With the COVID-19 pandemic, the development context for the world is fundamentally challenged in many ways. The pandemic has taken a drastic human toll, and its global-scale economic and social impacts affected rural development work focused on the most poor and vulnerable populations. It has...

The services sector has been the main source of economic growth in recent decades, with logistics, finance and information technologies playing an essential role in the functioning of modern economies while business services, healthcare and entertainment feature among the world's fastest growing...

Many developing countries sharing water resources of international river basins are facing serious problems in meeting their rapidly growing demandes for domestic, irrigation, industrial, power, and other uses due to riparian conflicts. This report decribes the Bank's successful interventions in...

Hydropower and irrigation projects involving reservoirs can displace thousands of people from their traditional lands and deprive them of their livelihoods. If poorly planned, they can also lead to environmental degradation. Solutions to these problems must be found--solutions that are...

This report consists of a collection of essays on extreme poverty. The first part of the report deals with what it means to live in extreme poverty, how to reach the very poor, through programs, and interventions, and how to make private, and public institutions more responsive to their...