This performance evaluation using case study design and mixed methods focused on opensource, DIY remote weather stations (RWSs) in Sri Lanka. The Challenge Fund is a joint initiative of GFDRR and UK Aid and seeks to bridge the gap between technology and on-the-ground user needs in the field of disaster risk identification, thereby building greater disaster resilience.
... Exibir mais + The technology involved in open-source, DIY remote weather stations is not overly-complex if you are a student of such things. However, the true innovation in the case of RWSs in Sri Lanka was the application of this technology to help irrigation engineers monitor the levels of their water tanks and therefore be able to operate their reservoirs to limit flooding downstream, to limit crop damage and loss of life. This much-needed early warning device is low cost and reasonable to sustain, given government budgets in a middle-income country such as Sri Lanka. Challenge Fund projects are intended to produce results related to innovating, inspiring and influencing risk information access and use for increased disaster resilience. The case of RWSs in Sri Lanka not only shows evidence of all of the results occurring, it shows that the results continue in a mutually-reinforcing cycle called the sustainability cycle. The results feed off of each other, guaranteeing the existence of some form of RWS access and use in Sri Lanka in the future.
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In the past decade, hundreds of impact evaluation studies have measured the learning outcomes of education interventions in developing countries.
... Exibir mais + The impact magnitudes are often reported in terms of "standard deviations," making them difficult to communicate to policy makers beyond education specialists. This paper proposes two approaches to demonstrate the effectiveness of learning interventions, one in "equivalent years of schooling" and another in the net present value of potential increased lifetime earnings. The results show that in a sample of low- and middle-income countries, one standard deviation gain in literacy skill is associated with between 4.7 and 6.8 additional years of schooling, depending on the estimation method. In other words, over the course of a business-as-usual school year, students learn between 0.15 and 0.21 standard deviation of literacy ability. Using that metric to translate the impact of interventions, a median structured pedagogy intervention increases learning by the equivalent of between 0.6 and 0.9 year of business-as-usual schooling. The results further show that even modest gains in standard deviations of learning -- if sustained over time -- may have sizeable impacts on individual earnings and poverty reduction, and that conversion into a non-education metric should help policy makers and non-specialists better understand the potential benefits of increased learning.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS8752 FEB 19, 2019
Rural accessibility is the only metric used in the Sustainable Development Goals to track progress toward better transport services in low- and middle-income countries.
... Exibir mais + This paper estimates the rural accessibility index, defined as the proportion of the rural population who live within 2 kilometers of an all-season road, in 166 countries using open data. It then explores the cost of increasing the rural accessibility index in 19 countries, using an algorithm that prioritizes rural roads investments based on their impact on rural access and connectivity. Investment costs quickly balloon as the rural accessibility index increases, questioning the affordability of universal access to paved roads for many countries by 2030. If countries spent 1 percent of their gross domestic product annually on the upgrade of rural roads, even under optimistic assumptions on growth of gross domestic product, rural accessibility would only increase from 39 to 52 percent by 2030 across all developing countries. Alternative solutions to rural integration must thus be implemented in the short run until countries can afford to increase significantly access to all weather roads. For example, drones that supply regular food and medicine supply to remote communities are much more affordable than roads in the short term.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS8746 FEB 19, 2019
Mikou,Mehdi; Rozenberg,Julie; Koks,Elco Eduard; Fox,Charles James Edward; Peralta Quiros,TatianaDisclosed
This paper conducts an assessment of the global costs for expanding, upgrading, and improving irrigation infrastructure in developing countries, along different future scenarios toward 2050.
... Exibir mais + It uses the GLobal BIOsphere Management Model, a partial equilibrium model of the global agricultural and forestry sectors. It examines the impacts of irrigation expansion on the agriculture and food system, from the perspective of different Sustainable Development Goals, in particular food security (goal 2), land use change and biodiversity (goal 15), greenhouse gas emissions (goal 13), and sustainable water use (goal 6). It finds that irrigation support policies improve food security globally and can reduce the burden on land by limiting expansion of cropland area. However, the effectiveness of irrigation to achieve a larger set of goals depends on the regional context. In South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, the expansion of irrigation increases unsustainable water extraction practices. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to evaluate the uncertainty of the infrastructure costs and impacts under different socioeconomic developments, levels of radiative forcing and climate change scenarios, dietary patterns, trade openness, and efficiencies of irrigation systems. The findings indicate that irrigation systems could play an important role in adaptation to the most adverse climate change; however, increased water scarcity may also limit adaptation potentials.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS8744 FEB 19, 2019
Palazzo,Amanda; Valin,Hugo Jean Pierre; Batka,Miroslav; Havlík,PetrDisclosed
Sea-level rise threatens low-lying areas around the world's coasts with increased coastal flooding during storms. One response to this challenge is to build or upgrade coastal flood defenses.
... Exibir mais + This report examines the potential investment costs of such an adaptation strategy applied globally over the 21st century for sea-level rise scenarios consistent with three Representative Concentration Pathways and 3 Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. For all the protection models considered, much less than half of the world's coast is protected. The total defense costs are significantly higher than earlier estimates, amounting to as much as US$18.3 trillion. With cost-benefit analysis, there are large uncertainties and empirical observations of protection standards are limited. Hence, the estimates should be considered as indicative, and this remains an important topic for future research. Further, building defenses is not a one-off capital investment. Over the 21st century, the cost of a comprehensive protection strategy is dominated by maintenance costs in all the cases considered in this report. This indicates that in addition to capital investment, the development of appropriate institutions and governance mechanisms to deliver maintenance, as well as the necessary funding streams, are essential for such a protection-based adaptation strategy to be effective.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS8745 FEB 19, 2019
Nicholls,Robert John; Hinkel,Jochen; Lincke,Daniel; van der Pol,ThomasDisclosed
This paper presents the details of three scenarios -- leapfrog, lock-in, and lopsided -- that describe an illustrative set of technological states.
... Exibir mais + Based largely on expert interviews, the paper argues that the technology outcomes are heavily attributable to the actions (or in some cases, inaction) of policy makers and incumbents. For each scenario, the paper presents descriptive levels of technology achievement and market outcomes for the energy, transport, and water sectors. One of the central differentiating features of the three scenarios is the extent to which governments perform their roles as enabling, that is, whether the policies are designed to help or hinder innovations that improve service levels, and distributive, that is, whether the policies are designed to ensure that multiple segments of society reap the rewards of innovation. A question raised as part of that theme is how countries can avoid lock-in, or how they might become derailed into a lopsided scenario. Some institutional behavioral markers of the scenarios were identified in these discussions and are noted in the paper. It is important to recognize that multiple combinations of these behaviors can lead to a lock-in or lopsided scenario. In addition to describing the scenarios in detail, the paper discusses the rationale for their creation, along with a brief discussion on the nature of uncertainty. The paper also describes the methodology employed in the creation of the scenarios, including expert interview methods and a day-long workshop.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS8748 FEB 19, 2019
Beyond the Gap: How Countries Can Afford the Infrastructure They Need while Protecting the Planet aims to shift the debate regarding investment needs away from a simple focus on spending more and toward a focus on spending better on the right objectives, using relevant metrics.
... Exibir mais + It does so by offering a careful and systematic approach to estimating the funding needs to close the service gaps in water and sanitation, transportation, electricity, irrigation, and flood protection. Exploring thousands of scenarios, this report finds that funding needs depend on the service goals and policy choices of low- and middle-income countries and could range anywhere from 2 percent to 8 percent of GDP per year by 2030. Beyond the Gap also identifies a policy mix that will enable countries to achieve key international goals—universal access to water, sanitation, and electricity; greater mobility; improved food security; better protection from floods; and eventual full decarbonization—while limiting spending on new infrastructure to 4.5 percent of GDP per year. Importantly, the exploration of thousands of scenarios shows that infrastructure investment paths compatible with full decarbonization in the second half of the century need not cost more than more-polluting alternatives. Investment needs remain at 2 percent to 8 percent of GDP even when only the decarbonized scenarios are examined. The actual amount depends on the quality and quantity of services targeted, the timing of investments, construction costs, and complementary policies. Finally, investing in infrastructure is not enough; maintaining it also matters. Improving services requires much more than capital expenditure. Ensuring a steady flow of resources for operations and maintenance is a necessary condition for success. Good maintenance also generates substantial savings by reducing the total life-cycle cost of transport and water and sanitation infrastructure by more than 50 percent.
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This study is focused on Clean Team, a social enterprise providing container-based sanitation (CBS) services in Kumasi, the second-largest city in Ghana with a population of 2.7 million in 2018.
... Exibir mais + Clean Team is owned by Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), a nonprofit partnership between the private sector, civil society, and academia. Clean Team delivers a single service: rental and regular servicing of in-house portable toilets, which includes transporting feces to a centralized treatment facility but not the processing and reuse of excreta. Customers find the Clean Team toilet appealing and Clean Team services are affordable compared to other alternatives. External subsidies, provided through public and philanthropic grant funding, have been necessary for Clean Team to cover its costs. Clean Team has been working, with support from funders and external advisers, on improving the efficiency of its services and reducing costs. Going forward, Clean Team could benefit from a clearer policy environment, which would allow them to increase the scale of their operations based on a more cost-efficient business model.
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This case study examines the container-based sanitation (CBS) service provided by x-runner in the low-income formal/informal settlements in peri-urban Lima. x-runner provides a safe sanitation chain in poor nonsewered neighborhoods in the hills of the outskirts of southwest Lima for a population that does not have (and probably will not have for some years) any safe or hygienic alternative. x-runner operates in difficult-to-access areas, sometimes relying on lockers for users to drop off their sealed full containers.
... Exibir mais + The company is leveraging the capacities of its suppliers to reduce the complexity of its business to a manageable level and the number of customers has been growing steadily, with an average of around 24 new households per month. Although some customers expressed the view that the price for the service is high, they appear to be willing to pay it and the level of satisfaction with the service for x-runner customers is high. Going forward, an explicit recognition of CBS—or a category into which CBS clearly falls—as a viable sanitation system for the urban poor, would be an important factor for enabling public sector support.
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This study focuses on Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL), a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization (NGO), and its operations mostly in Cap-Haitien, Haiti, and to a lesser extent in Port-au-Prince.
... Exibir mais + SOIL, through its container-based program known as EkoLakay, operates mainly in the eastern part of Cap-Haitien in low-income areas characterized by a high population density, irregular alley layout, and higher exposure to floods (compared to the rest of the city). SOIL provides full-cycle ecological sanitation, where excreta is treated and transformed into compost, benefiting agricultural projects and development. SOIL is the only service provider in Cap-Haitien (and in Haiti at large) able to manage a sanitation system that covers the whole sanitation service chain, and customers expressed satisfaction with the toilet technology. While affordability is a key issue for customers and non-customers, the user fee is unlikely to cover all costs of the sanitation service, which includes excreta treatment and transformation. SOIL intends to transfer implementation and scale-up of its CBS business models to the public and private sectors in Haiti, making replicability and scalability key for their business model. To meet its ambitious target number of customers in Cap-Haitien and Port-au-Prince, SOIL will need to continue to influence the institutional environment, along with other organizations and donors in the sector.
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In the face of urbanization, alternative approaches are needed to deliver adequate and inclusive sanitation services across the full sanitation service chain.
... Exibir mais + Container-based sanitation (CBS) consists of an end-to-end service—that is, one provided along the whole sanitation service chain—that collects excreta hygienically from toilets designed with sealable, removable containers and strives to ensure that the excreta is safely treated, disposed of, and reused. This report builds on four case studies (SOIL – Haiti, x-runner – Peru, Clean Team – Ghana, Sanergy – Kenya) to assess the role CBS can play in a portfolio of solutions for citywide inclusive sanitation (CWIS) services. The authors conclude that CBS approaches should be part of the CWIS portfolio of solutions, especially for poor urban populations for whom alternative on-site or sewer-based sanitation services might not be appropriate. Customer satisfaction with existing services is high and services provided by existing CBS providers are considered safe but have some areas for improvement. While the proportion of total CBS service costs covered by revenues is still small, CBS services are considered to be priced similarly to the main sanitation alternatives in their service areas. Recommendations include adopting a conducive policy and regulatory environment and exploring ways to ensure that CBS services are sustainably financed. The report also identifies areas for further analysis.
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This case study examines the container-based sanitation (CBS) service provided by Sanergy and how its business model fits overall in Nairobi as well as specifically in informal settlements there.
... Exibir mais + Sanergy’s basic business concept is to provide safe sanitation to low-income residents of informal settlements in Nairobi and to create a sustainable value chain that converts feces into premium reuse products for agriculture. Sanergy provides single-cubicle, branded Fresh Life Toilets (FLTs) to franchisees for a fee and collects the excreta from the toilets on a frequent basis (daily or every two or three days). Satisfaction expressed by customers with Sanergy’s toilets was high and users of Sanergy’s toilets are paying much the same rates as they would for other toilet options. Overall, the FLT operation shows promise to provide a highly cost-effective sanitation solution at scale and the evolving policy landscape and significant investment by Sanergy and others has radically changed the status of CBS in a short time. Sanergy plans to scale significantly to serve as many as 500,000 people in its existing areas of operation, an ambitious expansion plan that will warrant further study and monitoring.
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This paper experimentally evaluates a large-scale and low-cost parenting program targeting poor families in Chile. Households in 162 public health centers were randomly assigned to three groups: a control group, a second group that was offered eight weekly group parenting sessions, and a third group that was offered the same eight group sessions plus two sessions of guided interactions between parents and children focused on responsive play and dialogic reading.
... Exibir mais + Three years after the end of the intervention, the receptive vocabulary and the socio-emotional development of children of families participating in either of the treatment arms improved (by 0.43 and 0.54 standard deviation, respectively) relative to children of nonparticipating families. There were no statistically detectable impacts on other types of skills. The treatments also led to improvements in home environments and parenting behaviors of comparable magnitudes, which far outlasted the short duration of the intervention. A simple mediation analysis suggests that up to 13 percent of treatment impacts on language, and up to 36 percent of impacts on child socio-emotional development, can be attributed to changes in the home environment, as well as in nurturing and discipline parenting behaviors.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS8743 FEB 14, 2019
Amaro Da Costa Luz Carneiro,Pedro Manuel; Galasso,Emanuela; Lopez Garcia,Italo Xavier; Bedregal,Paula; Cordero,MiguelDisclosed
Students around the world are going to school but are not learning -- an emerging gap in human capital formation. To understand this gap, this paper introduces a new data set measuring learning in 164 countries and territories.
... Exibir mais + The data cover 98 percent of the world's population from 2000 to 2017. The data set will be publicly available and updated annually by the World Bank. The paper presents several stylized facts in a first application of the data: (a) although enrollment has increased worldwide, learning has stagnated; (b) girls outperform boys on learning -- a positive gender gap -- in contrast to a negative gender gap observed for schooling; (c) learning is associated with growth on a global scale; (d) associations with growth are heterogenous; and (e) human capital accounts for up to a third of cross-country income differences -- a middle ground in the recent development accounting literature. These stylized facts demonstrate the potential of the data to reveal new insights into the relationship between human capital and economic development.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS8742 FEB 14, 2019
As cities grow, the negative effects of congestion start to play their part, often affecting the cities' ability to become and remain competitive.
... Exibir mais + Although many studies have focused on these negative effects, the links between pollution and city competitiveness are less explored. This paper focuses on this relationship, particularly the links between air pollution and city growth, and how it correlates with city competitiveness. Although high-income cities are usually better at managing pollution, the paper finds successful examples of fast-growing, lower-income cities that are able to tackle this issue. The evidence shows that cities can be competitive and still manage pollution, as long as they have a proactive attitude and focus on developing a green agenda to support this journey.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS8740 FEB 14, 2019
This paper surveys the recent literature exploring the causes of urban pollution in the developing world and the implications of such pollution for a city's competitiveness.
... Exibir mais + Within a system of cities, cities compete for jobs and people. Those cities that specialize in heavy industrial activity will gain from a manufacturing boom but are more likely to be polluted than a city that specializes in the service economy and one that makes investments in regulations to reduce the social costs of power generation, transportation, and household services. The paper explores three main questions. First, why does pollution inhibit urban competitiveness? Second, why is this effect likely to grow in importance over time? Third, why have cities been slow to adopt cost-effective regulatory strategies?
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS8739 FEB 13, 2019
In the past four to five decades, inflation has fallen around the world, with median annual global consumer price inflation down from a peak of 16.6 percent in 1974 to 2.6 percent in 2017.
... Exibir mais + This decline began in advanced economies in the mid-1980s and in emerging market and developing economies in the mid-1990s. By 2000, global inflation had stabilized at historically low levels. Lower inflation has been accompanied by reduced inflation volatility, especially in advanced economies. This improvement in inflation outcomes has stemmed in large part from structural economic changes, including improved monetary and fiscal policy frameworks as well as international trade and financial liberalization. Lower and more stable inflation has often been associated with better growth and development outcomes, partly by reducing uncertainty, fostering a more efficient allocation of resources, and helping preserve financial stability.
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Documento de trabalho sobre pesquisa de políticas WPS8738 FEB 13, 2019
