MyHeadlines - World Bank

About us | Contact

Sources | Newsletters | Top Ten | Search | FAQ

My News

Dossiers

Select News

Home > All Sources > World Bank | e-Library

World Bank | e-Library

New online publications available via the World Bank e-Library

1-10 > Next 10

Now available online: Wind Energy in Colombia
25 07 2010 The wind regime in Colombia has been rated among the best in South America. However, under the current circumstances, and on its own, the interconnected system would not likely promote wind power. This report is targeted to analysts, planners, operators, generators and decision makers in Colombia and other countries in the region and provides a set of policy options to promote the use of wind power. The potential instruments assessed in this study include financial instruments, government fiscal mechanisms, and adjustments to the regulatory system. The single most effective policy instrument to promote wind power in Colombia consists on valuing the firm energy offered by wind, its potential complementarity to the hydrological regime and enabling wind power an access to reliability payments.

Now available online: Lesotho Highlands Water Project
25 07 2010 Effective communications in all stages of the project cycle (including identification, preparation, implementation and operation) are critical to the success of complex hydraulic infrastructure projects, involving many stakeholders. Being the largest binational water transfer scheme in the world and because of its phasing, the lessons learned in this case study are multifaceted. The LHWP can serve as a model of mutually beneficial development--through demonstrating the benefits of bilateral government cooperation in the development of an international river that exceed those of individual approaches as well as strengthening political cooperation.

Now available online: Berg Water Project
25 07 2010 Communication is central to multistakeholder dialogue and partnerships needed to achieve sustainability and governance reform in water resource management and infrastructure provision. The case study identifies current practice, offers advice on capacity building in an operational setting; and draws insights and lessons from experience.

Now available online: Tackling HIV-Related Stigma and Discrimination in South Asia
25 07 2010 Although HIV prevalence in South Asia is low, vulnerable groups such as sex workers (SW), injecting drug users (IDU) and men who have sex with men (MSM) are at high risk for HIV. Widespread stigma impede efforts to reach those most in need of HIV prevention, care and treatment services. To tackle stigma, the South Asia Regional Development Marketplace (SARDM) partnership, led by the World Bank, launched a competitive grants program in 2008 to support innovative community approaches for reducing HIV-related stigma and discrimination (S&D) in the region.Twenty-six community groups in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka received funds to pilot innovations over a 12-18 month period. The interventions engaged a broad spectrum of groups in combating stigma, including transgender communities, MSM, IDU, SWs, people living with HIV, the media, local government authorities, health workers and religious leaders. This book summarizes monitoring, evaluation and case study data, revealing that a number of strategies were particularly effective in raising awareness about S&D and shifting, albeit slowly, attitudes, norms and behaviors. The effective strategies engaged marginalized groups to design and lead the interventions, and facilitated contact between groups experiencing stigma and the general public to reduce fears and misconceptions about HIV transmission. Interventions that used traditional cultural mediums (e.g. song, dance, theater) were successful in broaching taboo subjects.Involving opinion leaders, such as local and religious leaders, the police and the media amplified the reach and effect of stigma reduction efforts. Projects that combined economic and stigma reduction interventions helped marginalized populations overcome internalized stigma and become empowered to advocate for their rights. This book is critical reading for all working on HIV prevention, care and treatment, from policy makers in national AIDS programs, to donors and program implementers, both within the South Asia region and globally.

Now available online: Trade and Transport Facilitation Assessment
25 07 2010 Achieving practical trade facilitation reforms has become a key development priority in recent years. In 2001, the Bank issued a first Trade and Transport Facilitation Audit (TTFA) toolkit. The TTFA provides a simple and cost-effective instrument to analyze bottlenecks in international supply chains and prepare corrective measures. The key insight of the TTFA is that considerable knowledge can be easily obtained by interviewing key participants in the commercial or procedural transactions that combine to form international supply chains. These participants include private service providers such as freight forwarders, exporters, transporters and bankers as well as public agencies such as customs, port authorities, and transport regulators. Many government and development agencies have implemented the toolkit, including the World Bank, which has conducted about 50 audits prior to 2009.The new edition provides an opportunity not only to reflect the changes in the trade environment and the need for additional features in the toolkit, but also to benefit from the experiences of the audits already undertaken based on the original edition and hence give the new toolkit an even more operational focus.The modular organization proposed in the document should facilitate a progressive reading, by adding an increasing degree of detail. The first chapter introduces the conceptual framework for the TTFA. The second chapter discusses some of the reasons for conducting an audit. The third describes the implementation of the Audit including planning and scheduling, resource requirements and organization of the analysis and preparation of the reports. The annexes provide additional information on the concept, the methodology and content of the audit. The Interview Guides provides the scope for the meetings and checklists for all categories of interviewees and field visits.The toolkit has been written for the different possible audiences interested in trade facilitation and logistics in developing countries, including:Policy makers in developing countries;Development practitioners, including staff from development agencies supervising the implementation of the audits, such as Country economists or Operational task managers, in the World Bank or in other development institutions.Trade/Transport facilitation consultants or consulting firms.

Now available online: The Cost of Being Landlocked
25 07 2010 This book proposes a new analytical framework to interpret and model the constraints faced by logistics chains in landlocked countries. The case of LLDCs has naturally received special attention for decades, including a specific set of development priorities based on the idea of dependence over the transit state. In this context, efforts to tackle the cost of being landlocked have been mainly directed to ensure or facilitate freedom of transit through regional/multilateral conventions, and to develop regional transport infrastructure. In contrast, analysis of service delivery constraints has been seriously neglected and could explain the disappointing implementation of regional transit agreements and massive investments in corridors for exports diversification in landlocked economies.Based on extensive data collection in several regions of the world, this book argues that although landlocked developing countries do face high logistics costs, these do not result from poor road infrastructure –contrary to conventional wisdom-since transport prices mainly depend on trucking market structure and organization. In turn, high logistics costs depend on low logistics reliability and predictability, which are sensitive to rent-seeking and governance issues.This volume proposes three types of measures with the largest potential gains in total logistics costs: (i) measures to increase supply chain predictability and to reduce hedging costs, (ii) measures to enhance best practices in governance, in order to phase out rent-seeking activities and therefore overhead logistics costs, (iii) reforms to increase efficiency in market structure.Hence, in practical terms supply chain predictability and performance might be improved by pursuing the following initiatives: (i) enhancing initiation of transit at the gateway or port through a streamlined transit regime, preferably using IT and based on quality and risk assessment system; (ii) improving clearance at destination; (iii) boosting market competition, by dismantling anticompetitive practices and upgrading entry requirements based on compliance and quality standards; (iv) re-engineering of transit regimes.

Now available online: Development as Leadership-led Change
25 07 2010 Development involves change, but many development initiatives produce unimpressive results. The authors ask why and consider how to close the gap between the intended change and what we actually see in the evidence.This paper presents the findings of a study, initiated by the multi-donor Global Leadership Initiative and led by the World Bank Institute (WBI), to examine leadership in the change processes of fourteen capacity development interventions in eight developing countries, through 140 in-depth structured interviews. It explores what it takes to make change happen and in particular, the role leadership plays in effecting change. The authors propose that leadership contributes to change when it builds “change space” by fostering acceptance for change, granting authority for change, introducing or freeing the abilities necessary to achieve change.This “change space” is required to ensure contextual readiness for change and foster progress through the difficult stages of the change process. An analytical framework is introduced to illustrate the dimensions of this “change space” and its limits in organizational and social change. The authors argue that a lack of “change space” in many development contexts may be overlooked, contributing to failure.The paper concludes that leadership manifests in different ways in different contexts, depending on the contextual readiness and factors that shape change and leadership opportunities; but the key characteristics of plurality, functionality, problem orientation and “change space” creation are likely to be common to all successful leadership-led change events.

Now available online: Water and Development
25 07 2010 Development patterns, increasing population pressure, and the demand for better livelihoods in many parts of the globe all contribute to a steadily deepening global water crisis. Development redirects, consumes, and pollutes water. It also causes changes in the state of natural water reservoirs, directly by draining aquifers and indirectly by melting glaciers and the polar ice caps. Maintaining a sustainable relationship between water and development requires that current needs be balanced against the needs of future generations.The development community has transformed and broadened its approach to water since the 1980s. As stresses on the quality and availability of water have increased, donors have begun to move toward more comprehensive approaches that seek to integrate water into development in other sectors.This evaluation examines the full scope of the World Bank’s lending and grant support for water activities. More than 30 background papers prepared for the evaluation have analyzed Bank lending by thematic area and by activity type. IDA and IBRD (the Bank) have supported countries in many water-related sectors.The evaluation, by definition, is retrospective, but it identifies changes that will be necessary going forward, including those related to strengthening institutions and increasing financial sustainability. Lessons and results from nearly 2,000 loans and credits, and work with 142 countries are identified.

Now available online: Incentives and Dynamics in the Ethiopian Health Worker Labor Market
25 07 2010 By international standards, the supply of health workers in Ethiopia is tiny. In addition, those who do enter the profession and remain in the country disproportionately live and work in the capital, Addis Ababa. This story is repeated across the developing world, and in particular in sub-Saharan Africa, where shortages of health workers are deemed chronic. Increasing the supply of health workers, and improving their geographic distribution, requires an understanding of their responsiveness to changes in the incentives and constraints they face, and the efficacy with which labor markets can be expected to allocate scare human resources for health (HRH).This book presents evidence on these and other HRH issues from a new survey of Ethiopian health workers. The detailed data we collected from nearly 1,000 health workers allows us to answer three sets of questions: (i) how do compensation levels vary with location, training, experience, etc.?; (ii) what kinds of incentive packages are potentially most effective in attracting workers to under-served rural areas?; and (iii) what can we learn about the health worker labor market from one of its unique institutional features, that is, that new graduates are assigned to their first jobs via a lottery? We first use this random assignment to evaluate the longer-term impacts of working in a rural area early on in a worker’s career – is being sent to the end of the earth the end of the world? (answer: no), and second, we evaluate the long term efficiency effects of the lottery, which tends to obscure information about health worker quality, thereby leading to adverse selection – do high quality lottery participants quit the profession, thereby contributing to the medical brain drain? (answer: yes).The policy issues we can address with these data are broader in scope and more detailed in execution than most of the extant empirical work on HRH in developing countries. The book is thus suitable for researchers and policy analysts with an interest in understanding and improving the allocation of human resources for health in the developing world.

Now available online: The Future of the Natural Gas Market in Southeast Europe
25 07 2010 This study was to analyze the future role of natural gas in the energy mix of countries of South East Europe. The study further identifies regional, cross-border and country-specific gas infrastructure projects that are economically, financially and technically sound. The study also analyses, and makes proposals for, the institutional and policy issues relating to funding and implementing gas infrastructure projects. The study examines sources of gas supply from Russia, the Caspian region and other current and prospective producer countries through Turkey and other transit routes (including LNG) and assesses costs of supply and gasification prospects in nine gas markets in the South East Europe region:• Albania• Bosnia and Herzegovina• Bulgaria• Croatia• Kosovo• Macedonia• Montenegro• Romania• SerbiaThese markets are all signatories of the Athens Memoranda of 2002 and 2003, which commit the participants to regional cooperation in electricity and gas.

1-10 > Next 10

World Bank | e-Library on your website!

To display this news on your blog or website, copy the code below and paste it into a page.

New Sources

HTM in het nieuws

Omroep West

Mijn HTM | Blog

Latest News
Login: Users | Administrators

© 2008 RISQ Consultancy | Disclaimer
Website by Maarten H.J.van den Berg | Powered by MyHeadlines © 2004 Mike Agar.

Page generation: 0.37 Seconds