While education stocks (measured as the number of years of schooling attained per person over age 15) have risen significantly in all regions, they have risen the fastest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
... Voir la suite This note documents this remarkable regional achievement. This brief shows that all 15 MENA countries for which we have comparable data increased their education stocks over time. As well as trends in population weighted averages for education stock across regions.
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The Ombudsman Bureau in Jordan was established in 2008. It was created to provide an avenue for redress by citizens for complaints against public sector bodies - part of the Governments drive to improve the public sector.
... Voir la suite Such a body is important in providing checks and balances in a government dominated by a strong executive branch. It also provides an alternative process of dispute resolution to filing cases in courts, thus relieving pressure on the court system and providing a means of redress that may prove more accessible than the courts for certain categories of disputes.
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The Syrian war and the subsequent emergence and spread of the Islamic State (ISIS) have transformed the Levant in ways one could not have imagined prior to 2011.
... Voir la suite As the numbers of dead and of refugees and internally displaced kept climbing, and as families were torn apart and neighborhoods were turned into war zones, economies slumped and regional economic ties broke down. The shock of these events, henceforth referred to as the Levant conflict or war, has changed the region in profound ways, yet there are no systematic evaluations of its economic impact. Our objective was to address this gap and quantify both the direct and indirect economic effects of the war on the countries in the greater Levant--Turkey, the Syrian Arab Republic, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Arab Republic of Egypt. It is important to note that the analysis in our paper does not factor in several types of costs. The authors do not assess the cost of delivering basic services to refugees in receiving countries; these costs could be substantial for Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. The costs of replenishing depleted human and physical capital in Syria will also be sizable. The authors also ignore important dynamic investment-growth links that may amplify the effects discussed here.
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Wind and solar energy is a fast-growing share of the global energy mix. But integrating them into power-system operations requires significant adaptations to compensate for their variability.
... Voir la suite Solutions include increasing the amount of flexible generation within the system, combining, and dispersing variable resources to smooth aggregate output, expanding the transmission network, using smart technology to control supply and demand, and storing electricity.
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Although the payment models offered by off-grid energy companies are less flexible than those implemented with great success by mobile telephone companies, they may still have an important role to play in scaling up off-grid energy services for billions of people who lack access to electricity.
... Voir la suite More research is needed to assess the importance of flexible payments in attracting reliable low-income customers.
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This MENA K&L Quick Note highlights the key lessons learned from the workshop entitled: Procurement Under Public private Partnerships (PPP): A Learning Event for the Water and Energy Sectors, held in Beirut, Lebanon on October 13-15, 2014.
... Voir la suite The event was organized by the Governance Global Practice Team at the World Bank Office in Beirut in coordination with the Public-Private Partnership Cross Cutting Solutions Area (GPCDR-PPP-CCSA). The event provided a platform to expose clients to best practices on PPP procurement, particularly in projects, sectors, and countries with upcoming PPP operations, as well as in countries that are exploring the possibility of utilizing PPP arrangements and are interested to learn more about the approach and the legal framework to support it.
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Fiche 93705 DEC 01, 2014
Lipson, Rachel; Ismail Ali, Nazaneen; Al-Kazzaz, Ala
This brief examines planning for access to electricity. That electricity for all campaigns around the globe often fall short of their targets is partly a failure of planning.
... Voir la suite In the area of generation and transmission, technical changes could improve the handling of key constraints, such as fuel availability, funding, and the rate of building. Planning for distribution networks could be improved by gathering data on end-use demand and deploying geospatial tools. Most important of all, the entire planning process from generation to distribution must be better coordinated if access plans are to be successful.
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As Dubai has grown over the last two decades, the demand for private education has grown with it, a reflection of the number of expatriates settling in the city and the various curricula on offer to cater to expatriates.
... Voir la suite Given the city-state's unique context (in which a majority of the population are expatriates, not Emiratis), the immediate challenge for this new public institution was to identify an appropriate approach for regulating a private education sector. It was the central tenets of this approach, dependent essentially on oversight rather than intervention, which appealed to the knowledge and human development authority (KHDA) and so the policy framework from that report was adopted, adapted, and put into place in Dubai. The KHDA has returned to the World Bank requesting a review of the governance initiatives. A World Bank team, working in close collaboration with counterparts in the KHDA, and in consultation with the wider stakeholders in question (private school owners, heads, teachers, and parents), completed the review and the findings are presented in this report.
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Hydropower development makes an essential contribution to reducing poverty, boosting shared prosperity, and improving sustainability. Water storage associated with some hydropower projects can also make important contributions to water and food security and to climate resilience.
... Voir la suite The World Bank Group (WBG) thus uses multiple instruments to support sustainable and responsible hydropower projects of various sizes and types, depending on local need. But hydropower can also carry significant risks that must be carefully managed. Supporting sustainable hydropower is important for the World Bank Group, because hydropower potential exists where electricity is most needed. Hydropower production is the least-cost method of providing electricity in many developing countries. The WBG is committed to helping its clients continuously improve the way they approach hydropower so as to better manage its risks and better share the benefits of this renewable resource. Support for hydropower helps manage risks and can yield local, national, regional, and global benefits. Sustainable hydropower has three dimensions: physical, financial, and social/environmental. While a large amount of progress has been made on sustainability, particularly over the last decade, new challenges continue to emerge or become more pressing. These include: 1) securing multiple benefits from investments in hydropower; 2) managing cascades of projects to optimize additional benefits or to prevent exacerbating negative impacts; and 3) developing a more sophisticated understanding of land and water interactions.
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Fiche 91154 OCT 01, 2014
Bucknall,Julia; Foster,Vivien; Liden,Mats Johan Rikard; Lyon,Kimberly Nicole; Rex,William
This quick note highlights the key discussions and recommendations made during the high-level development exchange held in Djibouti on June 20-23, 2014.
... Voir la suite The event was co-organized by the World Bank office in Djibouti and the ministry of economy and finance under the high patronage of the President of the Republic of Djibouti. The event provided a platform to promote dialogue, share knowledge, and develop policies to eliminate poverty and enable a dynamic private sector. It aimed to strengthen Djiboutis capacity to define, through a concerted open dialogue, a path to sustainable development, and ensure that growth translates into poverty reduction, jobs, and economic opportunities for all. The experiences of Cape Verde, Mauritius, and Dubai, also demonstrate that the small size of the Djiboutian market, along with the high cost of electricity, do not constitute binding constraints to economic development. It is critical that serious consideration be given to the recommendations made during the roundtables. To this end, the implementation of sector-specific five-year plans by the Government of Djibouti should include, to the extent possible, consultations between private and public actors and civil society.
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While circumstances vary by country, there are some generic principles for Public Financial Management, or PFM reform. For this quick note these principles were drawn from the personal experience (within and outside the World Bank) of the author as well as selected readings presented at the end of the note.
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Although child mortality rates have declined all across the developing world over the past 40 years, they have declined the most in the Middle East and North Africa region.
... Voir la suite This quick note documents this remarkable experience both at the country and regional levels. This paper shows how child mortality rates (measured as the number of deaths of children fewer than five years of age per 1000 live births) have declined in the 17 MENA countries for which we have data for the period 1970-2010. It is clear from the figure that all MENA countries experienced substantial declines in child mortality rates over the past four decades. What also stands out from the figure is the phenomenon of convergence. The gap between countries with high mortality rates and those with low mortality rates narrowed substantially between 1970 and 2010, suggesting the former have been converging with the latter.
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Many cities of developing countries are experiencing rapid growth of motorized transportation. This is leading to severe congestion, which, in turn, is reducing productivity.
... Voir la suite Road accidents have been increasing. Transport emissions have become a major contributor to severe air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. The main cause of these problems has been the increasing preference for personal motor vehicles for commuting to work and getting around the city. In many countries, urban development practices have worked in favor of such preference, leading to urban sprawl. Thus, remedial measures have to focus on reversing the preference for such modes of travel, shifting to public transport, cycling, or walking, and building and retrofitting cities to minimize the need for private automobiles. The objective of this guidance note is to present a systematic, practical, and comprehensive approach to dealing with the problems of urban transport. It outlines a framework of possible interventions and demonstrates how such interventions relate to the overall objectives of improving mobility and energy efficiency as well as reducing air pollution and road accidents. Thereafter, it highlights a range of cross-cutting issues that need to be addressed and also suggests steps to create an enabling environment to move towards a sustainable urban transport system. Its target audience is the city-level leadership and key decision makers responsible for sustainable urban mobility.
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Recent episodes of global financial stress have underscored the importance of individual banks to the stability of their own or even the global financial system.
... Voir la suite Against this backdrop and to respond to the need of World Bank Group staff for a wider diagnostic toolkit, we have developed the BRI, an icon set in the form of a traffic light to enable preliminary analyses of individual banks' financial soundness in the region, and an Excelbased spreadsheet tool (FRIM) to facilitate its calculation and presentation. A back-test based on actual developments in the Tunisian banking system suggests that the BRI is able to accurately differentiate banks according to their financial health. The impact of the global financial crisis on banking systems and banks in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has highlighted the importance of differentiating across countries and among financial institutions. While the region avoided systemic banking distress, the crisis had a stronger impact on countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council, where financial systems were more globally integrated and banks more overextended. Countries elsewhere in the region, including transition countries, weathered the crisis better. However, protracted economic weakness is likely to have a significant impact on several banking systems and banks, which can have profound consequences for credit intermediation and ultimately economic growth and job creation. This underscores the need for better tools to monitor financial risk and vulnerabilities in MENA.
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About one-third of global energy is consumed in residential, public, and commercial buildings (collectively referred to as buildings), where it is used for space heating, cooling, ventilating, lighting, cooking, water heating, refrigerating, and operating electric and mechanical devices.
... Voir la suite Global energy use in buildings is expected to grow as cities in developing countries continue to modernize and per capita income levels continue to increase. Because of their high energy consumption, residential, public, and commercial buildings also offer unparalleled opportunities for energy savings. According to the International Energy Agency, buildings account for some 41 percent of global energy savings potential by 2035, compared with the industrial sector (24 percent) and the transport sector (21 percent). This guidance note outlines how cities can tap into a wide array of proven technologies, policies, and financing mechanisms to improve energy efficiency and capture cost-effective energy savings in buildings. It offers city leaders advice on how to get started in introducing energy efficiency measures, and provides lessons and examples from successful programs that have been introduced worldwide.
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Climate change and climate-induced migration (Foresight, 2011) are major global concerns. This is true for the MENA region as well. Yet empirical data on how perceptions of climate change and weather shocks affect migration in the region are scarce.
... Voir la suite To what extent are perceived and actual weather shocks and changes in the environment driving temporary and permanent migration flows? Do remittances reach households living in climate poor areas, and if so, what is their impact on poverty and human development? These are some of the questions considered in a study by Wodon et al. (2014) based on various data sources including new household surveys for climate affected areas in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen (the five country sample in this note). In a short summary note as this one, it is important to be clear at the outset about what is measured and what is not. It is sometimes said that Climate is what we expect. Weather is what we get. Simply put, climate relates to the distribution of variables such as temperature and rainfall over a long period of time. This distribution is characterized by its moments, including the mean and the variance of key climatic variables. Climate change is then used to refer to the change in the distribution of rainfall and temperature. However, it is difficult to tell if the weather experienced at a point in time is due to climate change (the overall mean and variance of rainfall and temperature) or part of an existing distribution.
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The dynamism of air traffic markets in the Middle East obscures the persistence of restrictions on international competition. But how important are such restrictions for passenger traffic?
... Voir la suite This longer paper by the same title that this Quick Note is based on uses detailed data on worldwide passenger aviation to estimate the effect of air transport policy on international air traffic2. The policy variable is a quantitative measure of the commitments under international agreements. The paper analyzes, and for the first time, not only bilateral agreements, but also plurilateral agreements such as the one between Arab states. The analysis finds that more liberal policy is associated with greater passenger traffic between countries. Higher traffic levels appear to be driven primarily by larger numbers of city pairs being served, rather than by more passengers traveling along given routes. To demonstrate the quantitative implication of the estimates, two liberalization scenarios in the Middle East are evaluated.
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Do households living in climate affected areas in the MENA region believe that changes in climate patterns and their environment are taking place?
... Voir la suite Have households been affected by extreme weather events, and if so to what extent and which events have had the largest impact? What are the coping strategies that households declare having used, or could be using to cope with climate change and weather shocks? And what are the implications for policy? A new World Bank Study by Wodon et al. (2014) helps in answering these questions. It is widely recognized that MENA will be strongly affected by climate change. The frequency and severity of extreme weather shocks is expected to increase. Yet, the evidence on how households are already affected and whether they can cope and adapt to changing climatic conditions is limited. The study by Wodon et al. (2014) helps fill these knowledge gaps. It is based in large part on new household surveys and qualitative data from climate affected areas in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen. The study provides insights on household perceptions of, and vulnerability to, extreme weather shocks.
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According to a new World Bank report, economic complementarities between Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and the Palestinian Territories are significant, with substantial welfare gains expected from increased trade and investments and, ultimately, economic integration.
... Voir la suite With a population of 224 million, a land area of 2.4 million km, a nominal GDP of 1.4 trillion dollars, and close to major markets and transportation corridors, these New Levant countries have significant economic weight and promise. There are opportunities from deeper regional integration to derive significant benefits from economic complementarities and greater competitiveness.
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Improving the energy efficiency (EE) of municipally owned buildings, such as schools and hospitals, and municipal infrastructure, such as public lighting, water supply, and district heating, offers budgetary savings on energy bills and a wide range of environmental and socioeconomic benefits.
... Voir la suite But relatively few municipal EE projects have been developed and implemented successfully. The challenges that limit EE investments in municipal buildings and facilities can be grouped into three broad areas: (i) a lack of awareness and incentives; (ii) insufficient implementation capacity; and (iii) limited access to financing. All three sets of challenges need to be addressed to scale up successful implementation of municipal EE projects. This Guidance Note focuses on the key issues faced by municipalities in accessing financing for EE investments, particularly for projects in the following four areas: indoor lighting, building retrofits, public lighting, and municipal utilities. The guidance note discusses the following potential financing mechanisms that can be used by municipalities to finance EE measures: budget financing, Funds developed specifically to address energy efficiency, public support to leverage commercial financing, and commercial financing.
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