Other ESW Reports

255 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

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

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

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Pacific Maritime Transport Systems: Hazard Exposure Technical Note

(Washington, DC, 2023-12-04) World Bank

This Technical Note supplements the overarching regional report 'A Blue Transformation for Pacific Maritime Transport (World Bank, 2022)'. It provides more detail on, and analysis of, natural hazards in the Pacific affecting port infrastructure and operations. While natural hazards are a major issue for all Pacific Island states and dependencies, this Technical Note looks particularly at the experiences of 12 World Bank member countries, referred to collectively as the PIC12 countries. These are the Melanesian countries of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji; the Polynesian countries of Samoa, Tonga, and Tuvalu; and the Micronesian countries of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), Palau, Kiribati, and Nauru. This Note aims to assist technical specialists, client country teams, and donors, to identify needs and priorities for more detailed, site-specific risk studies. These risk studies will form the basis of port master planning, project design, asset management, and capital upgrade projects, as appropriate, to increase resilience in ports to the impacts of natural hazards. This Technical Note has six sections, as follows: overview: a summary of why Pacific ports is particularly exposed to natural hazards; mapping Pacific Islands’ Current Exposure to Hazards: descriptions of the seven natural hazards facing Pacific Island countries (PICs), and maps showing where in the Pacific their main impacts are felt; identifying where the greatest hazards lie, a hazard heat map for the pacific: quantitative and qualitative measures of the hazard intensities are summarized for primary and hub ports, with general observations and conclusions; current status of infrastructure upgrades in Pacific ports: a summary of work, both completed and planned, in each of the PIC12 primary ports, between 2007 and 2022; port master planning to future-proof Pacific ports: a brief outline of port master planning, strategic asset management and risk analysis, and principles of asset management for port infrastructure; and conclusions and recommendations.
Digital Conglomerates in East Asia: Navigating Competition Policy Challenges

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-21) World Bank

Conglomeration has traditionally been prevalent in Asia, a trend that is currently exacerbated by the characteristics of digital markets. While conglomerates offer important benefits, from economies of scale and diversification to the development of new products, they can also have a negative impact on market dynamics. This report examines conglomeration trends in five Asian countries, Malaysia, Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam, to better understand whether offline conglomerates are expanding into digital markets vis a vis the expansion of purely digital conglomerates into adjacent and non-adjacent markets. The report focuses on one of the main expansion strategies: conglomerate mergers and acquisitions. To this end, it explores the prevalence of conglomerate mergers, both globally and within the East Asia region, the type of competition scrutiny they are submitted to, and potential aspects to strengthen their review to foster more effective competition policies. The report concludes with a set of key policy recommendations that address the identified risks.
The Brazil of the Future: Towards Productivity, Inclusion, and Sustainability

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-13) World Bank Group

In 2022, Brazil celebrated its 200th anniversary. What will Brazil celebrate at its 220th anniversary, in 2042? Following the recent elections there is a window of opportunity for reforms that will shape Brazil’s development over the next decades. “The Brazil of the Future: Towards Productivity, Inclusion, and Sustainability” takes a long-term perspective on Brazil’s development, exploring how prudent actions today can generate opportunities for a more prosperous, inclusive, and sustainable society over the next 20 years. The report aims to stimulate public debate about a virtuous cycle for 2042, illustrated by four alternative future scenarios. With the right reforms Brazil can become an economic powerhouse that offers opportunities for all. A more inclusive social contract can facilitate critical reforms.
Impacts of Covid-19 on the World Bank’s Forest Investment Program Portfolio

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-10) World Bank

With the COVID-19 pandemic, the development context for the world is fundamentally challenged in many ways. The pandemic has taken a drastic human toll, and its global-scale economic and social impacts affected rural development work focused on the most poor and vulnerable populations. It has also highlighted the increasing need to invest in natural climate solutions that protect and restore critical ecosystems, support climate stability and ecosystem resilience, and help people access livelihood opportunities. This report provides an in-depth portfolio analysis of WB-implemented FIP and DGM projects during the pandemic, gathering information from documents and directly from stakeholders involved in these projects on the impacts of the pandemic during their preparation and implementation, finding trends in delays in project activities, and identifying coping mechanisms used to overcome the challenges resulting from the pandemic. For example, some projects have shifted activities requiring in-person engagement, such as training and workshops, to a virtual format. Other projects use electronic monitoring and data collection tools to follow up on activity implementation. Finally, this report provides a few general lessons for the CIF program, WB-financed operations, donors, and other external international development partners. Although the COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose a challenge, authors now hope, having already experienced it for roughly three years, to learn from the various adaptation measures implemented by the projects, for application to future shocks.
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.
Trade in Services for Development: Fostering Sustainable Growth and Economic Diversification

(Geneva, Switzerland: World Trade Organization, 2023-10-23) World Bank ; World Trade Organization (WTO)

The services sector has been the main source of economic growth in recent decades, with logistics, finance and information technologies playing an essential role in the functioning of modern economies while business services, healthcare and entertainment feature among the world’s fastest growing sectors. This publication — co-published by the WTO and the World Bank — underlines the contribution that trade and investment in services can make to economic growth and development and highlights, in particular, the importance of re-energizing international cooperation on services trade.
The Trends in Adolescent and Youth Well-being in the United Republic of Tanzania: Harnessing the Potential of Adolescents and Youth in Tanzania

(Washington, DC, 2023-10-19) World Bank

This report focuses on the trends of adolescent and youth well-being in Tanzania, identifying how and why well-being has or has not changed over time. The report conceptualizes well-being holistically. Well-being can be defined as one’s ability and opportunity to learn, make decisions, live a healthy life (physically and mentally), be well-nourished, express agency, have peace of mind, and ultimately be economically empowered. Well-being can be accumulated over time and is a composite of multiple aspects that affect the life one lives and the quality of that life. In many ways, how to live a good life and whether one is living this good life has been a key question asked across countries, and there are multiple frameworks that have been used to measure well-being. For the purposes of this study, six domains of well-being are recognized: (1) education and learning, (2) bodily integrity, (3) health, (4) psychological well-being (peace), (5) voice and agency, and (6) economic empowerment and skills. These domains are interconnected, and, also considered is the idea of peace of mind, without which, there is no wellness.
Household Surveys during Multiple Crises: Modifying Questionnaires to Assess the Impact of Shocks

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-09-25) Contreras, Ivette ; Gbemisola, Oseni ; Palacios-Lopez, Amparo ; Banerjee, Raka

Beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has experienced multiple global crises in the last few years. As countries adapt to a new normal, multi-topic household surveys should also be adapted to account for the impacts of shocks on household welfare. By reviewing the standard household survey questionnaires included in the guidebook, capturing what matters: essential guidelines for designing household surveys, the authors provide technical guidance on issues to consider when reviewing, designing, or updating questionnaires for household surveys during or after a major shock - relying on lessons learned from the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study program.
Unlocking Blue Carbon Development: Investment Readiness Framework for Governments

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-11) World Bank

The purpose of this paper is to provide a practical framework to guide governments in catalyzing and scaling up public and private investment in Blue Carbon as part of their blue economy development. It does this by describing in detail a Blue Carbon Readiness Framework, a step-by-step, well-illustrated guide with simple checklists. Client countries can use the illustrations and checklists to determine their readiness to catalyze and scale up investment in blue carbon credit finance. The Blue Carbon Readiness Framework consists of three pillars: 1. Data and Analytics; 2. Policy and Institutions; 3. Finance.
North and Northeastern Development Initiative (NEDI): Boosting Shared Prosperity for the North and Northeastern Counties of Kenya

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-10) World Bank

Kenya’s north and northeastern region is a host to 11 percent of the total population scattered across 63 percent of the country’s landmass. The arid and semi-arid region experiences recurrent droughts that create vulnerabilities for the nomadic pastoralist communities, pervasive insecurity, suffers fragility, and has been a host to the largest population of refugees in sub-Saharan Africa over the last three decades. These policy choices contributed to the significant lag in most of the development indicators for this region compared to the rest of the country. The region has huge infrastructure deficits, low literacy rates, and contributes only a modest 4.7 percent to the national gross domestic product. To address the socio-economic disparities and inequality challenges, the Government of Kenya with support from World Bank (WB) launched the North and Northeastern Development Initiative (NEDI) in 2018. The NEDI, the region’s first significant, integrated, and transformative investment, cuts across foundational sectors including energy, water, transport, social protection, displacement, and agriculture.