Publication: Supporting Environmental Sustainability: An Evaluation of World Bank Group Experience, 1990-2007
Loading...
Date
2008-08
ISSN
Published
2008-08
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The Bank Group's lending and non-lending support for environmental sustainability has increased and improved over the past 15 years. But the institution needs to raise the priority it accords to this area of rising concern, strengthen internal cooperation, and work more effectively with its government and private partners to help countries to get better results in addressing environmental challenges. The Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) should jointly develop and commit to a new environmental strategy and ensure that environmental priorities enter fully into their strategic directions as well as in regional and country assistance programs, focusing in particular on underperforming regions and sectors and countries with the most significant environmental problems. The Bank Group should step up its support for public-private partnerships and take greater advantage of the private sector's potential for technology development and transfer, transformation toward clean and low-carbon technologies, and sustainable supply chains, while continuing to help countries strengthen environmental governance.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2008. Supporting Environmental Sustainability: An Evaluation of World Bank Group Experience, 1990-2007. IEG Fast Track Brief. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/10596 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication GEF and Small Island Developing States(Washington, DC, 2005)The report highlights the GEF's work with small island developing states (SIDS) on key natural resource issues -climate change, biodiversity, international waters, and land degradation. It also describes the GEF's strategic priorities for SIDS over the next five years, recognizing the interrelatedness of SIDS' global environmental problems and their links to economic and social development. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) hopes this report will contribute to discussions at the International Meeting for the 10-Year Review of the Barbados Program of Action. The GEF fully supports the Barbados Program of Action as a fundamental framework for the sustainable development of SIDS and looks forward to continuing to work with SIDS on its implementation in areas consistent with the GEF's mandate.Publication India : Environmental Sustainability in the 1990s, A Country Assistance Evaluation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002)India's environmental problems are deep-rooted and severe. Estimates of annual environmental damage range from 4.5 percent to 8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), in line with annual economic growth. Since 1990 the World Bank has lent India 1.94 billion dollars for 19 projects to mitigate environmental damage and another 97 million dollars was granted under global environmental facility (GEF) and Montreal protocol trust funds for four projects to protect the global environment. The Bank has also supported a spectrum of economic and sector work (ESW) that address environmental issues based on country assistance strategies. The report identifies eight conclusions for the Bank s future environmental assistance to India: integrate safeguards earlier in the project cycle; provide alternatives to public sector management of water supply and sewerage systems; greatly expand support of sanitation programs; air pollution needs to be targeted as a priority measure; step up efforts to promote rational pricing of natural resources; monitoring and enforcement of environmental standards is lagging and undermines the whole regulatory effort; links between poverty reduction and ecological balance must be more fully documented; and better recognition of global environmental threats will also address local concerns.Publication Monitoring Environmental Sustainability(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-12-09)This report presents a concise review of the major environmental and natural resources issues at the global and national level over the coming two decades. The environmental issues reviewed include air pollution and deterioration of air quality, greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, water quality, scarcity and access, land and soil degradation, deforestation and forest degradation, natural disaster, loss of biodiversity and protected areas, and governance and institutions for environmental and natural resource management. Besides providing an environment outlook, the report tackles the issue of monitoring also from the supply side. It identifies the relevant data and indicator sets available at the global level and country level to capture the global and locally relevant environmental issues with the underlying objective of pinpointing at data gaps. It concludes with a set of recommendations for moving forward on the monitoring agenda. Overall, the threats from climate change caused by Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity loss, water pollution and scarcity as well as pressure on land as well as worsening ocean's state and biodiversity have to be taken under close observation in the period over the next 20 years. The environment challenges that the world faces are not trivial and some of them require immediate action. Action, in turn, requires reliable and accurate information. The second part of the report looks at information from the supply side. It identifies the relevant data and indicator sets available at the global level and country level to capture the global and locally relevant environmental issues with the underlying objective of informing and advising decision making and to identify the data gaps.Publication Environmental Priorities and Poverty Reduction : A Country Environmental Analysis for Colombia(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)The analysis of the cost of environmental degradation conducted as part of the country environmental analysis (CEA) shows that the most costly problems associated with environmental degradation are urban and indoor air pollution; inadequate water supply, sanitation, and hygiene; natural disasters (such as flooding and landslides); and land degradation. The burden of these costs falls most heavily on vulnerable segments of the population. To address these problems, this report identifies a number of cost-effective policy interventions that could be adopted in the short and medium terms to support sustainable development goals. In recent decades, considerable progress has been made in addressing the water and the forestry environmental agendas. The impact of environmental degradation on the most vulnerable groups suggests the need to increase emphasis on environmental health issues. However, the environmental management agenda has yet to catch up with this shift in priorities from watershed and forestry to environmental health problems because mechanisms in the current institutional structure to signal these changes are not yet in place. Improved monitoring and dissemination of information on environmental outcomes, assignment of accountability for environmental actions and outcomes, and involvement of a broad range of stakeholders are three important mechanisms to allow these signals to be picked up.Publication Turkey Energy and Environment Review : Synthesis Report(Washington, DC, 2003-12)Gaps in knowledge about the interface between energy and the environment, were identified sometime in the late 1990s, and a number of studies were then conceived to address this knowledge gap, and advance the level of understanding, by collecting additional information, through specialized analyses. This Synthesis Report summarizes the results of ten studies, collectively referred to as the "Energy and Environment Review", covering energy demand forecasting; environmental issues associated with the coal/lignite, mining and power generation sub-sector; potential of co-generation in Turkey; assessment of transmission and distribution loss reduction; improved management of emissions from non-power sectors; improvement of petroleum fuels quality; and, technical support to implement various energy system analyses. This report comprises a discussion of the issues relating to the energy and environment; a description of the key findings and recommendations; and a summary an conclusions.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Remarks at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10-12)World Bank Group President David Malpass discussed biodiversity and climate change being closely interlinked, with terrestrial and marine ecosystems serving as critically important carbon sinks. At the same time climate change acts as a direct driver of biodiversity and ecosystem services loss. The World Bank has financed biodiversity conservation around the world, including over 116 million hectares of Marine and Coastal Protected Areas, 10 million hectares of Terrestrial Protected Areas, and over 300 protected habitats, biological buffer zones and reserves. The COVID pandemic, biodiversity loss, climate change are all reminders of how connected we are. The recovery from this pandemic is an opportunity to put in place more effective policies, institutions, and resources to address biodiversity loss.Publication Media and Messages for Nutrition and Health(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) has experienced rapid and significant economic growth over the past decade. However, poor nutritional outcomes remain a concern. Rates of childhood undernutrition are particularly high in remote, rural, and upland areas. Media have the potential to play an important role in shaping health and nutrition–related behaviors and practices as well as in promoting sociocultural and economic development that might contribute to improved nutritional outcomes. This report presents the results of a media audit (MA) that was conducted to inform the development and production of mass media advocacy and communication strategies and materials with a focus on maternal and child health and nutrition that would reach the most people from the poorest communities in northern Lao PDR. Making more people aware of useful information, essential services and products and influencing them to use these effectively is the ultimate goal of mass media campaigns, and the MA measures the potential effectiveness of media efforts to reach this goal. The effectiveness of communication channels to deliver health and nutrition messages to target beneficiaries to ensure maximum reach and uptake can be viewed in terms of preferences, satisfaction, and trust. Overall, the four most accessed media channels for receiving information among communities in the study areas were village announcements, mobile phones, television, and out-of-home (OOH) media. Of the accessed media channels, the top three most preferred channels were village announcements (40 percent), television (26 percent), and mobile phones (19 percent). In terms of trust, village announcements were the most trusted source of information (64 percent), followed by mobile phones (14 percent) and television (11 percent). Hence of all the media channels, village announcements are the most preferred, have the most satisfied users, and are the most trusted source of information in study communities from four provinces in Lao PDR with some of the highest burden of childhood undernutrition.Publication Making Procurement Work Better – An Evaluation of the World Bank’s Procurement System(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-06)This evaluation assesses the results, successes, and challenges of the World Bank 2016 procurement reform. Procurements acquire the works, goods, and services necessary to achieve the World Bank’s project development outcomes. The World Bank’s procurement processes must ensure that clients get the best value for every development dollar. In 2016, the World Bank reformed its procurement system for Investment Project Financing and launched a new procurement framework aimed at enhancing the Bank’s development effectiveness through better procurement. The reform sought to reduce procurement bottlenecks impeding project performance and modernize procurement systems. It emphasized cutting edge international good practice principles and was intended to be accompanied by procurement capacity strengthening to help client countries. This evaluation offers three recommendations to scale up reform implementation and enhance portfolio and project performance: (i) Improve change management support for the reform’s implementation. (ii) Strategically strengthen country-level procurement capacity. (iii) Consistently manage the full spectrum of procurement risks to maximize project success.Publication South Asia Development Update, April 2024: Jobs for Resilience(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-02)South Asia is expected to continue to be the fastest-growing emerging market and developing economy (EMDE) region over the next two years. This is largely thanks to robust growth in India, but growth is also expected to pick up in most other South Asian economies. However, growth in the near-term is more reliant on the public sector than elsewhere, whereas private investment, in particular, continues to be weak. Efforts to rein in elevated debt, borrowing costs, and fiscal deficits may eventually weigh on growth and limit governments' ability to respond to increasingly frequent climate shocks. Yet, the provision of public goods is among the most effective strategies for climate adaptation. This is especially the case for households and farms, which tend to rely on shifting their efforts to non-agricultural jobs. These strategies are less effective forms of climate adaptation, in part because opportunities to move out of agriculture are limited by the region’s below-average employment ratios in the non-agricultural sector and for women. Because employment growth is falling short of working-age population growth, the region fails to fully capitalize on its demographic dividend. Vibrant, competitive firms are key to unlocking the demographic dividend, robust private investment, and workers’ ability to move out of agriculture. A range of policies could spur firm growth, including improved business climates and institutions, the removal of financial sector restrictions, and greater openness to trade and capital flows.Publication Economic Recovery(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04-06)World Bank Group President David Malpass spoke about the world facing major challenges, including COVID, climate change, rising poverty and inequality and growing fragility and violence in many countries. He highlighted vaccines, working closely with Gavi, WHO, and UNICEF, the World Bank has conducted over one hundred capacity assessments, many even more before vaccines were available. The World Bank Group worked to achieve a debt service suspension initiative and increased transparency in debt contracts at developing countries. The World Bank Group is finalizing a new climate change action plan, which includes a big step up in financing, building on their record climate financing over the past two years. He noted big challenges to bring all together to achieve GRID: green, resilient, and inclusive development. Janet Yellen, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, mentioned focusing on vulnerable people during the pandemic. Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, focused on giving everyone a fair shot during a sustainable recovery. All three commented on the importance of tackling climate change.