The purpose of the current flagship report is to address energy access and related developmental issues in East Asia Pacific (EAP) that so far have received less attention compared to the macro energy issues of climate change and reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
... See More + EAP countries have two steep paths to climb to achieve universal access to modern energy: electricity and modern cooking solutions. Approximately 170 million people, or 34 million households, in EAP countries do not have electricity connections in their homes. This number is equivalent to approximately 9 percent of the Region's total population, and 30 percent of the Region's population excluding China. Moreover, approximately 6 times that number, or over 1 billion people, still lack access to modern cooking solutions. In addition, EAP is exceeded by only Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia in the number of people who lack access to electricity. However, access to both electricity and modern cooking solutions is essential to address the enduring impacts of poverty and to move the poor onto a rising development trajectory. The link between access to modern energy and development is most clearly defined by the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). The MDGs were formulated to reduce global poverty while increasing education, empowering women, and improving child and maternal health. Although there is no direct reference to energy in the MDGs, the need for access to energy, particularly modern energy, to improve overall welfare is well recognized by the development community.
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The purpose of this Independence Evaluation Group (IEG) special study is to illuminate the scale and scope of Bank support for municipal development and to draw specific lessons from the achievements and failures of a sample of individual projects.
... See More + The study focuses on three dimensions of municipal management: planning, finance, and service provision that figure repeatedly in Bank financed municipal development projects (MDPs). The planning dimension refers to the capacity of a municipality to forecast and oversee its own progress. It includes information systems, monitoring and evaluation (M&E), city planning, and investment strategies. The finance dimension refers to how a municipality manages the resources needed to provide services to its constituents. It covers financial management, own-resource mobilization, access to credit, and private funding. The service provision dimension refers to the capacity of a municipality to manage the services required by city residents and business people through the effective prioritization of investments, management of competitive procurement, and the ability to sustain services through operations and maintenance (O&M).
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The Investment Climate Study is a evaluation of the Operations Evaluation Department (OED). The OED report reviews the Bank’s investment climate lending and non-lending activities during fiscal years 1993 through 2002-03.
... See More + The report presents the collected findings of several evaluative exercises: a literature review; an analysis of investment climate themes in country assistance strategies and sector strategies; an analysis of lending operations as well as economic and sector work including survey-based diagnostic assessments; discussions with groups of international investors as well as with Bank staff; and client consultations and country case studies for five countries of Indonesia, Romania, India, Mozambique, and Peru. The key lessons learned are as follows: (i) the Bank’s non-lending intellectual and coordinating contributions can be as important as its financial contributions; (ii) institutional weaknesses in the form of administrative and regulatory barriers and poor property rights, as well as inadequate infrastructure and capability problems in public administration and private business, can continue to constrain growth; (iii) reform efforts must be coupled with a convincing analysis of the costs and benefits of reform, together with an exercise to set reform priorities, capacity building to address weaknesses of executing agencies, and efforts on the ground to achieve political consensus and commitment by government leaders to adopt and implement required reforms; (iv) partial programs may fall well short of achieving their objectives; (v) in cases where comprehensive reform programs are politically impossible, greater effort may be needed to prioritize what needs to be fixed first and what needs to be worked on in the longer run; (vi) reform efforts need people on the ground to help build required political commitment; and (vii) there may be a need for interventions to assist firms in these areas by way of vocational and in-firm training and cost-sharing subsidies for technology transfer to increase the possibilities for a growth response to investment climate reforms. The OED evaluation concludes with the following recommendations to improve Bank support for investment climate reforms: (i) pay more attention to institutions and the political economy of reform; (ii) improve the focus and use of survey-based diagnostics; (iii) do a better job of prioritizing and packaging investment climate reforms in lending operations; and (iv) find organizational solutions that help integrate microeconomic and macroeconomic reform agendas.
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The report provides primarily project level findings on Bank assistance. It is based on a review of the Bank's portfolio of projects approved and completed since FY1993 and still under supervision.
... See More + Detailed discussion and statistical tables on the main characteristics of the project portfolio are provided in the annex. The report also draws from a literature survey and a survey of country assistance strategy (CASs) in respect of the extractive industries. The initial work summarized in the current report will be supplemented by three thematic studies and five in-depth cases studies of representative countries. The thematic studies will correspond to the main evaluative areas and cover: (i) fiscal revenue management; (ii) implementation of safeguard policies; and (iii) strengthening of governance; and will examine these issues both in the context of the extractive industries sector as well as their linkages with the wider economy. Following this introduction, chapter two discusses the World Bank's contribution to improving the generation, management, and utilization of the economic rent through its projects in the extractive industries sector. Chapter three assesses the extent to which the World Bank implemented its environmental and social safeguard policies and addressed issues of capacity building and mine closures. Chapter four reviews the World Bank's projects contribution to strengthening governance processes in the extractive industries sector. Chapter five summarizes the findings of the portfolio review and outlines implications for further work.
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Convention to Combat Desertification. "Greening Industry" publication launch and seminar. NGO-World Bank committee meeting rescheduled.
... See More + "Hotspots" launch. World Bank/WWW launch. World Bank/WWW high-level meeting. Workshop on funding for biodiversity in LAC. CGIAR international conference on biotechnology. CGIAR International Centers Week. Feeding the World 2020. Second World Bank study tour to Brazil. Third CEO ad hoc Forum on Forests. UN Convention on Climate Change. Environmental assessment capacity building in Africa. Conflict Prevention and Post-conflict Reconstruction Donor (CPR) Network meeting. Decentralized environment financing : cross-regional workshop examines Mexican proposal. Central America land registry modernization seminar yields regional cooperation protocol.
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