The World Bank Group (WBG) has long recognized that the restoration and preservationof cultural heritage, urban regeneration, and sustainable tourism can play a vital role in developing countries' efforts to promote local economic development, accelerate social integration, and alleviate...

Lao PDR faces a great opportunity to develop its tourism sector, in particular nature-based tourism (NBT), to create greener, more resilient economic growth and good jobs from its attractive landscapes and wildlife. Throughout the world, NBT is the fastest growing segment of tourism, and the...

Conservation and tourism contribute to greener economic growth in many countries. Although protected areas have often been viewed as land excluded from economic development for the purposes of environmental conservation, many countries have realized their powerful economic potential through...

The Rwandan economy continued to achieve strong growth in 2022 in the face of weakening external demand and restrictive monetary policies required to control inflation. Rising food prices particularly affected the poor, who devote a large share of their spending to food and appear to have faced...

Economic activity in Uganda is accelerating despite commodity-price inflation, global monetary tightening, international supply-chain bottlenecks, and a local Ebola outbreak. Real GDP growth is estimated to reach 5.7 percent in FY22/23, albeit still below the pre-COVID-19 projection of 6.5...

Enhancing Competitiveness in the Face of Disasters presents the case to government decision-makers, tourism private sector stakeholders, and development partners that the industry must act urgently to integrate resilience as a core component of its competitiveness agenda. Its objectives are to:...

This brief provides an overview of tobacco control legislation, use, and taxation in the country. Costa Rica ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2008. General Law for the Control of Tobacco and its Harmful Effects on Health was adopted in March 2012, and it regulates...

The aim of this report is to document the fidelity of the implementationof the RIPSS in the Huetar-Atlántica Region in Costa Rica. Implementationfidelity seeks to assess the extent to which an intervention is implementedas planned and, for this, the PIPs were contrasted with what wasimplemented...

The purpose of this poverty assessment is to shine a new light on poverty, inequality, and its drivers in Costa Rica. The report provides a descriptive overview of poverty trends in the country and examines why the poorest do not reap the benefits of economic growth. It provides high-level...

This urbanization review "Connecting the Greater Metropolitan Area of Costa Rica" focuses on the South Corridor, a lagging (sub)region within Costa Rica's Greater Metropolitan Area (Gran Area Metropolitana, GAM), and the challenges facing the subregion as a result of rapid and unplanned...