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Lemke, Jana

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J. Lemke
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Last updated:September 11, 2025
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Jana Lemke joined the World Bank in 2022 under the German Carlo Schmid Program. She works as a consultant in the Climate Change Unit, looking at the links among climate change, environmental degradation, and marginalization. Before joining the World Bank, she supported the project management of climate change adaptation and mitigation, as well as ecosystem protection projects in Central Africa and Southeast Asia. She holds a master’s degree in international development studies from the Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany.
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https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/40616

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    Settling in the Zone: Urbanization and Flood Exposure Trends since 1985, Europe and Central Asia
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-12) Rentschler, Jun; Lemke, Jana; Avner, Paolo
    As countries rapidly urbanize, settlements are expanding into hazardous flood zones. This analysis considers spatial urbanization patterns and the evolution of flood exposure between 1985 and 2020 in 55 countries in the Europe and Central Asia region. The evidence in this report suggests that across Europe and Central Asia, urbanization in flood zones can accelerate even as urbanization overall is slowing down. The causes behind this trend are wide-ranging, including rational risk taking for economic opportunities (e.g. coastal developments for tourism), as well as rising scarcity of safe land, a lack of risk-informed planning, inadequate zoning and land use regulations, or weak enforcement. These findings suggest that local planners and authorities play a key role in managing and counteracting flood exposure. These findings also highlight how comprehensive hazard data and continuous monitoring of urbanization and flood exposure patterns can help adapt planning and infrastructure investments and guide timely interventions. While land scarcity and geographic constraints can mean that flood zones cannot always be avoided, careful planning of protection systems and disaster preparedness are key to balance flood risk with objectives of urban and economic development.
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    Within Reach: Navigating the Political Economy of Decarbonization
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-16) Hallegatte, Stéphane; Godinho, Catrina; Rentschler, Jun; Avner, Paolo; Dorband, Ira Irina; Knudsen, Camilla; Lemke, Jana; Mealy, Penny
    Despite global commitments made through the Paris Agreement in 2015 to combat climate change, their translation into national policies has been slow, raising concerns about the feasibility of achieving climate targets. While policies face many obstacles, the political economy is one of the primary impediments to climate action, and urgency to reduce emissions makes slow and gradual approach increasingly insufficient. The report attempts to identify key political economy barriers and explore options to address them through the 4i Framework, considering how institutions, interests, ideas, and influence affect the political economy. The report offers a practical guide to help countries address political economy barriers when implementing climate policies with three prongs: (1) Climate Governance: governments can adapt their institutional framework, in ways that fit with the pre-existing political economy and moving from opportunistic and unstable to strategic and stable climate institutions. Establishing strategic climate governance institutions – such as climate change framework laws, long-term strategies, or just transition frameworks - can alter the political economy, set clear objectives, improve coordination across actors, and improve the ability to monitor progress and hold decisionmakers accountable. (2) Policy Sequencing: policies can be prioritized and sequenced based on dynamic efficiency, considering not only the economic costs and benefits, but also their feasibility and long-term impact on the political economy. The Climate Policy Feasibility Frontier tool can help identify policies that can overcome short-term political economy obstacles, and at the same time improve capacities and change the political economy to facilitate further climate action. (3) Policy Design and Engagement, considers the effective implementation of climate reforms by tactically navigating political economy constraints. This involves engaging citizens to create process legitimacy and reducing and managing distributional effects, not only across but also within income groups.