Publication: World Bank Research Digest, Vol. 10(1)
Loading...
Published
2015-10
ISSN
Date
2015-11-18
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This issue includes the following headings: Climate Change and Rural Livelihoods in Bangladesh; Natural Disasters and Household Well-Being; Road Improvement and Deforestation, Pathways toward Zero-Carbon Electricity; The Need for Broader Information in Climate Change Assessment; Effectiveness of Protected Areas; and Vulnerability to Malnutrition in the West African Sahel
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2015. World Bank Research Digest, Vol. 10(1). © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22997 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Convenient Solutions to an Inconvenient Truth : Ecosystem-based Approaches to Climate Change(World Bank, 2010)Global warming and changes in climate have already had observed impacts on natural ecosystems and species. Natural systems such as wetlands, mangroves, coral reefs, cloud forests, and Arctic and high-latitude ecosystems are especially vulnerable to climate-induced disturbances. However, enhanced protection and management of biological resources and habitats can mitigate the impacts and contribute to solutions as nations and communities strive to adapt to climate change. Biodiversity is the foundation and mainstay of agriculture, forests, and fisheries. Biological resources provide the raw materials for livelihoods, agriculture, medicines, trade, tourism, and industry. Forests, grasslands, freshwater, and marine and other natural ecosystems provide a range of services often not recognized in national economic accounts but vital to human welfare: regulation of water flows and water quality, flood control, pollination, decontamination, carbon sequestration, soil conservation, and nutrient and hydrological cycling. Current efforts to address climate change focus mainly on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by adopting cleaner energy strategies and on reducing the vulnerability of communities at risk by improving infrastructure to meet new energy and water needs. This book offers a compelling argument for including ecosystem-based approaches to mitigation and adaptation as an essential pillar in national strategies to address climate change. Such ecosystem-based strategies can offer cost-effective, proven, and sustainable solutions that contribute to, and complement, other national and regional adaptation strategies.Publication Convenient Solutions to an Inconvenient Truth : Ecosystem-based Approaches to Climate Change(World Bank, 2009-06-01)The World Bank's mission is to alleviate poverty and support sustainable development. Climate change is a serious environmental challenge that could undermine these goals. Since the industrial revolution, the mean surface temperature of earth has increased an average 2 degree Celsius due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Most of this change has occurred in the past 30 to 40 years, and the rate of increase is accelerating. These rising temperatures will have significant impacts at a global scale and at local and regional levels. While it remains important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reverse climate change in the long run, many of the impacts of climate change are already in evidence. As a result, governments, communities, and civil society are increasingly concerned with anticipating the future effects of climate change while searching for strategies to mitigate, and adapt to, its current and future effects. Global warming and changes in climate have already had observed impacts on natural ecosystems and species. Natural systems such as wetlands, mangroves, coral reefs, cloud forests, arctic and high latitude ecosystems are especially vulnerable to climate-induced disturbances. Current efforts to address climate change focus mainly on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly through cleaner energy strategies, and on attempting to reduce vulnerability of communities at risk by improving infrastructure to meet new energy and water needs. This report attempts to set out a compelling argument for including ecosystem-based approaches to mitigation and adaptation as a third and essential pillar in national strategies to address climate change. The report is targeted at both Bank task teams and country clients. Such ecosystem-based strategies can offer cost-effective, proven and sustainable solutions contributing to, and complementing, other national and regional adaptation strategies.Publication Agriculture and the Clean Development Mechanism(2011-04-01)Many experts believe that low-cost mitigation opportunities in agriculture are abundant and comparable in scale to those found in the energy sector. They are mostly located in developing countries and have to do with how land is used. By investing in projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), countries can tap these opportunities to meet their own Kyoto Protocol obligations. The CDM has been successful in financing some types of agricultural projects, including projects that capture methane or use agricultural by-products as an energy source. But agricultural land-use projects are scarce under the CDM. This represents a missed opportunity to promote sustainable rural development since land-use projects that sequester carbon in soils can help reverse declining soil fertility, a root cause of stagnant agricultural productivity. This paper reviews the process leading to current CDM implementation rules and describes how the rules, in combination with challenging features of land-use projects, raise transaction costs and lower demand for land-use credits. Procedures by which developed countries assess their own mitigation performance are discussed as a way of redressing current constraints on CDM investments. Nevertheless, even with improvements to the CDM, an under-investment in agricultural land-use projects is likely, since there are hurdles to capturing associated ancillary benefits privately. Alternative approaches outside the CDM are discussed, including those that build on recent decisions taken by governments in Copenhagen and Cancun.Publication Assessing the Potential Consequences of Climate Destabilization in Latin America(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-01)Estimating the potential costs of climate destabilization is not a trivial matter. Potential climate impacts have multiple consequences, some of which can be monetized while others are beyond the reach of standard economic tools. A full assessment of the implications of climate impacts often cannot be completed because many of the consequences are only partly known. This report summarizes data recently made available, through the portfolio of adaptation activities in the region, on some of the damages induced by climate destabilization. These include impacts from hurricane intensification, glacier retreat, and increased exposure to tropical vector diseases, coral bleaching, and composite costs of climate change in the particularly vulnerable Caribbean Basin. Other costs are becoming evident but they still cannot be estimated. Most worrisome among these are the potential implications from Amazon dieback which, if realized, will drastically affect the water cycle in the region as well as environmental services essential to economic activity in the region, with wider global implications. The report refers to destabilization in the title as recognition, that the region is now facing impacts from major, destabilizing changes in its climate.Publication Investing in a More Sustainable Indonesia : Country Environmental Analysis 2009 - Main Report(World Bank, 2009-10-01)The objective of this Country Environmental Analysis (CEA) is to highlight the underlying challenges and opportunities for Indonesia's environment and management of its natural resources in order to guide the World Bank support to Indonesian institutions for more sustainable development. Rather, the CEA sets the broader context (chapter one) and economic costs of environmental degradation (chapter two) in order to identify underlying challenges and opportunities. These are divided into two sets of priorities those related to environmental governance and those that are more sectoral in nature. Environmental governance encompasses the decentralized framework for environmental management (chapter three), enabling policies for greater environment and resource sustainability (chapter four) and building environmental constituencies (chapter five). The sectoral challenges that are most important for Indonesian development are vulnerability to climate change (chapter six), land use and climate change (chapter seven) and energy and climate change (chapter eight). The report concludes with options for a more sustainable Indonesia, including recommendations for how the World Bank can more effectively invest in light of the CEA findings (chapter nine).
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Gender Gaps in Property Ownership in Sub-Saharan Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-08)Women's ownership, use, and control over property matter for their well-being and agency and can influence outcomes for the second generation -- women's daughters and sons. Additionally, gender gaps in property ownership induce allocative inefficiencies and foregone economic output, thus having economywide implications. This paper uses data for 28 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to shine a spotlight on gaps between men and women in land and housing (property) ownership and analyze patterns across and within countries. The results indicate that men are about three times as likely as women to claim sole ownership over property. Gender gaps are smaller if joint ownership is taken into consideration, but still materially disadvantage women. Men are significantly more likely to own property than women even after controlling for a host of other factors. This paper is an important step toward a better understanding of gender gaps in property ownership in Africa and outlines an agenda for future data collection and analytic efforts.Publication Unlocking the 'Triple Dividend' of Resilience : Why Investing in Disaster Risk Management Pays Off(Overseas Development Institute, London, and World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-03-18)The risk of a disaster can cause economic losses even before a disaster strikes. Investing in disaster resilience, therefore, can yield a ‘triple dividend’ by (1) avoiding losses when disasters strike; (2) unlocking development potential by stimulating innovation and bolstering economic activity in a context of reduced disaster-related background risk for investment; and (3) through the synergies of the social, environment and economic co-benefits of disaster risk management investments even if a disaster does not happen for many years.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Flight Capital as a Portfolio Choice(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2001-01)This article sets flight capital in the context of portfolio choice, focusing on the proportion of private wealth that is held abroad. There are large regional differences in this proportion, ranging from 5 percent in South Asia to 40 percent in Africa. The authors explain cross-country differences in portfolio choice using variables that proxy differences in the risk-adjusted rate of return on capital. They apply the results to three policy issues: how the East Asian crisis affected domestic capital outflows; the effect of the International Monetary Fund-World Bank debt relief initiative for heavily indebted poor countries on capital repatriation; and why so much of Africa's private wealth is held outside the continent.Publication A Comparative Perspective on Poverty Reduction in Brazil, China, and India(World Bank, 2011-07-02)Brazil, China, and India have seen falling poverty in their reform periods, but to varying degrees and for different reasons. History left China with favorable initial conditions for rapid poverty reduction through market-led economic growth; at the outset of the reform process there were many distortions to be removed and a relatively low inequality of access to the opportunities so created, though inequality has risen markedly since. By concentrating such opportunities in the hands of the better off, prior inequalities in various dimensions handicapped poverty reduction in both Brazil and India. Brazil's recent success in complementing market-oriented reforms with progressive social policies has helped it achieve a higher proportionate rate of poverty reduction than India, although Brazil has been less successful in terms of economic growth. In the wake of its steep rise in inequality, China might learn from Brazil's success with such policies. India needs to do more to assure that poor people are able to participate in both the country's growth process and its social policies; here there are lessons from both China and Brazil. All three countries have learned how important macroeconomic stability is to poverty reduction.