    An Assessment of Forest Tenure in Myanmar: Securing Forest Tenure for Sustainable Livelihoods
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-04-30) World Bank
    Forests are an important economic and social resource, critical to the culture and livelihood of communities across Myanmar. Forest resources are key secondary income sources for more than half the rural population, and close to two-thirds of rural energy demands are met by traditional forest fuels. Hence, forest-dependent rural communities need secure access and use rights to forestland and resources. Building on several ongoing reform measures and public consultations, this assessment is being undertaken by the Forest Department (FD) of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation (MoNREC) to contribute to debates on forest tenure in Myanmar and is financed by the World Bank office in Yangon. It will also serve as input for the government’s policy reforms and its national strategy on rural development engagement within the context of forest tenure. The overall goal of this assessment is to outline an improved approach and policy roadmap to strengthen forest tenure. This will enable enhanced government interventions, better services, improved risk-management in rural development, and better livelihoods for forest-dependent rural communities. It is being undertaken within the global framework and international principles on forest tenure and governance. The assessment was carried out between September 2019 and January 2020.
  • Publication
    Paying Attention to Technology Innovations: Experimental Evidence from Renewable Energy Markets in Africa
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-05-15) Coville, Aidan; Orozco, Victor; Reichert, Arndt
    This paper presents results from a randomized field experiment that examined the effects of mass media campaigns informing about a new technology on the adoption decisions of households in rural Senegal. While some communities were exposed to a campaign broadcasted on national radio that informed households about the general benefits and quality of solar lamps, other communities were exposed to the same radio campaign complemented with information that singled out the most suitable lamp type for all main technological applications. The authors exploit the difference between the two campaigns to examine the extent to which certain information characteristics matter for the uptake of the technological innovation. Results from our experiment show that information on optimal lamp types was required to increase adoption of solar lamps on the extensive margin (more people investing in lamps). However, the type-unspecific information increased adoption on the intensive margin (existing users investing in more lamps). These findings can be explained by a simple learning model of selective attention that the authors adjusted to the study setting, where households engage in home production and spend time as well as mental energy to learn about technological features that maximize returns.
  • Publication
    Demand Analysis for Tourism in African Local Communities
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-12-01) World Bank Group
    This report aims to provide a market overview that describes the main characteristics and size of current and future demand for tourism products delivered by and based in local communities in Africa. If demand is better understood, supply can be better developed and better placed to take advantage of the market access opportunities offered by the growth in digital platforms. Increased supply that is performing well will yield development results for marginalized communities and help to increase shared prosperity.
  • Publication
    Integrating Nutrition Promotion and Rural Development in Sri Lanka
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-10-01) World Bank Group
    'Integrating Nutrition Promotion and Rural Development' (INPARD) is a multisectoral approach to delivering nutrition-related interventions in rural development programmes in Sri Lanka. Although multisectoral approaches to health promotion are widely recommended, barriers to collaboration across sectors were identified in the INPARD study described in this document. These include a lack of clarity among stakeholders regarding their respective roles, communication gaps between those working in different sectors, and resistance by some who consider health outside the purview of the sector they work in. Improved collaboration will also require training for all concerned. The INPARD study was undertaken to investigate how effectively a rural development programme could be employed to deliver improved human nutrition outcomes – an objective not typically included in traditional rural development interventions in the past. The intervention considered was a large rural development project known as the Re-awakening Project (RaP), which carried out operations in 112 villages in the districts of Ampara and Moneragala. The villages were selected in part on prevailing poverty levels, and 20 of them were randomly selected for evaluation by the INPARD study as it was carried out alongside the larger RaP. 20 other villages in Ampara and Monergala were selected as the control group representing non-RaP villages. Finally, ten villages were selected from outside the RaP area altogether, in Kurungala district.
  • Publication
    Connecting the Dots: Transport, Poverty, and Social Inclusion - Evidence from Armenia
    (World Bank, Yerevan, 2017-12) World Bank
    This report examines the impact of rural connectivity on poverty, access to basic services, and income in Armenia, a country which has found itself in a low-growth, low-investment nexus, with stalled poverty reduction. This study attempts to shed light on the linkages between transport and poverty in Armenia. The rest of the report is structured as follows: Section 1 explains the evolution of selected social, economic, and demographic indicators for Armenia during the analysis period; Section 2 lays out the conceptual framework for operationalizing shared prosperity and poverty in rural transport operations; Section 3 proposes a systematic but non-exhaustive collection of literature on rural road impact studies in low- and middle-income countries; Section 4 examines regional gaps in accessibility to markets and services which were computed with the use of the first geographic information system (GIS) based mapping platform of its kind in Armenia, and introduces the potential association between accessibility and poverty in Armenia; Section 5 characterizes key social and economic indicators in the project’s immediate area of influence to then summarize household-level outcomes obtained from a comprehensive qualitative analysis and community-level findings resulting from a nighttime lights analysis; and Section 6 summarizes the lessons learnt and the directions for future research. The report concludes with policy implications from this research and directions for future analytical and operational work on transport and poverty in Armenia.
  • Publication
    Standing Out from the Herd: An Economic Assessment of Tourism in Kenya
    (World Bank, Nairobi, 2017-09-01) World Bank
    In recent years, the prospects of Kenya’s tourism industry have been clouded by a perfect storm of misfortunes – insecurity, growing global competition, and unsustainable tourism development. It is in this context that the potential and actual contribution of the tourism sector to the country’s development has been questioned, with claims that tourism contributes less to the Kenyan economy than commonly thought. This report is arranged as follows: Chapter 1 identifies linkages with sectors that provide inputs into tourism as well as sectors that benefit from the boost in demand generated by the industry (termed the backward and forward linkages respectively). The results in Chapter 2 indicate that the effects on the economy depend on the cross‐sectoral linkages. Hence, impacts on the economy differ depending on whether they emanate from changes in foreign tourist arrivals, changes in domestic tourist demand, oil price shocks, or foreign exchange shocks. Chapter 3 attempts to explore how long‐term growth and poverty rates are affected with investments in the different segments of the tourism industry. Finally, recognizing that growth in the sector is dependent upon sustainable resource use, Chapter 4 contributes to the analysis of alternative policy strategies by investigating policies for the allocation of water. This is a highly relevant, though much neglected issue as Kenya is amongst the most water scarce countries in Africa and also has a highly water intensive economy (when measured in per capita availability, Kenya is more water scarce than land, and projections suggest the former will get worse faster). The Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is also used to examine the growth consequences of reallocating water from the highly water‐dependent tourism industry to other sectors of the economy
  • Publication
    Toward a Universal Measure of What Works on Rural Water Supply: Rural Water Metrics Global Framework
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-08-23) World Bank Group
    One of the most pervasive development issues related to the provision of rural water supply and sanitation services (RWSS) is their lack of sustainability. Assessing and measuring sustainability is a difficult task for which there has not emerged a consensus on which indicators to use. Unlike in the urban water supply and sanitation where there exist universally recognized indicators, the rural water supply and sanitation sub-sector still lacks a universal metrics global framework. This is because the rural water sector has a wide variety of service levels (water points and piped systems) as well as type of service providers (communities, governments and private sector). The adoption of such universal framework by adapting country monitoring systems will facilitate improved national and global reporting and analysis. This publication summarizes the methodology and conclusions of a study aimed at proposing a Rural Water Metrics Framework that was based on the findings of analyzing 40 RWSS frameworks. The proposed Global Framework contains minimum, basic, and advanced indicators to be tailored according to each country context. The study finalizes presenting a total of 24 indicators as being key to monitoring RWSS and proposes further validation and dissemination with regional and global partners in the short term, as well as engagement with regional platforms working on water issues for their framework adoption in the long-term to support data sharing and analysis.
  • Publication
    Land Governance Assessment Framework: Rwanda
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017) Ngoga, Thierry; Ntaganda, Francois; Tushabe, Karim; Niyonsenga, David; Ingabire, Nadia; Muvara, Pothin
    Rwanda has initiated a major land tenure reform program over the last two decades to clarify land rights, underpinned by far-reaching legal and institutional reforms (2004 national land policy (NLP); 2005 organic land law (OLL)), which culminated in a nationwide program of systematic land tenure regularization (LTR) that was completed in 2012. The implementation of the land governance assessment framework (LGAF) in Rwanda is timely and will help the country to take stock in a comprehensive way, benchmark, and assess priorities as input into ongoing policy, legal, and institutional reforms. LGAF was undertaken between September 2014 and May 2015, and validated in January 2016. The framework analysis is organized into nine modules: (i) land tenure recognition; (ii) rights to forest and common lands and rural land use regulations; (iii) urban land use, planning, and development; (iv) public land management; (v) process and economic benefit of transfer of public land to private use; (vi) public provision of land information; (vii) land valuation and taxation; (viii) dispute resolution; and (ix) review of institutional arrangements and policies.
  • Publication
    Influence of Land Governance on Job Creation in Mindanao
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-08) Eleazar, Floradema C.; Ravanera, Roel; Gatus, Jose; Masangcay, Bonapart
    The World Bank is preparing a Mindanao Jobs Report (MJR) that aims jobs challenge and identify recommendations on how to create more and better jobs in the region. The MJR represents regional analysis of the Philippine development report (PDR) creating more and better jobs which identified key constraints and recommended an agenda for sustaining inclusive growth and addressing the jobs challenge. The study analysis of influence of land governance and employment creation in Mindanao aims to contribute to the analytical work that was carried out under the MJR through a more focused assessment of land governance in Mindanao.