Other ESW Reports

305 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10986/2209

This includes miscellaneous ESW types and pre-2003 ESW type reports that are subsequently completed and released.

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

Climate Adaptation in Uzbekistan: Landscape Restoration Opportunities
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-07) World Bank
Land use plays a pivotal role in Uzbekistan’s development, and embracing sustainable agriculture offers a promising pathway to achieving middle-income status. This report aims to identify hotspots of land degradation and declining productivity along with areas of adaptation opportunity where landscape restoration can offset these trends under changing climate conditions. It also analyzes the costs of land degradation (cost of inaction) compared to investing in adaptation technologies (cost of action). The report recommends technological, institutional, and policy options to reduce natural capital degradation in the agriculture, forest, and water sectors.
Diagnostic Analysis for Circular Economy Interventions in Bulgaria
(Washington, DC, 2023-11-13) World Bank
Over the past decade, material efficiency and resource productivity have surfaced on the global policy agenda. The rise of the circular economy (CE) agenda reflects the objective of moving away from the current systems of production and consumption based on the ‘take-make-use-waste’ linear economic model toward economies centered on minimizing the use of virgin materials without adversely affecting welfare. The focus is on a life-cycle approach to resource management, which starts with reducing raw material demand by looping resources back into consumption and production systems through innovations in material design, production, and reutilization processes. In addition to reducing pollution and other harmful emissions, the CE can be a driver of private sector growth and jobs and can increase the strategic autonomy of countries by reducing dependence on raw material imports. The objective of this rapid analysis is to identify the CE-related priority areas, sectors in Bulgaria and potential areas of focus for follow-up interventions. The study also aims to highlight concrete barriers that prevent the national and local governments from undertaking these interventions, as well as enabling factors and approaches to overcome them.
Climate Change and Disability Inclusion in Uzbekistan
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-10-26) World Bank
The impacts of climate change will be unevenly felt within and across countries partly due to social and economic inequalities. Persons with disabilities represent 16 percent of the global population and face widespread forms of social and economic marginalization yet have received little attention in prior studies of climate change and social inequality. The mortality rate of persons with disabilities in natural disasters is “up to four times higher than people without disabilities” (Stein and Stein 2021). How do the fast-moving shocks, flooding, drought, heatwaves and slower-moving social and economic effects of climate change impact persons with disabilities How can climate change adaptation efforts be disability inclusive This study examines these questions through original fieldwork and qualitative interviews conducted in Uzbekistan. In November 2022, the authors interviewed persons with disabilities in three regions of the country. The resulting qualitative data afford key insights into how climate change and disability status interact to generate distinct vulnerabilities. Within the nascent field of climate change and disability studies, this report represents one of the first fieldwork-based accounts of how climate change presents heightened risks to persons with disabilities in a developing country context.
Watershed Management and Landscape Restoration Opportunities Assessment for Sioni Reservoir Watershed System in Georgia
(Washington, DC, 2022-10) World Bank
This assessment report presents the results of a study focused on the Sioni Reservoir watershed, which is subject to seasonal sediment loads affecting the sustainability of water for hydropower generation and irrigation. The study reveals the major causes of landscape degradation within target watershed and sediment loads to the Sioni Reservoir affecting the suitability of water for irrigation and the lifetime of the dam. The study also identifies the main interventions for landscape restoration and provides a brief analysis of the institutional and policy gaps and recommendations that are applicable for other watersheds in the region as well.
Testing the Resilience of the Turkish Cypriot Economy: A Macroeconomic Monitoring Note - Special Issue : Enhancing Competitiveness and Promoting Economic Integration
(World Bank, Washington DC, 2022-03) World Bank
The Turkish Cypriot economy (TCe) has struggled to recover since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. With a contraction of 16.2 percent in GDP in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic first took hold, the TCe experienced the most severe recession in its history, and the most severe recession among the economies of Europe. Moreover, just as other economies were beginning to recover, in 2021 the TCe underwent a phase of exceptional political uncertainty and numerous exogenous shocks, testing its resilience. With the emergence of new variants of the virus, the COVID-19 pandemic continued to adversely impact the TCe throughout 2021, with cases reaching a new peak at the end of 2021 despite the Turkish Cypriot (TC) administration’s efforts to prevent the spread of the virus, together with its support for the health system, households, and companies. Furthermore, a new record low in average precipitation in 2021, a series of earthquakes at the beginning of 2022, and weak energy security, with a recent series of power outages experienced across the island, have all revealed the intrinsic vulnerabilities of the island to climate change and natural disasters. Building a competitive private sector would require reforming business regulations and procedures that are under the mandate of the TC administration, and that should be aligned with international best practices and the EU Acquis, irrespective of the broader context of the political economy. Special attention should be devoted to the regulation concerning imports and GL trade. Pre-permits and licenses imposed by the TC administration on imports, on top of regulatory uncertainty and other cumbersome procedures, contribute to increasing prices, penalizing consumers, and eroding domestic competitiveness. A dialogue framework between GC and TC private sectors could be established to support solutions to the long-standing constraints that have been impeding business cooperation across the GL, for the benefit of all Cypriots.
Supporting the Implementation of Residential Heating Measures in Bulgaria’s National Air Quality Improvement Program and National Air Pollution Control Program
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06) World Bank
These programs have been prepared by the Government of Bulgaria (GoB) with technical support by the World Bank. In the course of the work it became clear that national and local institutions would face multi- faceted challenges in implementing the NAQIP and NAPCP, relating mainly to overcoming financial, administrative, and technical difficulties. The swift evolution of EU policy frameworks for countering climate change, improving energy security, reducing energy poverty, as well as the need to improve health and wellbeing in Bulgaria, add to those challenges though they may be regarded instead as presenting significant economic opportunities. The NAQIP proposes measures for phasing out the use of thermally inefficient, polluting old stoves and boilers that burn solid fuels, replacing them with cleaner, more efficient heating arrangements. It is expected that the measures will reduce PM10 emissions from the residential heating sector by about 78 percent. Other measures target the road transport sector though its contribution to local emissions is minor in comparison. The NAPCP focuses on meeting air pollutant emission targets for 2030 as required in the Revised NECD. NAQIP measures to reduce PM10 emissions from the residential heating sector are incorporated in full in the NAPCP. Other sectors where policies and measures to reduce emissions were considered have included large combustion plants in the power generation and industrial sectors, road transport, agriculture, and industrial processes. The preparation of these two programs was complemented by capacity strengthening, including the development of tools to help municipalities undertake essential planning and project preparation. All guidance documentation to accompany the tools were collated to form a Resource Toolkit. Communication and coordination issues were also tackled in the engagement.