The report provides an overview of the challenges and recommendations to improve spatial planning in Poland. The project referenced in the report is part of the larger European Union (EU) Catching-up regions program, financed and managed by the European Commission (EC).
... See More + The scope of the Catching-up regions program is to work directly with less developed regions in the EU, and help them overcome development hurdles. In Poland, the EC implements the Catching-up regions program with the help of the World Bank, focused on topics including technology transfer centers, direct support to Small and medium enterprises (SMEs), and improved vocational education systems. The Improved Spatial planning in Poland project is part of the second phase of the Poland Catching-up regions program, and it aims to determine both how spatial planning can be expanded and improved. The project focused on two regions in Poland (Podkarpackie and Swietokrzyskie), and on three types of issues related to spatial planning.
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In June 2015, about 53,000 people were affected by unusually severe floods in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana. The real impact of such a disaster is a product of exposure ("Who was affected?")
... See More + , vulnerability ("How much did the affected households lose?"), and socioeconomic resilience ("What was their ability to cope and recover?"). This study explores these three dimensions to assess whether poor people were disproportionally affected by the 2015 floods. It reaches four main conclusions. (1) In the studied area, there is no difference in annual expenditures between the households who were affected and those who were not affected by the flood. (2) Poorer households lost less than their richer neighbors in absolute terms, but more when compared with their annual expenditure level, and poorer households are over-represented among the most severely affected households. (3) More than 30 percent of the affected households report not having recovered two years after the shock, and the ability of households to recover was driven by the magnitude of their losses, sources of income, and access to coping mechanisms, but not by their poverty, as measured by the annual expenditure level. (4) There is a measurable effect of the flood on behaviors, under-mining savings and investment in enterprises. The study concludes with two policy implications. First, flood management could be considered as a component of the poverty-reduction strategy in the city. Second, building resilience is not only about increasing income. It also requires providing the population with coping and recovery mechanisms such as financial instruments. A flood management program needs to be designed to target low-resilience households, such as those with little access to coping and recovery mechanisms, even those who are not living in poverty before the shock.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8469 JUN 07, 2018
The development objective of the Integrated Transport project for Botswana is to enhance the efficiency of the transport system by building modern business management capacity and improving the strategic planning aspects of inter-regional and critical transport infrastructure.
... See More + Some of the negative impacts and mitigation measures include: relocation or loss of shelter; loss of assets or access to assets; loss of income sources or means of livelihood; the involuntary restriction of access to legally designated parks and protected areas resulting in adverse impacts on the livelihoods of the displaced persons. In projects involving involuntary restriction of access to legally designated parks or protected areas, the nature of restriction, as well as the type of measures necessary to mitigate adverse is determined with the participation of the displaced persons during the design and implementation of the project. In such cases, the borrower prepares a participatory process framework acceptable to the Bank; involuntary resettlement should be avoided where feasible, or minimized, exploring all viable alternative project designs; where it is not feasible to avoid resettlement, resettlement activities should be conceived and executed as sustainable development programs, providing sufficient investment resources to enable the persons displaced by the project to share in project benefits. Displaced persons must be meaningfully consulted and should have opportunities to participate in planning and implementing resettlement programs; and displaced persons should be assisted in their efforts to improve their livelihoods and standards of living or at least to restore them, in real terms, to pre- displacement levels or levels prevailing prior to the beginning of project implementation, whichever is higher.
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The distributional effects of urban transport policies are a broadly understudied topic, particularly when in comes to developing countries. This study seeks to fill in this gap in the existing literature by analyzing the effects of a newly established bus rapid transit system in Barranquilla, Colombia.
... See More + The analysis focus on evaluating the compositional and distributional effects that may follow from the displacement of households originally living in the areas in close proximity to bus rapid transit stations. Overall, the analysis performed points to poor households living in proximity to stations being replaced by households from upper socioeconomic strata.
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