The Pacific Renewable Energy Program (Program) provides an umbrella facility of up to $100,000,000 of financing support, including loans, guarantees, and letters of credit, to overcome the constraints to private sector investment in renewable energy projects in island countries. The Program was jointly developed by ADB's Private Sector Operations Department (PSOD) and the Pacific Department (PARD). PSOD oversees implementation, monitors the progress of the portfolio, and prepares periodic program progress reports to development partners as required. This is the first annual progress report covering the first 8 months from the approval of the Program on 23 April 2019 to 31 December 2019.
The Pacific Renewable Energy Investment Facility finances a series of renewable energy projects in the 11 smaller Pacific island countries (PIC-11).1 It uses an innovative modality that streamlines the internal procedures of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), enhancing its ability to process small-value projects in the PIC-11 faster and with lower transaction costs. Progress of the facility implementation is reported annually to the ADB Board of Directors. The first annual progress report covered the 12 months from the approval of the facility in June 2017 to May 2018. The second annual progress report covered June 2018 to December 2018 to bring reporting into line with the calendar year. This is the third annual progress report, covering January to December 2019.
Despite recent efforts by the Government of Indonesia to promote renewable energy investments, fossil fuels continue to account for around 90% of the national power generation mix. High financing costs and low power purchase agreement tariffs have been identified as major roadblocks for renewable energy investments in the country. This report examines how an Energy Resilience Fund can be designed to overcome the investment challenges by providing financial incentives for renewable energy developers. It makes recommendations for the fund's scope, structure, institutional design, function, and operation. Potential funding sources are also assessed.
Over the past quarter century, Vietnam's agricultural sector has made enormous progress. Vietnam's performance in terms of agricultural yields, output, and exports, however, has been more impressive than its gains in efficiency, farmer welfare, and product quality. Vietnamese agriculture now sits at a turning point. The agricultural sector now faces growing domestic competition - from cities, industry, and services - for labor, land, and water. Rising labor costs are beginning to inhibit the sector's ability to compete globally as a low cost producer of bulk undifferentiated commodities. Going forward, Vietnam's agricultural sector needs to generate more from less. That is, it must generate more economic value - and farmer and consumer welfare - using less natural and human capital and less harmful intermediate inputs. The strategic shift was highlighted in the government's agricultural restructuring plan (ARP), approved by the Prime Minister in June 2014. The ARP defines sector goals in terms of the triple bottom line of economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable development. It lays out expected changes in the roles and spending patterns of the government in the sector and discusses the need to work with other stakeholders, including in the private sector. It calls for an ambitious and ongoing process of learning and experimentation, and several potential directions are offered in this report.
This paper lays out a roadmap to achieve social justice in healthcare by prioritizing areas related to service delivery, financial protection, and quality of care. The aim is to assist the Government of Egypt (GoE) in realizing the principle of social justice in the provision of healthcare. In doing so, the roadmap aims to prioritize key areas of focus for Egypt, including describing which existing programs to continue supporting and which new programs to consider for development, all under an integrated and interdependent structure. It is a focused assessment of how the overarching aim of social justice can be achieved in the healthcare sector through an emphasis on improving services for the most disadvantaged groups. This roadmap suggests recommendations that will result in incremental improvements in Egypt's healthcare system in the short to medium term with a focus on disadvantaged groups. Achievement of these results should situate Egypt on the path to achieving social justice in healthcare in the long term.
The major role tropical forests play in biodiversity and climate change has led the world to search for effective ways to slow down deforestation. Community forest management (CFM) is an example of the broader concept of community-based natural resources management (CBNRM). As part of the decentralization policy in many countries, mainly in Africa and Asia, CFM was expected to promote: (i) a more effective stewardship of the resources by involving the local communities in the management of the resources, and (ii) a more locally-driven development with them tapping most of the derived benefits. The precursors of CBNRM and CFM in Madagascar are the centrally-led compensation-based mechanisms to conservation. Madagascar is one of the first countries in the southern hemisphere to have put in place a legal framework for CBNRM and CFM. The CBNRM implementation process starts with the creation of a local natural resources management group. The government has identified the protection of natural capital and the harnessing of its value as a key pillar in its national development plan for 2015-2019. The plan identifies poor governance as a major constraint to achieving the country's development objectives. It puts strong emphasis on the roles of both natural capital and the necessity for a more inclusive economy to achieve sustainable development. This report will help the Bank take stock of the nearly two-decades of implementation of the national environmental action plan and provide nation-wide facts that will inform future investment in renewable natural resources management, biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction, and local development in the future. The present work is targeted to decision makers and stakeholders involved in CFM policy with the objective of taking stock of almost 20 years of implementation and advise on future directions in policy formulation. The report is organized as follows: section one presents community forest management (CFM) in Madagascar. Section two provides the result of an impact evaluation analysis conducted on the application of CFM policy. Section three provides an analysis of the legal and institutional aspects of the application of CFM policy in Madagascar. Section four presents recommendations for the short, medium, and longer term. Section five concludes.
This Energy Sector Policy Note is intended to support the Government of Mozambique in determining priorities for policy decisions with the aim of delivering efficiently produced, technically and financially sustainable electricity supply to the Mozambican population. To support the development of recommendations, this Note includes simulation analysis based on the current finances of the sector. Electricidade de Macambique's (EDM) corporate financial model was adapted for this work. Targets for electrification are based on discussions with government officials. EDM's current generation pipeline and its timing was taken as a given in order to simulate investment needs and evolution of sector finances under various tariff and funding availability assumptions. The various simulations and the broader sector quantitative and qualitative discussion should support policy formulation and prioritization going forward. The power sector in Mozambique faces three key challenges: i) to provide reliable and efficient electricity supply to its customers; ii) to cope with the increase in the electricity demand from its current (and future) customer base by expanding its generation and transmission capacity; and, iii) to provide access to electricity to the vast majority of the population. The importance of the timing of new generation to export power to South Africa also points to the importance of the backbone transmission project to evacuate the power from the center of the country – thereby enabling exports. Increasing access in line with Government targets will require major investments. The Government needs to consider the trade-offs between the ambition of the access targets imposed upon EDM and the sector's broader financial viability for carrying out operations, maintenance and investment. Relaxation of the access target so that the 50 percent target is achieved by 2030 instead of 2023 gives EDM more liquidity in the first years.
This paper uses a combination of survey questions to instructors and data collected from course syllabi and examinations to examine how the subject of development economics is taught at the undergraduate and masters levels in developing countries, and benchmark this against undergraduate classes in the United States. The study finds that there is considerable heterogeneity in what is considered development economics: there is a narrow core of only a small set of topics such as growth theory, poverty and inequality, human capital, and institutions taught in at least half the classes, with substantial variation in other topics covered. In developing countries, development economics is taught largely as a theoretical subject coupled with case studies, with few courses emphasizing data or empirical methods and findings. This approach contrasts with the approach taken in leading U.S. economics departments and with the evolution of development economics research. The analysis finds that country income per capita, the role of the state in the economy, the education level in the country, and the involvement of the instructor in research are associated with how close a course is to the frontier. The results suggest there are important gaps in how development economics is taught.
Horizontal inequalities (HIs) within a country, or inequalities among groups, have been shown to be an important source of violent conflict. Relevant group categorizations include religion, ethnicity, and region. HIs can also be measured in different ways. Ethnicity, language, religion, race, and region are examples of potentially relevant and salient group categorizations. In this paper the authors will review the prevailing HIs and their management in four West African countries - Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. The report provides some basic facts about these four countries, which vary greatly in area, per capita income, poverty, child mortality rates, and other features. In terms of ethnoreligious demography, it is important to note that all four countries have a highly diverse ethnic population, and three of the four (Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote d'Ivoire) have substantial Christian and Muslim populations. Each of the case study countries has had a relatively turbulent and complex political history in recent decades. The four case study countries present instructive examples of the possible (mis)management of HIs. In this paper the authors analyze the evolution and management of the prevailing HIs in each of the four cases. Section one gives introduction. Section two presents evidence on the evolution and current state of HIs in each country. Section three analyzes the main causes of the prevailing HIs, while section four focuses on the governments' attitudes, policies, and measures toward HIs. Section five discusses the links between the HIs observed and the political outcomes. Section six draws some conclusions and makes policy recommendations for improved management of HIs in multiethnic developing countries generally, and specifically in four case study countries.
This study uses a randomized experiment to evaluate the impacts of the training and internship program piloted in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu counties by the Kenya Private Sector Alliance and the Government of Kenya with support from the World Bank's Kenya Youth Empowerment Project. The program provided three months of classroom-based technical training coupled with three months of internships in private firms to vulnerable youths between ages 15 and 29 years, with vulnerable being defined as those out of school and/or with no permanent job. The analysis in this paper is based on survey data collected before the program started (July 2012) and 15 months after the program ended (July 2014). The results of the impact evaluation show that the program has been successful in placing youths in paid jobs and has contributed to an increase of 15 percent in current employment among male participants. The evaluation also found that the program has had positive effects on wage earnings, especially those of females and among older males, with wages increasing by about K Sh 5,000 for males and by K Sh 7,500 for females. With a total unit cost of K Sh 97,000 per beneficiary, an estimated K Sh 6,768 monthly wage for males and K Sh 9,623 monthly wage for females, the program's benefits exceeded the costs for males and females. The program also encouraged youths to participate in either (certified) skills training or an internship program, and helped to increase the probability of participants' opening a bank account and accumulating savings (for females).
Romania faces today the critical need to enhance the coordination of public investment programs and projects in order to 'do more with less,' maximizing development impact given limited financial resources available. In this context, 'value for money' is the key guiding principle of public investments, making this final report is both critically important and timely. Romania's preparations for the 2014-2020 EU programming period are in full swing, with multiple operational programs recently approved. In parallel, the Government is working on revamping instruments financed entirely from the state budget. The core focus is on the National Local Development Program (PNDL), the main state-budget-funded investment program for local infrastructure development, though findings and recommendations may be extrapolated to other state-budget-funded instruments (e.g., the Environment Fund) and, indeed, as decentralization and regionalization may evolve in the future, subnational governments may also apply the lessons of this work. The main goal of this work is to recommend and facilitate the adoption of prioritization and selection criteria that enhance coordination at the level of infrastructure programs and the projects they finance.
This report presents an analysis of the Early Childhood Development (ECD) subsector, including programs and policies that affect young children in the Republic of Kiribati. This was a collaborative effort between UNICEF and the World Bank Group; it combines the World Bank Group's Systems Approach for Better Education Results SABER-ECD framework, which includes analysis of early learningand child p, health, nutrition, and social rotection policies and interventions in Kiribati, along with regional and international comparisons, as well as the regionally developed UNICEF National Situational Analysis ECD, which takes a greater in-depth look at the following system components, which have been highlighted by the Pacific Region as priority components for quality Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) implementation: policy, legislation, and governance; human resources; curriculum, child assessment, and environment; performance monitoring and assessment; and community partnerships. In 2008, the Ministry of Education (MOE) drafted the Kiribati Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Policy, which was formally endorsed by Cabinet in 2010. The ECCE policy, targeting ages three to five, calls ECCE a "national responsibility" with a mission "to culturally nurture young children in a loving and caring environment to enhance through interactive play the fullest potential of their physical, intellectual, social, emotional and spiritual growth in line with trends and development". This country report presents a framework to benchmark Kiribati's ECD system; each of the nine policy levers and five system components are examined in detail, and policy options to strengthen ECD are offered. This report is intended to serve as a first step for decision making within the government of Kiribati to improve the ECD system. Now that some areas in need of policy attention have been identified, the country can move forward in prioritizing policy options to promote healthy and robust development for all children during their early years.
This report argues that the practice of disaster risk management (DRM) is a defining characteristic of resilient societies, and should therefore be integrated, or 'mainstreamed', into all aspects of development. The report will inform the Development Committee at the annual meetings 2012, and support discussion at the Sendai dialogue, a special event co-organized by the Government of Japan and the World Bank as part of the Annual Meetings program. This event will engage delegates on the importance of mainstreaming DRM, drawing upon the lessons from the great East Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011, and other disasters. This paper includes the following headings: disasters and development: an alarming trend; disaster risk management in action; national policies and planning; International Development Cooperation; disaster risk management at the World Bank; the way forward: priorities and opportunities; and glossary and references.
International audience ; Lack of waste management facilities from mountain region often lead to uncontrolled disposal of waste on river banks polluting the local environment and damaging the tourism potential. Geographical conditions influences the distribution of human settlements which are located along the rivers and its tributaries. This paper aims to estimate the amounts of household waste generated and uncollected disposed into mountain rivers, taking into account several factors such as:proximity of rivers to the human settlements, the morphology of villages, length of river that crosses the locality(built up areas), local population, the access to waste collection services and waste management infrastructure. Vulnerability of rivers to illegal dumping is performed using GIS techniques, highlighting the localities pressure on rivers in close proximity. For this purpose, it developed a calculation model for estimation the amounts of waste (kg) that are dumped on a river section (m) that crosses a locality (village) or it is in close proximity. This estimation is based on the "principle of proximity and minimum effort" it can be applied in any mountainous region that are lacking or partially access to waste collection services. It is an assessment tool of mountain rivers vulnerability to waste dumping,taking into account the geographical and demographic conditions of the study area. Also the current dysfunctions are analyzed based on field observations.
This paper reviews the literature on the development consequences of internal armed conflict and state fragility and analyzes the relationship using data from World Development Indicators, Ukraine Corporate Development Project UCDP/Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) Armed Conflict Data (ACD), and World Bank state fragility assessments. Our main focus is on a set of development indicators that capture seven of the Millennium Development Goals, but the author also look briefly into the effect of conflict and fragility on growth, human rights abuses, and democratization. The author analyze these relationships using a variety of methods, averages by conflict and fragility status; cross-sectional regression analyses of change in each indicator over the time frame for which we have data; fixed-effects regression analyses of the impact on each indicator for each five-year period 1965-2009; as well as occasional panel time series models and matching techniques. In section two, the author summarizes the methodological choices and presents our conflict data. Section three summarizes the results of our analysis. Finally, section four analyzes the effects of internal armed conflict on the attainment of the individual Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
