This policy note was prepared in parallel to the report Pakistan at 100, Shaping the Future. The report Pakistan at 100 discusses options to accelerate and sustain growth in Pakistan so that the country becomes an upper middle-income country when it turns 100 years old in 2047. This policy note...

The World Bank Group (WBG) has been active in public and private sector pollution management for the past several decades. The Bank has mainstreamed environmental health concerns into its rural and urban services through projects that improved the management of solid and hazardous waste and...

The work summarized in this report fills a knowledge gap by contributing to an improved understanding of the links between competitiveness and pollution. Specifically, it argues that pollution need not be an inevitable consequence of development. Indeed, there are examples of cities that have...

Geographically, Chongqing is strategically positioned as a gateway to China's west, a key connection in the Yangtze river economic belt, and a strategic base for China's belt and road initiative. Over the past two decades, Chongqing has faced significant challenges, including the resettlement of...

Plastics have been a development driver for decades but have turned into a development problem due to their omnipresence in the environment. Marine litter and plastic pollution have attracted much attention and commitments from governments and the private sector alike in the past few years....

Resilient Housing (RH) initiatives are a crucial means of improving access to safe and sanitary housing in urban areas of high vulnerability. These projects make residents safer, healthier, and more secure, and increase the economic inclusion of the world's poorest populations. They upgrade...

The Twenty-sixth United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) was held in early November 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland, at which Vietnam's Prime Minister, Pham Minh Chinh, pledged once again that Vietnam would be part of the global climate change solution. The country aims to increase the share...

To meet carbon emissions targets, more than 30 countries have committed to boosting production of renewable resources from biological materials andconvert them into products such as food, animal feedand bioenergy. In a post-fossil-fuel world, an increasingproportion of chemicals, plastics,...

The Philippine archipelago emerged because of the dynamic shifting and collision of four plates: Continental Eurasian plate, Indian-Australian plate, Oceanic Pacific plate, and the Philippine Sea plate. In the past 100 million years, the archipelago was welded together in an island arc...