Sector/Thematic Studies

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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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Tanzania Economic Update, December 2019: Transforming Agriculture - Realizing the Potential of Agriculture for Inclusive Growth and Poverty Reduction

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12) World Bank Group

Tanzania was again one of the top growth performers in the region. Official GDP figures show that growth remained steady in the first half of the year, driven by higher public investment and by a recovery in exports. Inflation has been low and stable, and the balance of payments is quite sound despite a widening current account deficit. Exports are recovering from last year’s contraction. The Government's Tanzania Development Vision 2025 and the Five-Year Development Plan (FYDP II) set out ambitious goals for reducing poverty and sustainably industrializing so that the country can achieve middle-income status by 2025. The government recognizes agriculture as central to realizing its objectives of socioeconomic development, which are well-articulated in the Second Agriculture Sector Development Program (ASDP II). Among the goals of ASDP II are to transform agriculture by promoting commercialization, prioritizing high-potential commodity value chains, and mobilizing capital by giving the formal private sector a growing role in agriculture. Because agriculture and related value chains drive two-thirds of all jobs—three-quarters for the poor— the sector is central to creating more and better jobs at scale and significantly reducing poverty.
China Economic Update, December 2019: Cyclical Risks and Structural Imperatives

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12) World Bank Group

China's economy is slowing, reflecting cyclical factors and longer-term structural trends. Notwithstanding the recent conclusion of the phase one agreement between China and the United States, short-term risks remain tilted to the downside amid a fragile global outlook and the lingering impact of trade tensions, especially on confidence. Adverse demographics, tepid productivity growth, and the legacies of excessive borrowing and environmental pollution will continue to weigh on growth over the medium term. If downside risks lead to a sharp reduction in growth, the authorities have policy space to act, but this needs to be done in a way that is consistent with reducing financial and corporate sector risks and achieving the desired rebalancing of the economy toward consumption and private investment. The key medium-term priorities are to deepen structural reforms to strengthen productivity growth and private investment, while accelerating rebalancing toward consumption, services, and green growth. This would require addressing market distortions and mainstreaming environmental sustainability into China's medium-term development strategy. Implementation of these priorities would boost China's long-term growth prospects; it would also help move toward a more comprehensive and lasting resolution of remaining deep-seated disagreements on global trade and investment, and public goods agenda.
Lesotho Climate-Smart Agriculture Investment Plan: Opportunities for Transitioning to More Productive, Climate-Resilient, and Low Carbon Agriculture

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-01) World Bank

Lesotho's agricultural system faces a growing number of climate-related vulnerabilities with droughts, floods, pests, and extreme temperatures occurring more frequently. In response, the Government of Lesotho is collaborating with the World Bank to integrate climate change into the country’s agriculture policy agenda through the Lesotho Climate-Smart Agriculture Investment Plan (CSAIP).
Simulation on Connecting Climate Market Systems

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-01) World Bank Group

The Paris Agreement introduced a bottom-up approach for addressing climate change by enabling countries to pledge individual commitments through nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Furthermore, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement recognizes that Parties may engage in bilateral cooperative approaches, including through the use of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs), to achieve their NDCs. Heterogeneous climate markets may have different governance systems and technological approaches. Information about mitigation outcomes (MOs) or emission reductions is currently collected in a variety of repositories, including spreadsheets and registries, with different levels of information. The differences in these processes may constrain market integration and add to the complexity of tracking and recording transactions. Against this backdrop, there is a need to create a new architecture to support transparency and enhance the tradability of climate assets across jurisdictions while ensuring the integrity of trades. The Kyoto Protocol utilized an International Transaction Log (ITL), operated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to facilitate communication between registries and maintain a transaction log to ensure accurate accounting and verification of transactions proposed by connected registries. However, under the Paris Agreement, which may rely on a decentralized approach to markets under Article 6.2, climate negotiators are still determining whether a centralized infrastructure should continue, the functions it could perform, and to which market mechanisms or transactions it would apply. Consistent with the bottom-up ethos of the Paris Agreement, there is value in demonstrating an approach to link registry systems in a peer-to-peer arrangement.
Lesotho Disaster Risk Financing Diagnostic

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-01) World Bank

This diagnostic study is prepared at the request of the Ministry of Finance (MoF), Government of Lesotho (GoL)and aims to identify options to strengthen the country's financial resilience to disasters. It includes a review of disaster response costs and the current disaster risk financing (DRF) arrangements of the GoL, including institutional and legal frameworks, and proposes some recommendations. Lesotho is prone to weather-related perils such as droughts, floods, and storms. Drought affects the largest number of people. For instance, a drought in 2015/16 affected almost half of the population. Over two-thirds of the population—71 percent—is involved in some form of agricultural activity. The majority of the rural population engages in subsistence agriculture, working on small rain-fed farms or are livestock producers. Disasters can severely impact agriculture, thus devastating livelihoods and increasing food insecurity in a country already characterized by low agricultural productivity and reliance on food imports. Natural disasters in Lesotho jeopardize efforts to eliminate extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity Poverty in the country is declining slowly, and as of 2017 remained high, at 49.7 percent (at the national poverty line). Disasters disproportionally impact poor and vulnerable households, pushing them back or further into poverty (Hallegatte et al. 2017). According to the World Bank (forthcoming) Poverty Assessment, without the 2015/16 drought, poverty in Lesotho would have decreased twice as fast over the past 15 years. Natural disasters can also impact the macro-fiscal situation of the country. The average annual cost of disaster response is estimated at US$19.3 million, or 1.6 percent of the total budget expenditure in the 2019/20 fiscal year. For more infrequent and severeshocks, the costs can be much higher: US$31.8 million (or 2.6 percent of total budget) for shocks that occur every 10 years, and 45.3 million US Dollars (or 3.8 percent of total budget) for shocks that occur every 50 years.
Climate Change and Marine Fisheries in Africa: Assessing Vulnerability and Strengthening Adaptation Capacity

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12) World Bank

The understanding of the impacts of climate change on fisheries is constantly increasing and can be organized around several main factors - ocean acidification, sea-level rise, higher water temperatures, deoxygenation, changes in ocean currents - although these factors are unequally known and hard to model in terms of scope - where they will occur and where they will be felt the most - and severity. For instance, although the impacts of acidification are not as well understood as the effects of the other impacts, and are more difficult to measure, it is likely that they are more severe and widespread, particularly on shell-forming species, invertebrates, and coral associated species and throughout any carbon-dependent ecological processes. This report aims to assess, to the extent possible, the potential impact of climate change on fisheries and the related well-being of coastal African countries. It focuses on how the observed and anticipated ecological impacts of climate change are likely to affect fish stocks and the fisheries that depend on them and highlights the coastal countries and regions in Africa that are most vulnerable to climate change. Based on these projections, the report further assesses subsequent socioeconomic impacts on coastal countries and communities. The report concludes with a discussion of lessons learned from the modeling results.
Use of Evidence to Inform Agricultural Policy Decisions: What have We Learned from Experience in Africa?

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12) Delgado, Christopher ; Brooks, Karen ; Derlagen, Christian ; Haggblade, Steven ; Lawyer, Kate

Agricultural policymakers in Africa increasingly face the need for policy options based on evidence-based analysis to promote agricultural transformation and to adapt to climate change. Furthermore, data and analytical tools to support informed agricultural policymaking are increasingly abundant thanks to investment in these areas, mostly from external sources. Still, the use of hard data and robust analyses linked to outcomes are still rare in most agricultural policymaking in the region. Today, ministries of agriculture (MoAs) are increasingly under pressure to show ministries of economy and finance (MoEFs) both the rationale behind spending and the impact of past spending, particularly net estimated impacts on forex and fiscal balances. Even so, at present most African governments are still under-spending on agricultural public goods such as research, extension, and infrastructure. The present paper focuses on what can be learned to improve outcomes from experiences promoting the increased use of evidence in agricultural policymaking.
Sustainable Land Management and Restoration in the Middle East and North Africa Region: Issues, Challenges, and Recommendations

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-11-30) World Bank

Land management in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) is facing important challenges with degradation and needs to learn from others in order to make progress at scale. Sustainable land management and the restoration of degraded lands are important topics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, not only because of the significant role that land plays in people’s livelihoods, but because of its sensitivity to changes in its management and to the impacts of climate change. The objective of this report is to provide the evidence base for governments and policymakers in developing a regional program on land restoration in MENA, drawing on lessons from Africa and other regions with large-scale efforts. The literature on sustainable land management and restoration of degraded lands is vast. This report reviews relevant global and regional experience and develops an applicable framework for MENA countries.
Sand and Dust Storms in the Middle East and North Africa Region: Sources, Costs, and Solutions

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-11-30) World Bank

Dust storms are capable of transporting sediment over thousands of kilometers, but due to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region’s proximity to the Sahara Desert, the region is one of the dustiest in the world. While natural sources such as the Sahara are the main contributors to dust storms in MENA, land-use changes and human-induced climate change has added anthropogenic sources as well. Like sources, drivers of sand and dust storms are also natural and anthropogenic, as both wind speed and land management can cause them. Dust deposition has wide-ranging health impacts, such as causing and aggravating asthma, bronchitis, respiratory diseases, and infections and lung cancer. Apart from devastating health impacts, dust also impacts the environment, agriculture, transport, and infrastructure. Globally, welfare losses from dust are approximately 3.6 trillion USD, where costs are about 150 billion USD and over 2.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on average in MENA. Besides investing in early warning systems, governments all over the world are designing policies to mitigate the impact of sand and dust storms, both at national and regional levels. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) launched a sand and dust storm warning system that aims to deliver reliable dust storm forecasts through a network of research organizations all over the world. It aims to improve the ability of countries to deliver quick and high-quality sand and dust storm forecasts and knowledge to users through an international partnership of research and operational organizations.
Mali Climate-Smart Agriculture Investment Plan

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-11-27) World Bank Group

This document provides an investment plan for climate-smart agriculture (CSA) in Mali, developed with support of the AAA Initiative and the World Bank, and technical assistanceof the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, the World Agroforestry Centre and the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture, Climate Change and Food Security (CCAFS). It identifies specific interventions that define on-the-ground action that are consistent with Mali’s NDC and national agricultural strategy, which can be funded by public and private sector partners. CSA interventions are designed to increase agricultural productivity, to help farmers, livestock keepers and fisher-people adapt and build resilience to climate risks, and, where appropriate, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.This plan includes a set of 12 key CSA investments for Mali that were developed with strong stakeholder engagement, expert input and scientific evidence. This plan is not intended to be comprehensive but can further include additional projects when more funds will be available. The plan presents a situation analysis of Mali’s national policies, plans and programs in relation to key climate risks, which form the context for key prioritized interventions. Designed project concepts are developed for each of these key investments, including the main project objectives, components and implementation arrangements. These provide a tangible set of project concepts for potential investors and donors to consider for funding. Finally, a general framing for developing a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework for the CSA investment plan (CSAIP) is provided, showing how CSA outcomes relate to other M&E frameworks and other monitoring activities for national-level development priorities.The CSAIP provides the context and evidence for the importance of these projects, and details how they can be economically beneficial and provide food security to the people of Mali. This can help spur investment and funding for CSA to help Mali deliver on its NDC and other national targets.