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A Handbook for Policy Makers
Get PDFArtificial Intelligence (AI) has significant potential to help drive economic development and poverty reduction in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). AI—including traditional and generative AI (GenAI)—is a tool that can help foster resilient, sustainable, and inclusive economic growth. While GenAI tools have quickly reached hundreds of millions of users globally, low-income countries (LICs) are lagging, even as “small AI” solutions gain ground. To mitigate the AI divide, policy makers need to prioritize the development of a strategic approach to AI and support AI ecosystems development. Some studies suggest that AI may over time shrink the space for countries to generate well-paid jobs in high-skill services (Liu, 2024) and that countries that fail to develop a comparative advantage in high-skill services and delay AI adoption may face mounting difficulties creating jobs. This handbook aims to assist policy makers in developing strategic national-level approaches to artificial intelligence (AI), supporting the responsible development and deployment of AI for public good. It offers a hands-on, structured, yet adaptable framework that can help policy makers tailor strategic AI approaches adapted to their unique contexts. Without being normative or prescriptive, the framework and tools outlined in the handbook offer guidance and provide a collection of emerging good practices to help each country find the most suitable approach
Roads, Railways, and Urban Transport
Get PDFThe railway sector is essential to economic growth and connectivity, offering efficient and sustainable transport solutions. However, growing threats from climate change and natural disasters are placing increasing strain on railway infrastructure. To maintain long-term operational stability, resilience must be embedded into the planning, investment, and management of railway systems. This starts with high-level risk mapping to identify vulnerabilities, followed by assessments of infrastructure exposure and potential economic impacts. These insights guide the development of adaptation strategies and inform policy and investment decisions that prioritize durable, reliable systems
INSPIRE Guide to Refugee Inclusion in National Education Systems
Get PDFThe guide is structured into three main sections: guidance notes. This section acts as a primer, offering clear, concise, and practical information on policy and process issues related to refugee inclusion. It discusses the why of inclusion, highlighting the benefits for both refugees and host countries, and the shift from parallel education systems to national inclusion. It also delves into the practical aspects of inclusion, including legal frameworks, policies, and interventions, and emphasizes the importance of understanding the refugee population's characteristics and needs. The political economy of inclusion, including financing and the changing roles of national and international actors, is also explored. Section two is the intervention repository. This section curates short notes on on-ramp inclusion interventions. These interventions are categorized into addressing policy/financing, supporting schools, supporting students, and monitoring and evaluation. Each note provides details relevant to design and implementation, such as cost estimates, human and material resource requirements, and evidence of impact. Examples of interventions include strengthening identification documentation systems, increasing school capacity through double-shift systems, training teachers in school safety, engaging refugee teachers, providing teacher professional development, recognizing prior learning, organizing back-to-school campaigns, offering cash grants, distributing school kits, extending school health and nutrition programs, providing remedial/accelerated education, strengthening psychosocial support and socio-emotional learning, and using EdTech solutions. The third section is the evidence note. This section synthesizes empirical evidence on refugees and education to inform policy decisions and interventions. It covers the impact of forced displacement on human capital, factors predicting educational outcomes (age at arrival, sex/gender, socio-economic status, parental education, country of origin, length of stay, return intentions, early school environment, refugee teaching assistants, language of instruction, and child labor), the impact of the school environment on psychosocial adjustment, the link between educational attainment and longer-term integration outcomes, and the effects of refugees on the educational outcomes of host community children
Quantifying the Jobs Potential of AI in Latin America and the Caribbean
Get PDFGenerative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) is set to potentially transform the labor market, presenting both opportunities and challenges. Studies about its possible impacts have generally focused on high-income countries. But AI may be a crucial path to greater productivity in emerging markets - or, like other recent waves of technological change, it may widen the gap between low- and high-income workers. These effects are of particular concern to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), one of the world’s most unequal regions, and one that has struggled with a persistent productivity gap, in large part because of barriers to innovation and technology adoption. To effectively minimize the risks and leverage the benefits of Gen AI, LAC countries would need to understand their economy’s occupational exposure to technology - yet that type of assessment had never been undertaken in the region
Identification of Potential Locations, Assessment of Triple Dividends, and Cost Estimation
No full textBangladesh is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events due to its frequent exposure to floods and extensive low-lying areas. Coastal flood risks are expected to increase due climate change. Therefore, Bangladesh has been upgrading its coastal embankment system to enhance flood safety. This initiative includes not only hard flood defense infrastructure, but also nature-based solutions through planting mangroves on the seaside of embankments. Mangroves, serving as natural flood barriers, have been utilized in Bangladesh for coastal protection since the 1960s. However, their integration with embankment designs and their benefits in carbon sequestration remain underexplored. This paper consolidates current knowledge on the role of mangroves in coastal resilience in Bangladesh, incorporating recent studies and new analyses on their benefits on (i) flood risk reduction, (ii) livelihood enhancement, and (iii) carbon sequestration. The estimated benefits are mapped along the country's coastal system. The study identifies some of the most beneficial mangrove sites to be combined with embankment designs, such as a belt south of polder 45 (Amtali) with an average width of 1.77 kilometers, and a belt around the Kukri-Mukri polder with an average width of 1.82 kilometers. These mangrove forests can reduce the required thickness for slope protection by up to 80 percent, offer carbon service benefits of US22,000 per hectare. Other wide mangrove belts are found in Sandwip and Mirersarai. The findings aim to guide future investments in integrating mangroves into coastal protection systems, highlighting their triple dividends for building resilience
Disaster and Climate-Resilient Transport Guidance Note
Get PDFAs climate change accelerates, transport networks face both direct and indirect disruptions, impacting trade, mobility, and economic stability. Extreme weather events damage critical infrastructure, isolating communities and disrupting supply chains, having a significant impact on economic growth. Recognizing these challenges, the World Bank Group has committed to raising annual climate financing to US 40 billion dollars by 2025, with 45 percent of total financing directed toward climate action. To effectively address climate risks on transportation system functionality, considering a more comprehensive approach is essential. Rather than focusing solely on hard infrastructure, resilience must be built through transport systems and the community. This is critical to effectively withstand climate hazards while supporting business continuity and communities’ adaptability to disruptions. The World Bank therefore developed the life-cycle approach, i.e. a five-pillar approach, to enable climate resilience to be embedded into every phase of the transport infrastructure life cycle: system planning and financing to assess risks and guide investments, engineering, and design to develop cost-effective adaptation solutions, operations and maintenance to facilitate proactive monitoring and climate-smart upkeep, contingency planning to strengthen emergency response, and institutional capacity and coordination to enhance cross-sector collaboration
Evidence from Colombia’s Sugar Market
Get PDFThis paper examines the impact of two interventions by Colombia's competition authority to enforce competition in the sugar market on firm performance in downstream sectors. Using an exogenous identification strategy, the analysis finds that following the competition authority’s intervention against collusion in 2015, downstream firms expanded production but did not increase productivity or profitability margins, consistent with the removal of supply constraints imposed by cartelization. In contrast, the 2011 intervention against abuse of dominance increased the profitability margins of downstream firms, without altering production scale or labor intensity, consistent with input price reductions and stable consumer demand. Robustness checks, including propensity score matching, confirm the reliability of these findings. The results show that antitrust enforcement works through different channels, depending on the type of anti-competitive behavior. The results also highlight the importance of targeted and continuous antitrust enforcement in addressing market distortions
Evidence for MENA Countries
Get PDFThe Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region stands among the most vulnerable areas to the impacts of climate change. At the same time, with lax environmental regulations, this region’s integration into Global Value Chains (GVC) is modest. Thus, this paper aims to examine the effect of environmental stringency on GVC participation in MENA countries. To do so, using the World Bank Enterprise Surveys, this paper analyzes how environmental regulations and treaties affect both the extensive and the intensive margins of GVCs. The main results show that national environmental regulations increase the likelihood of integrating into GVCs when it is measured using both the simple and the strict definitions. This result highlights the role of such regulations in attracting GVCs in developing countries and thus lends support to the Porter Hypothesis. The paper also shows that these regulations increase the effect of spending on research and development on GVC. Yet, the results are less conclusive for the role of environmental treaties. These results remain robust when a mixed multilevel approach is used, and when large exporters, who might lobby to affect policy choices, are dropped from the analysis. In addition, at the sectoral level, national regulations are associated with higher GVC participation in the food sector in the MENA region and lower participation in the plastics one. Finally, regulatory stringency increases the probability of GVC participation for both SMEs and large firms, with the effect generally stronger for SMEs
Bhutan Country Climate and Development Report
Get PDFThe 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.Building on the analytical framework of this CCDR, this report outlines steps to strengthen Bhutan’s resilience while accelerating economic diversification. Despite the emerging climate challenges, Bhutan can drive sustainable growth by leveraging its carbon-negative status and abundant natural resources. Key resilience-building measures include enhancing the spillovers of hydropower production to related sectors, raising agricultural productivity through CSA adoption, and strengthening infrastructure to better support economic activity despite climate risks. Creating the conditions for sustainable green growth in forestry and tourism will support economic diversification and create opportunities for green job creation. The key enablers are harnessing innovative climate finance mechanisms, strengthening institutional capacity, and empowering communities to drive locally-led climate adaptation
FY 2024 Sri Lanka Country Opinion Survey Report
Get PDFThe Country Opinion Survey in Sri Lanka assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in better
understanding how Sri Lanka stakeholders 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 Sri Lanka on 1) their views
regarding the general environment in Sri Lanka; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in
Sri Lanka; 3) overall impressions of the WBG’s effectiveness and results, knowledge work
and activities, and communication and information sharing in Sri Lanka; and 4) their
perceptions of the WBG’s future role in Sri Lanka