This is a statement by Mr. Pravin J. Gordhan, Minister of Finance at the eighty-ninth meeting of the Development Committee held on April 12, 2014.
... See More + The report states the improvement of economic prospects and growth in high-income countries; the progress made to date in aligning the institution to achieve the goals endorsed by governors at the last spring meetings; International Development Association's (IDA's) strong and more targeted investments in regional transformational projects in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) as an important component to shaping the future of sustainable growth on the continent; and the progress report on the implementation of the recommendations of the Sendai report and commend the increased integration of disaster risks management (DRM) into policy and investment operations, as well as in country partnership strategies across the Bank Group.
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This is a statement by Mr. Mitsuhiro Furusawa, Vice Minister of Finance, International Affairs at the eighty-ninth meeting of the Development Committee held on April 12, 2014.
... See More + He emphasises on: the International Development Association's( IDA's) role of providing valuable development expertise, as well as on the effect that loan programs from IDA to its client countries urge to pursue sound and responsible macro-economic policy that enables to pay back debts in a timely manner; and Japan's emphasis on support for infrastructure development, the formulation of development policies, and technical assistance for human resource development. He also traces Japan's emphasis on assistance in disaster risk management, global environmental issues, and healthcare, as it pays attention to factors that can impede inclusive and sustainable growth.
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This is a statement by Mr. Hon Steven Ciobo, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer of the Commonwealth of Australia at the eighty-ninth meeting of the Development Committee held on April 12, 2014.
... See More + He states that the growth in high income countries is slowly showing signs of improvement, but the external environment for many countries remains uncertain. The tightening of fiscal and monetary policy in the developed world remains necessary in order to restore balance following the period of post-crisis stimulus. However, this may lead to short-term volatility and, over time, tighten access to capital for many countries, including those represented in constituency. In this context, it is important for all countries to renew commitment to the reforms required to reduce vulnerabilities and spur growth.
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This is a statement by Mr. Jacob J. Lew, Secretary of the Treasury at the eighty-ninth meeting of the Development Committee held on April 12, 2014.
... See More + Since the Development Committee met last October, the shared priority has been delivering on the bold vision for achieving the World Bank's twin goals - reducing extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. The United States strongly supports the World Bank's efforts to strengthen its own capacity so that it can provide more strategic, evidence-based solutions, grounded in the best global knowledge, to its clients. Progress is being achieved on a number of fronts, from financial measures that will improve the World Bank's long-term financial sustainability to better tools that will diagnose a country's constraints to achieving durable growth.
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This is a statement by Luis Videgaray, Secretary Finance and Public Credit, Mexico, on behalf of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Kingdom of Spain, and República Bolivariana de Venezuela, at the eighty-ninth meeting of the Development Committee held on April 12, 2014.
... See More + He stresses that multilateral coordination is the best asset to face global economic difficulties and to achieve the goals of fostering shared and sustainable prosperity, in order to eliminate extreme poverty by the year 2030.
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This is a statement by The Right Honourable Justine Greening, MP, Secretary of State for International Development, and The Right Honourable George Osborne, MP Chancellor of the Exchequer, United Kingdom, at the eighty-ninth meeting of the Development Committee held on April 12, 2014.
... See More + They discuss the World Bank President Jim Kim's reform efforts, the engagement with resilience, fragile states, conflict and crises, and gender and anti-discrimination. It is essential that UN member states agree on a clear, compelling and inspiring framework that builds on and goes beyond the Post-2015 Millennium Development Goals.
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The paper estimates the effects on presidential election returns in Mexico of a government climatic contingency transfer that is allocated through rainfall-indexed insurance.
... See More + The analysis uses the discontinuity in payments that slightly deviate from a pre-established threshold, based on rainfall accumulation measured at local weather stations. It turns out that voters reward the incumbent presidential party for delivering drought relief compensation. The paper finds that receiving indemnity payments leads to significantly greater average electoral support for the incumbent party of approximately 7.6 percentage points. The analysis suggests that the incumbent party is rewarded by disaster aid recipients and punished by non-recipients. The paper contributes to the literature on retrospective voting by providing evidence that voters evaluate government actions and respond to disaster spending.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS6836 APR 01, 2014
The objective of Additional Financing for the National Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project for India is to reduce the vulnerability of coastal communities in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa to cyclone and other hydro meteorological hazards.
... See More + The additional financing will be used to scale up risk mitigation project activities and their impact and development effectiveness in the context of the October 2013 cyclone that hit the states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. These aims will be targeted through expanded activities under component B (cyclone risk mitigation infrastructure) and the related incremental management and coordination support under component D (project management and implementation support). The additional financing will be processed with the following: (i) adjustment of the indicators to reflect the proposed scale up and additional activities, and (ii) closing date of October 31, 2017. As a result of cyclone Phailin, the Government of India is seeking support to further finance disaster preparedness, ever more conscious of the need for cyclone risk mitigation infrastructure in the vulnerable coastal states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.
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Ratings for the Conservancy Adaptation Project (CAP) for Guyana were as follows: outcomes were moderately satisfactory, the risk to global environment outcome was moderate, the Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and the Borrower performance was also moderately satisfactory.
... See More + Some lessons learned included: it is recommended that all future projects enable the use of a designated account as a mode of disbursement and budget should be made available to directly fund staff under the project; (ii) a detailed procurement plan should be established at appraisal for all key components of the project, especially those that directly impact the timing of other project components (such as equipment purchase, key contracts); (iii) Terms of Reference, or TOR specifications should incorporate close and continued technical supervision to avoid delays and/or misunderstandings; and (iv) technical review of the project should run throughout project implementation and include aspects for quality control. The CAP communication plan was funded by a Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, or GFDRR grant. It was found that this helped to regularly disseminate the results of the project, facilitate knowledge transfer, boost coordination and inform future activities. It is highly recommended that all future projects incorporate a communication/dissemination plan. The remote sensing technologies and modelling methods used in the project have been tested in the CAP, and can be replicated for other regions in Guyana or in other Caribbean countries with similar situations. Development of a technical foundation for risk analysis conducive to rationalizing key-investment strategies is a necessary step in reducing flood risk.
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Implementation Completion and Results Report ICR3019 MAR 07, 2014
This issue focuses on ways to minimize impact on vulnerable populations living in the Rio de Janeiro's mountainous region, particularly in regards to extreme flooding and devastating landslides.
... See More + With the spotlight on Rio de Janeiro as a host city of the World Cup and Summer Olympics, government authorities need to protect residents and tourists from disasters and are striving to build resilience by improving land-use planning and implementing best practices in disaster risk management (DRM) to better prepare for climatological hazards. In the wake of the Rio flooding and landslide disaster in 2011, government authorities sought to understand the economic impacts and human losses triggered by extreme hazard events and the underlying causes of disaster risk. A number of DRM interventions, analytical studies, technical assistance, and capacity building activities include four main areas: risk identification; disaster preparedness and response; policymaking; and economic analysis. A culture of disaster risk awareness is growing in Brazil as urban planners are developing integrated and proactive approaches to development by institutionalizing DRM policies and building technical capacities to mitigate disasters. However, even with recent progress, much remains to be done to improve the performance and technical capacity of the institutions to integrate DRM principles into decision-making processes. The frequent and intense natural disasters in Brazil call for substantial investments including: studies to identify the best technologies; strategies for collecting and using data; development of land-use planning and urban policies that incorporate mitigation measures for existing hazards; and avoidance of settlements in high-risk areas.
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The development objective of the Odisha Disaster Recovery Project for India is to restore and improve housing and public services in targeted communities of Odisha, and increase the capacity of the state entities to respond promptly and effectively to an eligible crisis or emergency.
... See More + The project has five components. The first component is resilient housing reconstruction and community infrastructure. It has following two sub-components: (i) housing reconstruction for the reconstruction of about 30,000 houses in the designated rural areas in the coastal belt 5 km from the high tide line (HTL) in the districts of Ganjam and Puri, and 5km from the Chilika lake boundary as defined by the survey of India in the district of Khordha; and (ii) selected community infrastructure for public infrastructure improvements to complement the housing reconstruction. The second component, urban infrastructure in Berhampur will finance investments to improve public services in Berhampur while at the same time reduce the vulnerability of its population. Improved public infrastructure will reduce vulnerability through improved drainage to reduce floods, and increasing the resilience of public service infrastructure. It has following four sub-components: (i) upgrading of slums; (ii) public service infrastructure; (iii) community participation; and (iv) technical assistance. The third component, capacity building in disaster risk management objective is to support Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) in strengthening their overall capacity towards better risk mitigation, preparedness, and disaster response, in line with global best practices. The fourth component, implementation support will finance the incremental operating costs of the project management units (PMUs) in OSDMA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (H and UD), and the project implementation unit (PIUs) in OSDMA and the Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BeMC). The fifth component, contingent emergency response will draw resources from the unallocated expenditure category and or allow the Government of Odisha (GoO) to request the Bank to re-categorize and reallocate financing from other project components to partially cover emergency response and recovery costs.
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The development objective of the Community Resilience to Climate and Disaster Risk Project for Solomon Islands (CRISP) is to increase the capacity of selected rural communities to manage natural hazards and climate change risks.
... See More + The project has four components. The first component, integration of climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) in government policies and operations objective is to support policy development, capacity building, and institutional strengthening aimed at integrating governance and operational processes for CCA and DRR. It comprises of following two sub-components: (a) development of a national integrated CCA and a disaster risk management (DRM) framework; and (b) strengthening capacity for mainstreaming CCA and DRM in sector planning and investments. The second component, strengthening of climate and disaster risk information and early warning systems objective is to establish an early warning network for volcanic and seismic hazards and start the establishment of a national risk information platform. It comprises of following two sub-components: (a) establishing a volcanic-seismic monitoring network (the need for which was identified by global facility for disaster risk and recovery (GFDRR) in 2009 in the Solomon Islands country assessment); and (b) establishing the foundations of a national risk information capability to improve risk management, that can be applied under CRISP to assess disaster and climate change effects for sectors and investment planning. The third component, CCA and DRR investments will support both structural and non-structural disaster risk and adaptation investments at the community and provincial level. It comprises of following three sub-components: (a) risk analysis, design, advisory, and supervision services of rural infrastructure investments and disaster and climate risk management plans; (b) development and implementation of community-led rural investment projects through the provision of community grants; and (c) development and implementation of provincial-led rural investment projects in participating provinces. The fourth component, project management and monitoring and evaluation will provide efficient and effective management support for the implementation of the project. It has following two sub-components: (i) project coordination and management; and (ii) project monitoring and evaluation.
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This paper is part of a larger effort to document, assess, and promote scalable models and approaches to empower poor communities to manage a climate and disaster risk agenda in support of their development goals and to identify practical ways of getting climate and disaster risk financing directly to the ground level where impacts are felt.
... See More + Social funds, social protection systems and safety nets, community-driven development (CDD) projects, livelihoods-support and related operational platforms can serve as useful vehicles for promoting community-level resilience to disaster and climate risk. This paper examines the World Bank's Community-Driven Development (CDD) portfolio to assess experience to date and to explore the potential for building the resilience of vulnerable communities to climate and disaster risk through CDD programs. It aims to be useful to both the Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Management practitioner as well as the CDD practitioner. The paper assesses the scale of climate and disaster resilience support provided through CDD projects from 2001-11 and characterizes the forms of support provided. For the climate change adaption and disaster risk management (DRM) practitioner, it discusses the characteristics of a CDD approach and how they lend themselves to building local-level climate resilience. For the CDD practitioner, the paper describes the types of activities that support resilience building and explores future directions for CDD to become a more effective vehicle for reducing climate and disaster risk.
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The development objective of the Additional Financing for the Regional Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project for Saint Vincent the Grenadines is to measurably reduce vulnerability to natural hazards and climate change impacts and to create some level of resilience at a national level.
... See More + St. Vincent and the Grenadines is among the most disaster-prone countries in the world, regularly suffering disasters related to natural events such as earthquakes, hurricanes, landslide, rain and drought. These hazards have caused significant and in some cases recurrent damage to national infrastructure including housing, road networks, schools, hospitals and other facilities such as phone lines, water and electricity. This significantly affects human welfare, national economic activities, property, and natural resources. Additionally, the effects of climate change are already evident in many parts of the country with rising sea levels and storm activity continuing to impact on exposed coastlines and development. The situation is only expected to worsen as St. Vincent and the Grenadines is highly vulnerable to the effects of global warming and climate change. The project seeks to measurably decrease the vulnerability of people and the national economy of SVG to climate change and natural hazards. Mitigation measures include: 1) the implementation of new structures requires the dissemination of information as it regards accessibility and operation to potential beneficiaries. Awareness campaigns and other educational activities should be conducted at all projects implementation sites; 2) the formation of community self-help groups is recommended for the sustainability of the project management; 3) safeguard be built into the implementation in order to minimize impact which include scheduling works at best time to minimize disruptions. Where disruptions cannot be avoided develop a traffic plan outlining alternative routes and appropriate signage; 4) establish a system of communication and information in the communities; and 5) support programs which build the capacity of the local authorities and other institutions which can support community members in shelter management.
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