Social Development Notes

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This series is intended to disseminate good practice and key findings on community driven development.

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    What Have Been the Impacts of World Bank CDD programs?: Operational and Research Implications
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-02) Oshima, Kaori
    Community driven development (CDD) is an approach that emphasizes community control over planning decisions and investment resources. A rigorous evaluation process helps determine CDDs effectiveness in various settings and highlights areas that need strengthening for second phase programs or new projects. This note summarizes the findings of a recently conducted study, What have been the Impacts of World Bank Community Driven Development Programs? CDD impact evaluation review and operational and research implications (Wong 2012), which synthesizes the impact evaluation results of seventeen World Bank CDD programs over the past twenty five years. The study finds that, on the whole, these projects achieved their stated goals of poverty welfare reduction, poverty targeting, and increased access to services. Evidence on governance, social capital, spillovers, and conflict impacts, however, is found to be limited and mixed.
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    Building on Tradition as the Way to Women’s Empowerment in Cambodia
    (Washington, DC, 2012-01) World Bank
    Approximately eighty percent of Cambodians live in rural areas with limited access to clean and affordable water and energy. Thirty-four percent of the rural population lives below the national poverty line on less than 2,367 riels ($0.60) per day. Even though Cambodia is a low income country, the cost of electricity is one of the world's highest due to limited domestic energy resources. Over ninety percent of energy used for cooking comes from wood and charcoal, contributing to increased deforestation. Women traditionally shoulder the burdens of collecting wood and cooking in Cambodian society. They to produce ceramic cook stoves with the goal of empowering women spend an average of three to four hours a day on energy-related activities such as gathering fuel wood, boiling water, and cooking. This report identified the unique role women play in rural Cambodian households, and describes a pilot initiative, reducing deforestation and pollution, and promoting healthier more vibrant communities.
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    Building Capacity to Make Transport Work for Women and Men in Vietnam : Gender and Transport Challenges
    (Washington, DC, 2012-01) World Bank
    Women and men use rural and urban transport for different purposes based on their socially determined roles and responsibilities. Poor rural transport systems limit access to markets, education, and health services for all, but even more so for women and girls. Female mobility is often constrained by heavy domestic work-loads and time spent traveling by foot, carrying heavy loads over rough trails. Time poverty combines with cultural restrictions to limit women's and girls' economic, educational opportunities and participation in community decision-making, particularly for ethnic minority women in remote mountainous areas. Gender differences in mobility and access are also affected by ability to pay for transport services. Most women have more limited access to financial and other resources, and inadequate voice in local level transport priority setting than men. Gender and Transport capacity building needs to be grounded in practical, on-the ground country realities in the transport sector and draw on the experience of transport specialists who have addressed gender in their work or clearly understand the entry points. Participatory gender and transport capacity building that provides opportunities for applying what is learned to transport problems is more effective than a lecture format.
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    After the Tsunami : Women and Land Reforms in Aceh
    (Washington, DC, 2012-01) World Bank
    On Boxing Day morning, 2004, a 9.3 magnitude earthquake struck the Indian Ocean. The quake unleashed a blast of energy and created a tsunami three stories high. The disaster claimed more than 228,000 lives, affected 2.5 million others and caused close to US $11.4 billion of damage in 14 countries. By far the highest price was paid by Aceh, where more people died than in all the other countries combined. In Banda Aceh, the capital of the province, the tsunami claimed nearly a third of the population. More than 800 km. of coastline was affected and close to 53,795 land parcels were destroyed. The land administration system sustained significant damage as documentation of land ownership was washed away. Physical boundary markers, including trees and fences, also disappeared. The tsunami and earthquake not only shattered housing and other coastal infrastructure, they also shook the foundations of Acehnese society and the social capital built up over decades.
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    Engendering Mines in Development : A Promising Approach from Papua New Guinea
    (Washington, DC, 2012-01) World Bank
    Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a culturally diverse, environmentally rich country with over five million inhabitants, the majority of whom live on the eastern half of the rugged and mountainous island of New Guinea, the rest scattered among tropical archipelagos in the Bismark and Solomon seas. PNG's natural beauty hides a legacy of poverty and dependence on natural resources, especially mining operations: there are currently six working mines in PNG, five on the main island in rural, mountainous, and unimaginably remote locations. The sixth operating mine, and the only closed mine in the country, are situated on the small islands of Lihir and Misima.
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    Pathways to Development : Empowering local women to build a more equitable future in Vietnam
    (Washington, DC, 2012-01) World Bank
    Vietnam's economic emergence is perhaps best experienced along its rural roads: over 175,000 km of pavement, rubble and dirt track extend to two-thirds of the country's population and nearly all of the poorest people, who live among its productive farms, lush forests and meandering river valleys. The World Bank's Third Rural Transport Project (RTP3) identified missing links that left many rural Vietnamese communities off the map from the country's remarkable development successes. The project prioritized road maintenance and local infrastructure management above new construction projects, and collaborated with the government institutions to address steep increases in travel costs per kilometer across crumbling rural roads. Project staff identified barriers along the route to more accessible road networks, including a lack of incentives to local bureaucracies to regularly maintain rural roads in remote areas. This situation has lead to deteriorating roads in places that are desperate for improved access to goods, services and social networks.
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    Summary of the Online Discussion on Linking Gender, Poverty, and Environment for Sustainable Development (May 2 - June 17, 2011)
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-01) World Bank
    Gender-poverty-environment links: a focus on the links between gender disparity, poverty and environmental degradation is increasingly recognized as a key strategy for improving the lives of poor women and men. Acknowledging the ways in which relationships between the environment, society and the economy are gendered opens space for new approaches to poverty reduction, environmental conservation and gender equality. The Social Development Department (SDV) of the World Bank conducted in-depth studies in Ethiopia and Ghana to advance understanding of the dynamics underlying negative spirals of poverty, environmental degradation, and gender inequality, and how to foster a positive synergy in the sustainable development sector e.g. energy, agriculture, natural resource management, water, urban development, and transport. An important component of the study design was an online discussion within and outside World Bank on findings from the country case studies to ground truth the potential for wider application in other countries; and to collect and share additional good practice cases that address gender-environment-poverty-links from as broad a range of countries as possible.
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    How-to Note : A Framework to Assess Administrative Decentralization
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-06) World Bank
    Local governments need to be endowed with administrative autonomy to be able to respond to local needs effectively. The purpose of this note is to clarify components of a well-designed administrative decentralization system and to assist task teams and stakeholders to assess administrative decentralization effort in any given country. There are two main components of an administrative decentralization system: discretion allowed to the local government to direct the business of the local government, and mechanisms to hold the local government accountable for appropriate use of this discretion. The objective of this note is to explain the importance of each of these components. The note also illustrates how these components should be put into practice. Challenges and good practices in implementations in various developing countries are highlighted. The review of study countries shows that local governments in the Philippines and Kerala have the authority to engage in all kinds of procurement contracts.
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    Good-Practice Note : Governance and Anti-Corruption Innovations in the Malawi Social Action Fund Project
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-06) Aklilu, Petros ; Agarwal, Sanjay
    The World Bank supported three phases Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF) project was first approved in 1996. Malawi, with a population of 13 million, is a low income country with one of the lowest per capita incomes in Sub-Saharan Africa. Malawi continues to face a variety of social, economic, political and administrative challenges including high inflation, low salaries/pensions of public officials, chronic resource shortages, dearth of public goods and services, unethical individual behavior, and kinship and nepotism. As a result of these factors, corruption remains a major problem in Malawi. In response to these challenges, Malawi has introduced a number of initiatives aimed at promoting good governance and fighting endemic corruption. In May 2004, President Bingu Wa Mutharika, immediately after taking office adopted a zero tolerance stance on corruption. This was subsequently formalized into a declaration on zero tolerance on corruption in February 2007. MASAF projects' commendable work in identifying governance and accountability risks and integrating mitigation measures into proposed project activities.
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    Good-Practice Note : Governance and Anti-Corruption Innovations in the Da Nang Priority Infrastructure Investment Project, Vietnam
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-06) Golan, Amnon
    As Vietnam's fourth largest urban area, Da Nang is expected to grow exponentially in the next two decades. The Da Nang priority infrastructure investment project which operates in a challenging governance environment has introduced a number of innovative Governance and Anti-Corruption (GAC) interventions through a Governance and Transparency Action Plan (GTAP). The key features and challenges of the project GTAP assessed along three dimensions governance and political economy, fraud and corruption risks in procurement and financial management, and demand side governance (transparency, participation and third party monitoring) are discussed in this learning note.