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FY 2025 Saint Lucia Country Opinion Survey Report
No full textThe Country Opinion Survey in Saint Lucia assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in better understanding how stakeholders in Saint Lucia perceive the WBG. It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in Saint Lucia on 1) their views regarding the general environment in Saint Lucia; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Saint Lucia; 3) overall impressions of the WBG’s effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Saint Lucia; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG’s future role in Saint Lucia
Livable Pacific Cities and Towns. Spotlight: Tides of Change - Urban Resilience Across Pacific Landscapes
No full textPacific Island Countries (PICs) are experiencing a rapid urban transition in the context of intensifying climate and disaster risks. Responding to these challenges requires more than incremental action. The Livable Pacific Cities and Towns report sets out a strategic framework for resilient urbanization, built around four mutually reinforcing building blocks: strengthening risk-informed urban management systems; investing in resilient infrastructure and housing; enhancing city preparedness for shocks; and prioritizing social inclusion and communities. This Spotlight report builds on the foundation of the Livable Pacific Cities and Towns report by presenting three different urban resilience diagnostic methodologies. Regardless of methodology, the first step to addressing the challenges that Pacific cities and towns face is to conduct urban disaster risk assessments - evaluating hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and urban development patterns. These assessments are essential to inform strategic planning and prioritize investments in urban areas, and must be tailored to each city’s unique context, considering available data, technical capacity, and governance structures. This Spotlight presents the following three methodologies to guide decision-makers in selecting the appropriate tools for their needs: Detailed Multi-hazard Risk Assessments (MHRAs); Critical Hazard Assessments (CHAs); and Rapid City Scans (RCSs)
Turning Vision Into Action: Advancing the Implementation of Climate Strategies Through Effective Institutions
No full textThis assessment has four key objectives, which are to: 1. Fill a knowledge gap: To undertake a systematic review of Malaysia’s climate institutional and governance frameworks to identify key challenges and opportunities for reform. 2. Offer benchmarking insights: To assess Malaysia’s position relative to neighboring countries and aspirational peers by analyzing climate institutional data. 3. Shape the policy landscape: To develop policy recommendations and a detailed, actionable roadmap for reform, including supporting inputs for the implementation of the National Climate Change Policy 2.0. 4. Bring a global perspective: To provide a repository of international experiences of institutional innovations relevant for Malaysia, to guide authorities in adopting proposed recommendations
The Value of Nature : Evaluating and Realizing the Value of Indonesia’s Forests and Ecosystems
No full textIndonesia’s forest ecosystems are critical for sustaining economic growth, human well-being, and biodiversity conservation. Despite covering less than 1 percent of the Earth’s landmass, Indonesia contains 10 percent of the world’s tropical rainforests, making it the third largest such area globally. These forests are home to around 10 percent of the world’s known biodiversity, providing habitat for endangered species and supporting ecosystem services vital to economic and social wellbeing. Indonesia’s mangrove forests are the world’s largest and most biodiverse, covering 3.4 million hectares and providing storm protection, carbon sequestration, and coastal fisheries. These natural assets underpin economic development, with agriculture, forestry, and fisheries collectively providing jobs for over 40 million people (Statistics Indonesia). This report aims to identify and quantify these ‘hidden’ values and to propose strategies to leverage their full economic potential. Indonesia has set ambitious economic targets, aiming for 8 percent economic GDP growth by 2028-2029 and transitioning to a high-income economy by 2045. Achieving these goals requires recognizing and utilizing all available economic opportunities, including natural capital. Currently, nature is undervalued and overexploited because it is perceived as a public good, freely available for use. Unlike infrastructure, technology, or human capital, natural ecosystems rarely receive the investment needed to sustain their productivity. Yet, like any other form of capital, nature requires management and financing to maximize its contribution to national prosperity. By integrating natural capital into economic planning and policymaking, Indonesia can unlock new pathways for sustainable, long-term growth, often referred to as green growth. This approach ensures that nature’s economic contributions are fully accounted for, leading to better decision-making in land-use policies, infrastructure development, and investment strategies
Building Human Capital Where It Matters: Homes, Neighborhoods, and Workplaces
Full text linkHuman capital—the health, knowledge, skills, and experience that people accumulate throughout their lives—is essential for productivity and economic growth. Yet, progress has stalled, and there have even been reversals in human capital accumulation over the last 15 years. Two-thirds of low- and middle-income countries experienced declines in nutrition, learning, or workforce skill development between 2010 and 2025.
Building Human Capital Where It Matters argues that, to accelerate human capital development and accumulation, the focus of policy needs to be expanded beyond schools and clinics to include other key settings where human capital is built: the home, the neighborhood, and the workplace. This settings approach provides an understanding of some of the crucial drivers of human capital accumulation, such as care for children and adolescents in the home, the social dynamics and the quality of the environment in neighborhoods, and job attributes that foster learning at work. It also makes evident the benefits of collaboration across various departments of governments and between the public and private sectors and the need for a more ambitious data agenda that tracks progress in human capital in the home, the neighborhood, and the workplace
The Cycle of Hate, and What We Can Do About It
Full text linkIntergroup hate—both shaped by and shaping development processes—is spreading worldwide as hate speech becomes normalized, hate groups proliferate, and political discourse increasingly frames opponents as enemies rather than as partners in compromise. Drawing on historical, economic, political, and social-psychological research, this paper synthesizes 10 drivers of intergroup hate into four interlocking components: history, current context, call to arms, and justification of mistreatment. These components form a self-reinforcing cycle that escalates animosity and legitimizes harm, making hate difficult—but not impossible—to disrupt. The paper shows how the 10 drivers interact over time and uses the cycle of hate framework to organize evidence from experiments and program evaluations aimed at reducing intergroup animosity. This evidence indicates that intergroup hate can be interrupted at multiple points through coordinated psychosocial, institutional, and economic interventions. By contrast, policies that neglect any of the four components—particularly elite and media mobilization—consistently underperform. Context sensitive, integrated, institutionally embedded strategies hold the greatest promise, including the potential to support inoculation and early-warning systems that detect and counter intergroup hate before it is politically mobilized
Wage Subsidies to Promote Female Hiring: Evidence from Pakistan
Full text linkCan employer-side wage subsidies increase hiring women in low female labor force participation settings? This paper tests this using a randomized experiment with 1,227 Pakistani firms on a national jobs platform. Treatment firms were offered a six-month wage subsidy determined via the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak mechanism. They were 11 percentage points more likely to hire a woman, with larger effects for male-only firms. After 18 months, the treatment effect on employing a woman persisted, although the firm-wide share of female employees did not change. Additionally, administrative data show the treated firms reduced male-preference language in job postings, consistent with emerging demand-side shifts
Does Message Framing Matter for Tax Compliance? Evidence from a WhatsApp Field Experiment
Full text linkThis study evaluates whether low-cost digital nudges delivered via WhatsApp can improve property tax compliance in Gorontalo, Indonesia. In a randomized controlled trial, individuals were as-signed to receive either (i) a soft-tone message emphasizing civic duty and public benefits, (ii) a hard-tone message highlighting penalties and consequences, or (iii) no message (control). Four findings emerge. First, although messages referenced overdue obligations, the soft-tone nudge substantially increased current-year compliance: payment of the fiscal year 2024 bill rose by 9–11 percentage points from two weeks through the payment deadline and remained 9.9 percentage points higher at six months, relative to a 38 percent control mean at the deadline. Second, the soft-tone message narrowed and statistically eliminated the compliance gap between historically high- and low-compliance groups. Third, framing mattered: the soft-tone message consistently outperformed the hard-tone message at longer horizons. Fourth, while the hard-tone message generated short-run increases in compliance, these effects dissipated over time, consistent with intertemporal substitution (treated taxpayers paying earlier rather than more). Overall, the results show that behaviorally informed messaging can meaningfully improve tax collection in low-capacity settings, especially when designed to fit local behavioral and institutional context
Striving for Economic Security: Emerging Middle Class in the East Asia and Pacific Region
Full text linkThe East Asia and Pacific region has made remarkable progress on poverty reduction, transforming the economic lives of hundreds of millions of people. With growth prospects dimmer in a world that is increasingly polarized, the question of what it will take to convert the success in poverty reduction into a similar success in growing and nurturing the emergent middle class has become critical for the region. Providing an updated definition of middle class that is grounded in the concept of economic security, this paper presents new evidence on the size, evolution, and characteristics of the region’s middle class. The results show that around a third of the region’s population belongs to the middle class, and more than half still live in relative poverty and vulnerability. From a global perspective, the region stands out for the fastest rate of expansion of the middle class, but China accounts for a large share of this progress. Excluding China, middle-class growth in the rest of the region has stalled in recent years. A larger share of the region’s poor today live in urban areas than a decade earlier (47 percent versus 34 percent), suggesting marked progress on rural convergence. Still, urban areas continue to provide better prospects for upward mobility into the middle class (44 percent) than rural areas (22 percent). Jobs have been pivotal in driving middle-class growth in the region and future mobility prospects will continue to depend on countries being able to generate more and better-quality jobs. Improving quality of services and closing the remaining gaps across economic classes will be crucial for building human capital and ensuring upward mobility for all. This will also necessitate and reinforce the emerging middle class’s commitment to the social contract, including greater tax contributions
Lao PDR Country Climate and Development Report
Full text linkThe World Bank Group’s Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs) are a core diagnostic that integrates climate change and development. They help countries prioritize the most impactful actions that can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and boost adaptation and resilience, while delivering on broader development goals. CCDRs build on data and rigorous research and identify main pathways to reduce GHG emissions and climate vulnerabilities, including the costs and challenges as well as benefits and opportunities from doing so. The reports suggest concrete, priority actions to support the low-carbon, resilient transition. As public documents, CCDRs aim to inform governments, citizens, the private sector and development partners and enable engagements with the development and climate agenda. CCDRs feed into other core Bank Group diagnostics, country engagements and operations, and help attract funding and direct financing for high-impact climate action.The World Bank Group’s Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs) are a core diagnostic that integrates climate change and development. They help countries prioritize the most impactful actions that can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and boost adaptation and resilience, while delivering on broader development goals. CCDRs build on data and rigorous research and identify main pathways to reduce GHG emissions and climate vulnerabilities, including the costs and challenges as well as benefits and opportunities from doing so. The reports suggest concrete, priority actions to support the low-carbon, resilient transition. As public documents, CCDRs aim to inform governments, citizens, the private sector and development partners and enable engagements with the development and climate agenda. CCDRs feed into other core Bank Group diagnostics, country engagements and operations, and help attract funding and direct financing for high-impact climate action.The World Bank Group’s Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs) are a core diagnostic that integrates climate change and development. They help countries prioritize the most impactful actions that can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and boost adaptation and resilience, while delivering on broader development goals. CCDRs build on data and rigorous research and identify main pathways to reduce GHG emissions and climate vulnerabilities, including the costs and challenges as well as benefits and opportunities from doing so. The reports suggest concrete, priority actions to support the low-carbon, resilient transition. As public documents, CCDRs aim to inform governments, citizens, the private sector and development partners and enable engagements with the development and climate agenda. CCDRs feed into other core Bank Group diagnostics, country engagements and operations, and help attract funding and direct financing for high-impact climate action.The Lao PDR CCDR analyzes how Lao PDR can achieve sustainable development while addressing climate change. Lao PDR (henceforth Laos) was one of the fastest-growing
countries for two decades and significantly reduced poverty, but now faces debt distress, macroeconomic instability, slower growth, and constrained fiscal space. Climate change is exacerbating these challenges. Rising temperatures and more
frequent and intense floods, droughts, and landslides pose increasing economic and social costs. At the same time, the country’s development slowdown has increased the concentration of people and economic activity in climate-vulnerable sectors, reducing the ability to cushion climate shocks. Laos therefore faces an urgent need to restore macroeconomic stability and diversify the economy, which would have substantial benefits for climate adaptation. In addition, targeted measures to adapt to climate change will be needed and could have large development benefits. Finally, although Laos is a low contributor to global GHG emissions, the country has pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Many of the actions that would lower emissions could benefit the country’s development, although others may be challenging to finance