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Green Digital Transformation: How to Sustainably Close the Digital Divide and Harness Digital Tools for Climate Action

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-28) World Bank

Climate change is unfolding amid the greatest information and communication revolution in human history. From e-commerce and social media to smart manufacturing and precision farming, digital technologies have become prevalent in all aspects of economic and social life. Digital technologies also have the potential to shape climate change action. Green digital transformation can help countries adapt effectively to the impacts of climate change and create greener growth pathways. Doing this means combining a focus on digital transformation and inclusion with a strategic and sustainable use of digital technologies to address climate change. Green Digital Transformation: How to Sustainably Close the Digital Divide and Harness Digital Tools for Climate Action illuminates the channels through which digital technologies intersect with climate change, and it proposes a path to low-emissions applications of digital technologies to help countries mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Within Reach: Navigating the Political Economy of Decarbonization (Advance Edition)

(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.
Braced for Impact: Reforming Kazakhstan’s National Financial Holding for Development Effectiveness and Market Creation

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-05) Melecky, Martin ; Di Benedetta, Pasquale ; Ahmad Fontan, Ismael ; Jambal, Ganbaatar ; Noel, Michel

Braced for Impact: Reforming Kazakhstan’s National Financial Holding for Development Effectiveness and Market Creation offers a framework for assessing the readiness of development finance institutions (DFIs) and their conglomerates to deliver credible development impact and create financial markets. The framework focuses on accountability for impact, responsible leveraging of entrusted capital, holistic risk management, and proper governance. It is used to assess Baiterek, Kazakhstan’s national financial holding—a conglomerate of DFIs—and to derive policy options and practical recommendations for the given country context. If the recommended reforms are implemented, Baiterek will be braced for positive impact on Kazakhstani firms, households, and the environment while also helping create deeper financial markets through robust mobilization of private capital. A reformed Baiterek could become a leading global DFI conglomerate and a role model for similar institutions in other countries. However, if too few or none of the recommended reforms are undertaken, Baiterek will need to brace for further criticism from unhappy stakeholders.
Greening National Development Financial Institutions: Trends, Lessons Learned, and Ways Forward (Overview)

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-10-06) Dalhuijsen, Emma ; Gutierrez, Eva ; Kliatskova, Tatsiana ; Mok, Rachel ; Regelink, Martijn Gert Jan

National Development Financial Institutions (NDFIs) are crucial for mobilizing the required financing, including from private sources, to reach countries’ climate and environmental (C&E) objectives. Funding needed to achieve countries’ C&E goals is in the trillions of dollars, with many countries also facing significant fiscal and economic constraints. NDFIs are well positioned to overcome the market barriers associated with green investments and catalyze private-sector financing. The main purpose of “Greening National Development Financial Institutions: Trends, Lessons Learned, and Ways Forward” is to examine the current trends and recommend policy actions for “greening” NDFIs. This report identifies key steps NDFIs can take to catalyze finance toward countries’ C&E objectives and manage C&E risks. The assessment of NDFIs’ C&E practices is based on a review of key elements of NDFI operations and their institutional setup. The work draws from the results of a survey conducted by the World Bank of greening practices within NDFIs based in countries in a range of regions and income levels, as well as on in-depth case studies of four NDFIs: Los Fideicomisos Instituidos en Relación con la Agricultura, Korea Development Bank, Türkiye Sinai Kalkinma Bankasi, and Development Bank of Southern Africa.
Reality Check: Lessons from 25 Policies Advancing a Low-Carbon Future

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-19) World Bank

To address the myriad challenges posed by global climate change, countries at all income levels have put in place a diverse set of policies over the past three decades. Many governments have already made significant progress in their efforts to decarbonize, creating a rich history of implementation experiences that provides important lessons for how to successfully advance climate policy goals in a variety of different economic, cultural, and political contexts. Despite this progress, the transition to a net zero future continues to face significant barriers, including the need for large investment, a lack of institutional capacity, and challenging political economy issues. ‘Reality Check: Lessons from 25 Policies Advancing a Low-Carbon Future’ identifies key policy approaches that countries are taking to decarbonize their economies. The report classifies policies into five categories: 1. Planning for a future with zero net emissions; 2. Getting the pricing and taxes right; 3. Facilitating and triggering transitions in key systems, such as energy and food; 4. Getting the finance flowing, particularly by incentivizing private sector investment; 5. Ensuring a just transition that protects the poor. ‘Reality Check: Lessons from 25 Policies Advancing a Low-Carbon Future’ fills a critical research gap by documenting low-carbon policy trends and providing a series of case studies across sectors and geographies. The 25 case studies furnish country contexts and policy details, examine results and impacts, and outline key takeaways and lessons learned for enabling further ambition in achieving emissions reductions. The report contributes to an evolving analytical agenda on how to reduce carbon emissions while achieving economic development and the strategic transition to a greener, more resilient, and more inclusive future.
The Commons: Drivers of Change and Opportunities for Africa

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-17) Leyronas, Stéphanie ; Coriat, Benjamin ; Nubukpo, Kako ; editors

'The Commons' explores the many forms of development being championed by Africa's residents, users, and citizens. In addition to managing property and shared tangible and intangible resources collectively, communities are experimenting with a concept of 'commoning' founded on values such as community, engagement, reciprocity, and trust. In practice, their approach takes the form of land-based commons, housing cooperatives, hybrid cultural spaces or places for innovation, and collaborative digital platforms. The purpose of this book, where observation of historical and recent practices converges with new theories within commons scholarship, is not to promote commons themselves. Rather, it examines the tensions, drivers of change, and opportunities that surround commons dynamics in Africa. This book highlights the abundance of commons-based entrepreneurial processes in Sub-Saharan Africa and shows that partnerships between African public authorities and communities involved in the commons can be powerful drivers of sustainable development for the continent.
Social Protection Program Spending and Household Welfare in Ghana

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-15) Raju, Dhushyanth ; Younger, Stephen D. ; Dadzie, Christabel E.

Ghana administers multiple social protection programs. One of these, pensions provided by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust, has a long history, but others—the Ghana School Feeding Programme, Labor-Intensive Public Works program, Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty program, and National Health Insurance Scheme—have been introduced and expanded only over the past two decades. Social Protection Program Spending and Household Welfare in Ghana assesses the performance of the government of Ghana’s main social assistance and social insurance programs. The study discusses the programs’ main design and implementation parameters; summarizes existing evaluative and operational research; and examines the patterns and trends in program benefit spending, using government administrative data, and the programs’ coverage rates, incidence, and effectiveness for reducing poverty and inequality, using recent national household sample survey data. Furthermore, the study examines the relationship between household participation in social assistance programs and exposure to adverse covariate shocks—specifically, possible weather-related shocks—on the basis of high-resolution climate risk maps for the country.
Unexplained Wealth Orders: Toward a New Frontier in Asset Recovery

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-28) Brun, Jean-Pierre ; Hauch, Jeanne ; Julien, Rita ; Owens, Jeffrey ; Hur, Yoonhee

Several countries have in recent years introduced the unexplained wealth order (UWO) as a tool to improve recoveries of the proceeds of crime—particularly kleptocracy, the fruits of corruption by government officials. While it is too early to be able to draw any definite conclusions as to its effectiveness in curbing corruption, the UWO contains novel ideas that are worth examining in more depth. UWOs oblige persons suspected of corruption or other serious crimes in these countries to explain the origin of their wealth and discrepancies between their legitimate sources of income and the value of their assets. UWOs are a civil, not criminal action and can be an invaluable tool in asset recovery cases in which cross-border identification and tracing of criminal and corrupt assets is a challenge for relevant investigative agencies and prosecutors. The report provides suggestions on approaches to develop similar policies and makes recommendations for future efforts to use UWOs to combat money laundering and corruption. The purpose of this study is to provide policy makers with an overview of UWO systems by placing them in the context of other asset recovery tools and drawing lessons for countries contemplating the introduction of UWO-type legislation. While the design and implementation of UWO systems are very much in a state of evolution, they may fill a gap in asset recovery systems. UWO systems, like other legal tools, depend on other legal and institutional aspects in each jurisdiction. If a country considers implementing a UWO system, it should form part of a more comprehensive whole of policies and must be adapted to the specific legal context. For example, countries that have established a strong forfeiture system based on value confiscation or civil confiscation, not requiring prosecutors to show a link between assets and a crime, may not need UWOs as much as other countries that have not.
Asset and Interest Disclosure: A Technical Guide to an Effective Form

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-28) Pop, Laura ; Kotlyar, Dmytro ; Rossi, Ivana

Asset and interest disclosure of public officials is a well-established tool to prevent corruption and to help strengthen integrity in public administration. Countries use it to identify unexplained wealth, prevent conflicts of interest, and promote accountability and integrity of public officials. Asset and interest disclosure is a mechanism by which public officials must submit information about income, assets, liabilities, expenditures, and other interests of the officials and their family members. This mechanism includes many elements, including the disclosure form, the scope of declarants (filing population), methods of submission (paper or electronic), procedures of submitting the form, validation and verification of the forms, publication of information, institutional set-up to deal with the disclosure system, sanctions, and others. This technical guide focuses on the disclosure form. How and what data are requested in the form represents the disclosure system's main and most important input. It also defines declarations' role in the anticorruption value chain.
Nature's Frontiers: Achieving Sustainability, Efficiency, and Prosperity with Natural Capital

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-27) Damania, Richard ; Polasky, Stephen ; Ruckelshaus, Mary ; Russ, Jason ; Amann, Markus ; Chaplin-Kramer, Rebecca ; Gerber, James ; Hawthorne, Peter ; Heger, Martin Philipp ; Mamun, Saleh ; Ruta, Giovanni ; Schmitt, Rafael ; Smith, Jeffrey ; Vogl, Adrian ; Wagner, Fabian ; Zaveri, Esha

The great expansion of economic activity since the end of World War II has caused an unprecedented rise in living standards, but it has also caused rapid changes in earth systems. Nearly all types of natural capital—the world’s stock of resources and services provided by nature—are in decline. Clean air, abundant and clean water, fertile soils, productive fisheries, dense forests, and healthy oceans are critical for healthy lives and healthy economies. Mounting pressures, however, suggest that the trend of declining natural capital may cast a long shadow into the future. "Nature’s Frontiers: Achieving Sustainability, Efficiency, and Prosperity with Natural Capital" presents a novel approach to address these foundational challenges of sustainability. A methodology combining innovative science, new data sources, and cutting-edge biophysical and economic models builds sustainable resource efficiency frontiers to assess how countries can sustainably use their natural capital more efficiently. The analysis provides recommendations on how countries can better use their natural capital to achieve their economic and environ mental goals. The report indicates that significant efficiency gaps exist in nearly every country. Closing these gaps can address many of the world’s pressing economic and environmental problems—economic productivity, health, food and water security, and climate change. Although the approach outlined in this report will entail demanding policy reforms, the costs of inaction will be far higher.