Development in a Changing Climate | Making our future sustainable. December 2009 does not seem so long ago. The UN climate conference in Copenhagen had just come to a disappointing end, and I headed home feeling depressed. I returned to China for holiday and was surprised to see the widespread awareness of climate change and the collective sense of urgency for action. The concept of "low carbon" was discussed in all major and local newspapers. To my amazement, I even found an advertisement for a "low carbon" wedding. I finished my holiday and went back to Washington with optimism and hope: Despite the failings of Copenhagen, China, the biggest emitter in the world and the largest developing country, was going through a real transformational change.
China clearly saw action on climate change as serving its own interest and as an opportunity to pursue a green growth model that decouples economic development from carbon emissions and resource dependence. China’s progress is impressive. While these numbers are impressive, sustaining them will be harder. Sustainable Cities. This Earth Day, we have good reason to celebrate. It’s been a year that saw historic commitments along the path of our collective response to climate change and how we will live on the planet in this century. In September, global leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals and are now working to put them into force to end poverty, while also combating climate change and ensuring that our future is prosperous for all people.
The Paris Agreement reached at COP 21 last December represents our best foot forward toward cutting carbon pollution and building resilience to the climate threats we face. And that momentum continues this week, as leaders from around the world gather in New York City to formally sign the Agreement to turn those promises into action. Increasingly, that future will be more urbanized than ever before. 6 out of 10 people on the planet will live in cities by 2030.
However, more than 820 million people live in slums and this number, sadly, is increasing. The Water Blog. Lessons from a recent case study on informal settlements in Kampala, Uganda, where water services were expanded to reach the poor in less than a decade, indicate that pro-poor policies are critical to increasing water coverage for poor people. What is telling is that revenues and subsidies earned from serving the non-poor, combined with applying rigorous business principles, were equally important in sustaining these services. In the case of Kampala, the utility improved its financial viability by more than doubling the number of connections from 59,000 in 2004 to 146,000 in 2009 and tripling revenues between 2004 and 2010. As a result of the policy, an additional 2,500 yard taps and 660 new public points were installed in the informal settlements. Although this was a small fraction of total new connections in the period, since they were shared, they reached 21% of the approximately 466,000 new people served during this period, those in the lowest socio-economic quintiles.
All About Finance. Access to formal financial services has been expanding in recent years. But as people start to use these services for the first time, it has become clear that the challenge is not only providing access to financial services, but also ensuring that people have the behaviors and attitudes to use financial products responsibly and to their advantage. If not, increased access to finance could potentially lead to over-indebtedness and even financial crises. Two recent nationwide surveys of 1,526 adults in Colombia and of 2,022 adults in Mexico measure financial capability to provide insights on how people manage their finances. The term “financial capability” refers to a broader concept than financial literacy or knowledge alone. It covers a number of different behaviors and attitudes related to participation in financial decisions, planning and monitoring the use of money, and balancing income and expenses to make ends meet. Investing in Health.
Information and Communications for Development | Promoting Information and Communications for Development (IC4D) Energy for All. Education for Global Development. In my career as an educator, social scientist and university president, I have worked primarily as an organizational designer and architect. And in doing so, I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to study how universities and other organizations are structured, how decisions related to their design can shape their visions and accomplishments, and how organizations can work together as partners to achieve more than they could alone. It is my belief that, as the pace and complexity of our global society increases exponentially, there is an urgent need to realign the design and infrastructure of education with the needs of the people our educational systems are intended to serve.
While universities have long been vital and powerful drivers of global innovation and economic development, they must now be willing to break free from outmoded paradigms if they hope to continue achieving meaningful progress. Transport for Development. The World Bank recently financed an urban mobility survey in greater Buenos Aires to explore the gender dimension of commuting – an issue we (and our co-author Catalina Ochoa) have been interested in for quite some time. There is plenty of evidence that even in relatively sophisticated middle class settings such as in Buenos Aires, ‘traditional’ gender roles survive – women, particularly women with children, have more complex travel patterns than their male counterparts.
They travel more, they have more travel needs at off-peak hours than men, and these non-work travel needs are often associated with fixed destinations (e.g. child care). The mobility survey confirmed that the trends observed in Buenos Aires were similar to findings across the world including Europe, US[i], as well as nations in the global south like Peru and Vietnam[ii]. Comparing men and women’s mobility patterns: Women spend as much time commuting as men, but cover shorter distances. Africa Can... | End Poverty. It's a place of darkness. People are poor and hail from tribes and clans. They live in basic shelters in remote villages, with no running water or electricity, and no access to clinics. Subsisting on seasonal work, hunting and fishing to stock up food for the lean months, they worship nature's beauty. They consider themselves hardy, descendants of those who suffered war, famine, and religious persecution.
They resent that their part of the earth gets attention only through the prism of movies or when natural or manmade disasters strike. Then oil is found and they are blessed. Nope, this isn't one of the many countries we all associate with poverty. In 1975 the Alaska legislature asked itself: Was it morally acceptable or ethical for the generation whose presence in Alaska coincided with the oil boom to get all the benefits, leaving the following generations to deal with the decline and fall? Alaska set up the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APF).
Latin America & Caribbean: Opportunities for All. En Haïti, le recrutement de jeunes femmes pour les former à ce qui a toujours été perçu comme des métiers majoritairement masculins est une tâche difficile. Notre équipe a découvert que, si de nombreuses familles voulaient profiter de l'occasion qu’offrait la formation pour éduquer leurs filles, elles étaient hésitantes parce que la formation offerte était dans des rôles non traditionnels. En effet, ces étudiantes allaient apprendre des professions attribuées à des ouvriers/artisans tels que la maçonnerie, la menuiserie, la manœuvre d’engins lourds, la plomberie et le câblage électrique. Les pères et surtout les mères se sont farouchement opposés à ce que leurs filles exercent ce type de métier, mais pour des raisons différentes. Chez les pères c’était souvent la même question qui revenait : «Pourquoi vous ne leur apprenez pas à faire quelque chose de plus respectable, plus adapté pour une fille, à être secrétaire, ou travailler dans un hôpital ?
". End Poverty in South Asia | Promoting dialogue on development in South Asia. The biggest daily struggle for 28 year old mother of two Sima Begum, is feeding her young children and keeping them healthy. Nutrition is a key challenge not only for Sima, living in a slum in Narayanganj, but for women across Bangladesh and South Asia. In fact, wasting and stunting are among the most stubborn health challenges facing the children of this region. For the last 15 months, Sima has started receiving nutritional advice as well as a small cash transfer to help raise healthy children.
Through a pilot cash-transfer program supported by the Rapid Social Response Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF), her 10 year old son Faisal, is eligible for a Tk 800 ($10) school stipend and her daughter Shakal, 5, for a Tk 800 income transfer. Sima uses the stipends to feed Shakal a healthier diet and to pay for Faisal’s tuition, school books and uniform. Voices & Views: Middle East & North Africa. East Asia & Pacific on the rise | Making development work for all.
Dapatkah ekonomi Indonesia keluar dari keadaan investasi yang tak menentu? Ini adalah salah satu pertanyaan yang diajukan dalam laporan Perkembangan Triwulanan Perekonomian Indonesia dari Bank Dunia edisi bulan Maret 2014. Mengapa pertumbuhan investasi Indonesia tak menentu? Pertama, terdapat perlambatan dalam investasi tetap, karena turunnya kondisi perdagangan dan lebih ketatnya kondisi pembiayaan luar negeri.
Kedua, sementara investasi asing langsung (FDI)—sumber pembiayaan investasi yang penting—masih tetap kuat sejauh ini, laju pertumbuhan aliran masuk FDI yang tercatat pada beberapa tahun terakhir menunjukkan tanda-tanda mendatar. Ketiga, Indonesia tetap bergantung kepada pembiayaan luar negeri dari aliran masuk modal investasi portofolio. Akhirnya, perkembangan kebijakan terakhir telah meningkatkan ketidakpastian peraturan. Namun sejumlah hal perlu diwaspadai.