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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Valuing Green Infrastructure: A Case Study of the Vakhsh River Basin, Tajikistan

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-14) World Bank

This report outlines the main results of a study conducted to assess the potential role of landscape restoration/nature-based solutions/green infrastructure in the Vakhsh River Basin, Tajikistan, to reduce the impacts of soil erosion on the hydropower cascade, increase agricultural productivity, improve livelihoods, and inform about investment opportunities. This assessment finds sediment sources and loadings in the Vakhsh River Basin, considers the potential correlation between soil erosion and sedimentation in hydropower reservoirs, proposes possible and cost-effective landscape restoration measures, and estimates the value of ecosystem services provided. The study also presents recommendations for implementing the proposed interventions for the Vakhsh River Basin and for scaling up to other degraded areas throughout the country.
Green Growth in North Macedonia‘s Agriculture Sector

(Washington, DC, 2023-03-23) World Bank

This report focuses on the agri-food sector in North Macedonia and investigates the potential and necessary actions for adopting a green growth trajectory. Agri-food is a key sector in need of transformation to achieve green growth in the country. The sector has great economic importance, and it is vulnerable to climate change and other environmental risks, which will compound current sector inefficiencies, including declining competitiveness. This report aims to assess: (i) the actions needed to re-focus agricultural support priorities in a manner that reflects green growth ambitions; (ii) policy financing implications; and (iii) the availability and capacity of effective policy implementation mechanisms. Finally, the potential impacts of greening agriculture support on farm efficiency are assessed and discussed.
Digital Climate Information and Agriculture Advisory Delivery Mechanisms in West Africa

(Washington, DC, 2023-03-21) World Bank

By advancing knowledge on digital climate information and agriculture advisory services (‘agromet services’) in support of West Africa’s farmers, this report has two objectives. First, it aims to identify priority actions for promoting digital agromet services under the West Africa Food System Resilience Program (FSRP) with a focus on Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, and Togo. Second, the report strives to provide insights on the required ingredients for creating viable agromet delivery models to all stakeholders involved in the production and dissemination of weather and climate information. These stakeholders include representatives from the Ministries of Agriculture (MOAs), National Meteorological Services (NMSs), Disaster Risk Management (DRM) specialists, interested parties from the private sector and civil society, and development practitioners. This report’s findings were obtained through i) a benchmarking analysis of ten case studies examining existing delivery mechanisms of digital agromet services, and ii) semi-structured interviews with public institutions complemented by desk research. Case study results indicate that providers of agromet services should bundle different service types and diversify revenue streams to ensure that their offerings are impactful and viable. The report also finds that increasing levels of trust between the public and the private sector would facilitate the creation of innovative climate information delivery models based on public-private engagement (PPE). Other key recommendations to enhance agromet services include continuing to invest in the technical and human capacity of the region’s NMSs, increasing collaboration between NMSs and agricultural extension services, and establishing clear regulatory frameworks on digitalization and open data.
Spearheading Vietnam’s Green Agricultural Transformation: Moving to Low-Carbon Rice

(Washington, DC, 2022) World Bank

This report focuses on promoting low-carbon rice production systems in Vietnam. There are many sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within the agricultural sector in Vietnam, including along value chains and within the whole agri-food context. However, because rice production is so important to the country and to emission reductions in agriculture, this report focuses on known actions that can be rapidly upscaled, along with other complementary actions to reduce GHG emissions from rice production systems. The report covers emission reduction pathways in rice. This report assesses agronomic and other options that offer technically and economically feasible pathways to promote low-carbon rice. Some options have been piloted in Vietnam and require significant upscaling at the farm-level. This report considers challenges and practical actions and policy reforms to address these challenges for Vietnam’s low-carbon transition (LCT) in rice.
Learning from Tropical Cyclone Seroja: Building Disaster and Climate Resilience in Timor-Leste

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12-21) World Bank

Tropical Cyclone (TC) Seroja impacted Timor-Leste with heavy torrential rains over a 24-hour period on April 4, 2021, with an average intensity of over 14 millimeters per hour and a peak intensity of over 70 millimeters per hour. The heavy precipitation and the country’s natural topography led to flash floods, landslides, and liquefaction, causing significant damage. The disaster affected all 13 municipalities of Timor-Leste, caused at least 44 fatalities, damaged critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, water supply infrastructure, schools, and health facilities, and impacted rural areas and agricultural assets. This report is part of the World Bank’s response to the Government’s request for support in assessing damages as well as longer-term implications for disaster risk management. It will serve as inputs to a more detailed Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) under development and could inform the methodology of future similar remote-based assessments. It is also a contribution to the policy dialogue with the Governmentand its partners about how to plan and invest more effectively to mitigate disasters in the future.
Ukraine: Building Climate Resilience in Agriculture and Forestry

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12) World Bank

Ukraine has made impressive progress on key reforms and restored macro-financial stability, but weak growth and poverty remain a concern. Despite these economic challenges, Ukraine recognizes climate change as the most consequential factor this century, affecting the economy and future generations. This study is the first detailed assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on Ukraine, with a focus on agriculture, a key driver of the economy and jobs. The analysis provides an insight into the spatial dimension of climate change, how these changes would be experienced in different oblasts in the country. This report is supported by four background technical reports on climate projections, impact on agriculture, impact on forests and distributional analysis. In addition, climate datasets of over two terabytes generated for this assessment are housed at the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Institute, Kyiv. The results of this study are expected to inform Ukraine’s national adaptation strategy, which is now being finalized. This study also paves the way for the development of sub-national and sectoral adaptation strategies with the spatially disaggregated information that has been generated for all oblasts.
Realizing Scale in Smallholder-Based Agriculture: Policy Options for the Philippines

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) World Bank

In recent decades, the agriculture and fisheries sector in the Philippines has grown but has clearly not lived up to its potential. Philippine agriculture has weathered the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic better than the overall national economy. Recent government reports highlight the difficulty of modernizing Philippine agriculture under circumstances in which farmland is continuously fragmented, institutional arrangements for farm-to-market coordination and distribution are underdeveloped, and large parts of the food economy experience significant logistical bottlenecks and costs. This report combines results from three activities undertaken from mid-2020 to the first months of 2021. This report has five chapters. Chapter 2 reviews recent policy developments and some current priorities of the Department of Agriculture (DA). Chapter 3 describes the spatial analysis, highlighting the differences in agriculture’s transformative potential in different regions of the country. Given that spatial strategies are a relatively new departure in Philippine agriculture, Chapter 4 draws on experience at the national and subnational levels of other Asian countries to derive positive lessons for implementing them in the Philippines.
Agricultural Land Use and Sustainable Livelihoods in the Mekong Delta: Alternative Scenarios and Policy Implications

(Washington, DC, 2021) World Bank

The Mekong Delta (MKD) is Vietnam’s most productive agricultural region, and its agroeconomy is well integrated into international markets. Nevertheless, there are increasing threats to the MKD’s agricultural achievements, and other serious questions are emerging about the sustainability of many of the prevailing production systems. Sea level rise, caused by climate change, is increasingly threatening the viability of once protected cropping systems in the coastal areas. This study seeks to contribute to the planning effort for the MKD by addressing some analytical gaps, especially around the technical feasibility and socioeconomic characteristics of alternative agricultural production systems in the context of the evolving natural conditions in the region, and more specifically in the MKD’s three subregions (that is, Upper, Middle, and Coastal). The primary purpose of the study is to fill in that gap by reviewing and assessing different livelihood models and land-use scenarios in the MKD using multi-criteria of technical feasibly, climate change, environmental adaptability, economic and financial, and social aspects to inform the ongoing agricultural transformation in the MKD.
Future Foodscapes: Re-imagining Agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-11) Morris, Michael ; Sebastian, Ashwini Rekha ; Perego, Viviana Maria Eugenia

Agriculture and food systems in Latin America and the Caribbean Region (LAC) are rightfully recognized as among the most successful on the planet: they have fed a fast-growing population, facilitated economic development, enabled urbanization, generated substantial exports, and helped drive down global hunger and poverty. Yet despite these significant contributions, the public image of the region’s agriculture and food systems as dynamic, productive, and efficient reflectsonly part of a more complicated reality. The impressive achievements have come at the expense of significant environmental and health costs. LAC agriculture uses over one-third of the region’s land area, consumes nearly three-quarters of the region’s fresh water resources, and generates almost one-half of the region’s greenhouse gas emissions. And despite the consistent food production surpluses, millions of people in LAC regularly go hungry or suffer from malnutrition and related diseases. In short, the region’s successes in feeding the population and exporting food to the rest of the world are exacting high costs on people and on the environment.
Impacts of Climate Change on Georgia’s Coastal Zone: Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Options

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-11) World Bank

The higher-level purpose of this study is to provide information to be used to raise the ambition of Georgia’s nationally determined contribution (NDCs) and to consider adaptation targets for the Black Sea coast of Georgia. The study also aims to highlight how supporting a blue economy can accelerate the implementation of adaptation measures required to reduce climate risks and contribute towards the region’s socioeconomic development and environmental conservation. The methodology used in the present study consists of five main steps: define the geographic scope; review available climate change projections; identify key climate risks and vulnerabilities for coastal Georgia; assess the impact of climate change on economic sectors and infrastructure, and possible adaptation options; and prioritize initial recommendations and key climate adaptation actions. The approach used to evaluate the various impacts on coastal Georgia consisted of a qualitative analysis and expert input from international and local teams. This included an assessment of feasible adaptation options. Discussions with local experts and government agencies were also carried out in order to gain further details of vulnerable areas and evaluate both the potential for specific adaptation measures to yield economic benefits as well as the feasibility and acceptability of these options. The report is organized in six chapters. Chapter one introduces the purpose, objectives, methodology, and limitations for the study. Chapter two provides an overview of Georgia’s coastal zone economic sectors, while chapter three provides an overview of Georgia’s coastal climate and climate change impacts. Chapter four presents the priority risks for coastal Georgia, based on the existing cost of environmental degradation estimates and climate change projections. Chapter five discusses the impacts of climate change on Georgian coastal economic sectors, health and infrastructure, through the prism of the priority risks described in the previous chapter and presents a menu of adaptation options. Chapter six discusses the conclusions of the study and makes initial information, institutional, and investment recommendations, and key actions, including key actions required to implement climate adaptation on the ground.