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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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.
Policy Lessons on Agriculture

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023) Halim, Daniel ; Ubfal, Diego ; Wangchuk, Rigzom

Gender productivity gaps in agriculture are large around the world, even though women comprise 40–50 percent of the agricultural labor force in developing countries. Gender differences in agricultural productivity can be as high as 66 percent and can cost countries up to $105 million annually. Women farmers tend to produce lower output per unit of land than men farmers because of gender-specific constraints, such as unequal access to farm labor, agricultural inputs, lower literacy, childcare responsibilities, limited involvement in cash crop production, and lower participation in farmers’ groups. Women farmers are concentrated in the lower levels of agricultural value chains and are less likely to be active in commercial farming than men. Restrictive gender norms underlie occupational sex segregation in agriculture, leading women to concentrate in low-value crops.
Collection of Policy Notes for the New Somali Government: Unlocking Somalia’s Potential to Stabilize, Grow and Prosper

(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-06) World Bank

The arrival of a new government provides an opportunity to reinvigorate the reform agenda to deliver inclusive growth for the Somali people. Since the establishment of the Provisional Constitution in 2012, Somalia has made commendable progress on many fronts. Macroeconomic stability has been maintained, high levels of indebtedness are being addressed through the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, several sector laws and institutions have been established, and a poverty reduction strategy paper has been developed – the ninth National Development Plan (NDP9). However, much remains to be done and the time has come to mark the next milestone in Somalia’s development trajectory through advancing reforms anchored in the HIPC process. The objective of the collection of policy notes is to provide sector-specific policy advice for the leadership of the new government, drawing on the expertise of the World Bank Group. This overview chapter synthesizes the advice across the sector policy notes and is organized in four sections. The first section outlines the current context. The second section presents the framework for organizing the policy notes. The third section summarizes the advice, and the fourth section concludes.
Turkish Cypriot Economy: Identifying and Analyzing Priority Agri-Food Value Chains

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-03) World Bank Group

Cyprus joined the European Union (EU) in 2004 as a de-facto divided island. The agriculture sector is an important driver for the Turkish Cypriot (TC) economy. The sector has significant linkages to other economic sectors, such as food processing and tourism. Manufacturing, which includes agri-food processing, produces predominantly dairy products and therefore relies heavily on domestic milk production. Agriculture also performs important social protection functions by providing income-generating activities for the rural population, thereby improving household consumption, food security, and the accumulation of durable assets. Improving agri-food value chain linkages can increase farm incomes, improve sustainability, and support the agriculture sector’s contribution to the economy. An analysis of value chains will help to identify business-to-business relationships that connect the chain, methods for increasing efficiency and profitability, and ways to enable businesses to increase productivity and add value. The report consists of three sections: a macro analysis focusing on competitiveness and comparative advantage analysis, a value chain analysis of the TCc halloumi/hellim subsector, and a value chain analysis of the TCc carob subsector. The latter two sections contain specific recommendations and actions to strengthen value chain competitiveness.
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.
Bangladesh Rural Income Diagnostic: Enabling Faster and More Equal Income Growth in Rural Bangladesh

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-11-30) Genoni, Maria Eugenia ; Ahmed, Md Mansur ; Gautam, Madhur ; Tillan, Pablo Antonio

This Rural Income Diagnostic (RID) aims to answer the question: “What are the main opportunities and constraints to faster, sustained income growth for poor and vulnerable households in rural Bangladesh” This analysis is motivated by recent evidence highlighting the centrality of rural areas for poverty reduction in Bangladesh and the need to update our understanding of rural income dynamics to better inform policy solutions. The objective of the analysis is to inform the World Bank Systematic Country Diagnostic and governmentplanning. The analysis focuses on areas where progress can be made in the next five years, consistent with the country’s long-term development path. The focus on short-term priorities to accelerate rural income growth needs to be implemented in a manner that is consistent with, and does not distract from, long-run goals and investments that will have very high future returns, especially for the poor. These include investments in child nutrition, health, and education.
Gaza Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment, June 2021

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) World Bank ; European Union ; United Nations

On May 20, 2021, after 11 days of the worst conflict since 2014, Israel and militants in Gaza agreed to a cessation of hostilities. Casualties were recorded on both sides, including more than 260 dead in Gaza according to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), along with considerable destruction of residential and commercial buildings. While in Israel, 9 Israelis and 3 foreign workers were killed according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In Gaza, the conflict damaged various core physical and digital infrastructure assets, particularly buildings, hospitals and health centers, water and sanitation facilities, and transport, energy and communications networks. Exacerbated by previous trauma, this renewed round of violence having a particularly serious impact on children’s mental health as they are more susceptible to the effects of high levels of stress. Beyond the human tragedy and the subsequent immediate humanitarian relief that was channeled to Gaza, the economic impact of these 11 days of conflict has severely weakened an economy already reduced to a fraction of its potential. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with around 2.1 million individuals living in a total area of 365 square kilometers. For nearly 15 years, the movement of people and goods into and out of Gaza has been under restrictions imposed by the Government of Israel (GoI) due to security concerns. This isolation, in addition to multiple episodes of conflict and a damaging internal political divide, has created a severe humanitarian situation in Gaza that was exacerbated by the recent hostilities.