Sector/Thematic Studies

6,525 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2110

Economic and Sectoral Work are original analytic reports authored by the World Bank and intended to influence programs and policy in client countries. They convey Bank-endorsed recommendations and represent the formal opinion of a World Bank unit on the topic. This set includes the sectoral and thematic studies which are not Core Diagnostic Studies. Other analytic and advisory activities (AAA), including technical assistance studies, are included in these sectoral/thematic collections.

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Equitable Growth, Finance & Institutions Insight

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 6130

Tools and Resources for Nature-Based Tourism - Second Edition

(Washington, DC, 2023-05-30) World Bank

Nature-based tourism (NBT) plays an important role in sustainable development. It can support poverty alleviation, economic growth, and biodiversity conservation and contribute to key global agreements and frameworks, including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. NBT’s singular potential to create jobs and growth, while protecting wildlife and ecosystems, makes it an enticing prospect for developing countries seeking to align those interests. The World Bank commissioned a comprehensive review of the tools and knowledge resources that could be used by practitioners in the field of NBT, to prepare and implement projects that promote sustainable NBT practices and policies. Impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic have reverberated across the tourism sector since first publication of this report in July 2020. Those working in nature-based tourism, from tour operators to community organizations to protected area authorities, have faced particular challenges – and opportunities – as tourism revenues plummeted and slowly rebound. This second edition in 2022 aims to collect and share the many resources that have emerged to support nature-based tourism destinations and stakeholders to recover and reset in the face of the pandemic, including a new chapter on COVID-19 resources.
The Potential Implications of Economic and Social Rights for Sovereign Debt Investing

(World Bank, 2023-05-24) Gratcheva, Ekaterina ; Gurhy, Bryan ; Wang, Dieter ; Brook, Anne-Marie ; Clay, K.Chad ; Randolph, Susan

This paper discusses both the relevance of economic and social rights (ESRs) for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing in the sovereign debt asset class and how to start incorporating these rights into the investment process in a practical way. Many in the investment industry recognize the potential role that investors can play in influencing a country’s decisions on environmental and social issues, including human rights. Investors are also increasingly acknowledging the potential to influence a sovereign’s actions on social issues, such as ESRs, given the state’s direct role in providing a pathway to social advancement for its citizens. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 explains the relevance of ESRs to the sovereign debt asset class. Section 3 introduces the income adjusted ESR dataset, and section 4 illustrates the insights that this dataset can provide for sovereign debt investors. Section 5 provides one practical example of how sovereign debt investors could use such a dataset in practice. Section 6 presents our conclusions.
Options for Reducing Plastic Leakage to the Marine Environment from Capture Fisheries and Aquaculture

(Washington, DC, 2023-05-10) World Bank

The Government of Indonesia’s (GoI) National Plan of Action on Marine Plastic Debris (NPOA-MPD 2017-2025) outlines the ambitious objective of reducing marine plastic debris by seventy percent by 2025. Abandoned, Lost and Discarded Fishing Gear (ALDFG) is a major component of sea-based sources of marine debris, and is another important sea-based source of plastic leakage. The cultivation of marine and aquatic species, including seaweed, uses plastic components such as buoys, ropes, harvest bins and feed sacks. The primary pathways for plastic leakage from aquaculture include mismanagement, deliberate discharge, extreme weather and catastrophic events such as tsunamis. The impacts of fishery and aquaculture plastic pollution on the environment, economy, livelihoods and food security are significant. The scale of these impacts on fisheries, marine ecosystems and human users has prompted international action. Managing and mitigating plastic pollution from fisheries and aquaculture has the potential to contribute to Indonesia’s marine plastic debris targets while also providing economic opportunities. This report presents options for reducing ALDFG and ALDAG in Indonesia, and improving the management and use of End-of-life fishing gear (EOLFG).
Management, Retrieval and Recycling of End-of-Life and Abandoned, Lost and Discarded Fishing Gear: The Evidence Base from Capture Fisheries

(Washington, DC, 2023-05-10) World Bank

The Government of Indonesia’s (GoI) National Plan of Action on Marine Plastic Debris (NPOA-MPD 2017-2025) outlines the ambitious objective to reduce marine plastic debris by seventy percent by 2025. Abandoned, Lost and Discarded Fishing Gear (ALDFG) is considered to be a major component of sea-based sources of marine debris. ALDFG has increased in recent decades due to the expansion of fishing effort and greater use of synthetic fishing gear materials. Drivers of ALDFG generation include gear characteristics, fishery management frameworks and socioeconomic factors. The impacts of ALDFG on the environment, economy, livelihoods and food security are significant. ALDFG management and mitigation strategies have the potential to contribute to Indonesia’s marine plastic debris while also providing economic opportunities. This study aims to enhance the evidence available to support efforts to improve the management, retrieval and recycling of End-of-life fishing gear (EOLFG) and ALDFG in Indonesia.
Urban Heat in South Asia: Integrating People and Place in Adapting to Rising Temperatures

(World Bank, Washington DC, 2023-04-28) Kim, Ella Jisun ; Henry, Grace ; Jain, Monica

This policy brief evaluates the current state of the knowledge of and plans to manage urban heat in South Asia. First, the brief examines heat in South Asian cities through the different layers of the urban environment: buildings, communities, and cities. Next, it adds the human element and explores different population groups that are vulnerable to urban heat in the region: children, informal workers, and residents of informal settlements. Together, this analysis forms the basis of three major recommendations and a conceptual framework to provide policymakers with direction on where greater attention and resources are required to improve urban heat management in South Asia.
The Future of Pacific Tourism

(Washington DC, 2023-04-25) World Bank

Over the two decades preceding the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, tourism became one of the most important drivers of economic growth across the Pacific. The COVID-19 crisis had a devastating impact on tourism activity in the Pacific, with severe and potentially durable economic and social consequences. This study takes a fresh look at tourism’s role for development in the Pacific, its future after COVID-19, and the scope to foster a greener, more resilient, competitive, and inclusive sector. It complements and builds on the 2016 Pacific possible report, which assessed specific opportunities to increase arrivals in a context of rapid tourism growth, by considering the changes to the industry’s model that could maximize tourism’s economic, social, and environmental benefits for Pacific Islanders. It does this by: (i) taking stock of the evidence on tourism’s historical contribution to development in the Pacific Island Country (PICs) and of the COVID-19 crisis’ impacts, (ii) analyzing current obstacles and potential opportunities for a more competitive and sustainable Pacific tourism, focusing on selected issues key to target higher value markets, and (iii) recommending policy priorities and investment needs to (re)position the Pacific tourism model for the future and broaden its benefits, focusing on competitiveness, environmental sustainability, resilience and inclusiveness. Given the scarcity of data on Pacific tourism and frequent discrepancies across sources, one of the study’s main contributions is to provide a detailed quantitative assessment of the sector and its economic impacts, for instance on jobs, poverty, and public revenue, based on an extensive data collection, cross-checking and integration exercise.
Making the European Green Deal Work for People: The Role of Human Development in the Green Transition

(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2023-04-24) Sanchez-Reaza, Javier ; Ambasz, Diego ; Djukic, Predrag

Climate change is the single most important existential threat of our times. Mounting average global temperature contributes to rising sea levels, more frequent extreme weather events, deteriorating biodiversity, and shifts in the sustainability of agriculture and aquaculture. The European Green Deal (EGD) is the response of the European Union (EU) to the climate challenge. It will establish regulations and incentives to nudge European society toward a more sustainable economy. To achieve these ambitious goals the EGD combines a wide range of regulations, policies, and intervention. But a green transition is only possible with an enabling human transition, and only with the proper human development (social) policies to support this transition. This report identifies the human development (HD) policies needed to enable the green transition in Europe.
Environment and Natural Resources Supplementary Guidance Note for Risk and Resilience Assessments

(Washington DC, 2023-04-20) World Bank

This supplementary guidance note is based on the report, Defueling Conflict: Environment and Natural Resource Management as a Pathway to Peace (2022), which was funded by the State and Peacebuilding Fund. This document is intended to encapsulate the key ideas to support Risk and Resilience Assessment (RRA) teams to collect knowledge on and deepen and nuance the treatment of the environment and natural resources in RRAs. Additional examples and analyses are available in the original report.
Scaling Up to Phase Down: Financing Energy Transitions in the Power Sector

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-04-20) World Bank

The Scaling Up to Phase Down approach is a contribution by the World Bank to the ongoing debate on how to accelerate energy transition in low- and middle-income countries (LICs and MICs)—as called for by the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change—while simultaneously widening access to the reliable and affordable energy that underpins countries’ development goals. The approach is intended to be a bridge between the challenges facing World Bank clients who are seeking to transition their power sectors and the development partners supporting their efforts. The energy transition is the process of shifting the global energy system away from the consumption of fossil fuels and toward low-carbon technologies in order to support international goals of limiting climate change. In the next decade, much of this transition will first occur in the power sector because solutions using newer technologies have the potential to become cost competitive with appropriate interventions, and also because the power sector is a powerful pathway for decarbonizing other sectors—most notably transport, buildings, and industry. The power sector is therefore the focus of this report. The power sector transition will advance energy efficiency and decarbonize the energy supply by expanding renewable energy and strengthening electricity networks in order to integrate renewable energy, demand-side management, and end-use electrification. In LICs and MICs, this transition aims to meet the rapidly growing demand for energy in a way that supports inclusive development consistent with net-zero global emissions by mid-century, and builds resilience to the changing climate. A just transition in the power sector should address the needs of workers and communities who are affected by the shift away from fossil fuels; provide modern energy access to millions of people; and protect vulnerable customers from unaffordable energy prices. For the first time, the World Bank has outlined a vision for how the international community can support LICs and MICs to overcome critical barriers that are paralyzing the power sector transition. Drawing on findings of the first set of Country Climate and Development Reports produced by the World Bank, and decades of engagement with energy sector development, this approach distills understanding of the unique challenges that LICs and MICs face in undertaking this transition at the scale and pace required to meet their development and climate needs. The approach may help both World Bank clients and development partners in preparing a roadmap to catalyze and sustain a virtuous cycle that unleashes urgently needed investment in power sector transition. Chapter 1 explains that the capital-intensive nature of clean energy investments, combined with the lack of access to affordable capital, have a disproportionate and distorting effect on the power sector transitions of LICs and MICs. Even where renewable energy has the potential to provide a more affordable energy supply and improve energy security and health, the up-front capital costs that must be borne leave LICs and MICs locked into using costly fossil fuels. Chapter 2 discusses additional barriers to the scaling up of clean energy and the concomitant phasing down of coal. The commitment of governments will be essential in order to foster the policies, regulations, and institutions needed to prepare a pipeline of projects that can attract private capital. This chapter argues that concessional finance is essential in order to overcome the barriers to investments of private capital at the necessary levels. Chapter 3 discusses how public and concessional support must be deployed with a disciplined approach in order to scale up clean energy and energy efficiency. Chapter 4 explains the need to phase down the use of unabated coal, and the instruments to do so in a manner that manages losses and protects the most vulnerable. Chapter 5 concludes the paper with a discussion of how larger and sustained volumes of concessional capital could be more effectively structured within country-based programmatic approaches and technology demonstration partnerships in order to scale up the financial resources and political momentum for transitioning the power sector.
Protecting Human Capital Through Shocks and Crises: How lessons learned from the COVID-19 response across Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus can be used to build better and more resilient human development systems

(World Bank, Washington DC, 2023-04-20) Rigolini, Jamele ; Coll-Black, Sarah ; de Hoyos, Rafael ; Nguyen, Ha Thi Hong

Risk and uncertainty are on the rise, and countries across Europe and Central Asia (ECA) are not immune from it. The region is being hit by crises, conflicts, and continued uncertainty that are negatively affecting people’s livelihoods in the short term and prosperity in the long term. Then COVID-19 hit, inflicting massive harm on people’s wellbeing, livelihoods, and human capital. Lockdowns prevented people from working, school closures prevented students from learning, and overwhelmed hospitals had to defer important treatments. This report explores how to strengthen the resilience of health, education, and social protection systems to better protect people’s human capital from the long-term effects of recurrent shocks and crises.