Over the past decade, illegal gold extraction has increased significantly in the Amazon region, partly due to the high international prices of this mineral, the less stringent attitude of some countries in relation to the environment and the pursuit of immediate economic opportunities....

Climate change has been called the most important threat to human health in the 21st century. It is estimated that if thetemperature rises and its impact on the other climatic variablescontinues unchanged, it will kill more than 83 million people (1 percent of the world's population) in the next...

Colombia is very exposed to natural and climatic disasters and especially to large-scale hydro meteorological drought and excess rain or flood events related to the ENSO El Nino or La Nina phenomena which impact very severely on the agricultural sector. In Colombia a high proportion of the rural...

The Enterprise Surveys (ES) focus on many aspects of the business environment. These factors can be accommodating or constraining for firms and play an important role in whether an economy's private sector will thrive or not. An accommodating business environment is one that encourages firms to...

Achieving gender equality in Colombia is critical to the country's future economic development and social cohesion; yet it remains an ongoing challenge. The government of Colombia recognizes the importance of closing the country's gender gaps and is working on multiple fronts to realize this...

Colombia's solid economic growth since early 2000s has led to significant social improvements. Since the turn of the century, extreme poverty in Colombia almost halved, falling from 17.7 percent in 2002 to 7.4 percent in 2017. Similarly, moderate poverty fell from 49.7 percent to 26.9 percent...

Tajikistan's human capital, eroded by the country's civil war (1992-97), remains low today. According to analyses by the World Bank's Human Capital Project, a child born in Tajikistan today is expected to be 53 percent as productive as he or she could be with full health and complete education....

This report presents findings from an assessment of quality of care in the health sector in Colombia, using a novel methodology developed by the World Bank Group to assess government oversight, promotion and stewardship of quality of care in the health sector. This assessment of quality of care...

Over the last five decades, Colombia has made substantial progress in protecting its environment. This includes restructuring its legal and regulatory landscape, undertaking policy initiatives, and strengthening its capacity for protecting and managing its natural resources and environmental...

The study described in this policy brief quantified the impacts of water shocks (too much, too little and too dirty) on economic outcomes in Colombia, using combined hydrological and econometric modeling, and offers recommendations for putting the country on the path to water security (see...