The World Bank Group (WBG) has focused on reducing the environmental impacts of its internal operations and improving corporate environmental practices since 2002, when the WBG President announced WBG's commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The objective of this document is to...

Rural accessibility is the only metric used in the Sustainable Development Goals to track progress toward better transport services in low- and middle-income countries. This paper estimates the rural accessibility index, defined as the proportion of the rural population who live within 2...

Beyond the Gap: How Countries Can Afford the Infrastructure They Need while Protecting the Planet aims to shift the debate regarding investment needs away from a simple focus on spending more and toward a focus on spending better on the right objectives, using relevant metrics. It does so by...

Approximately 4.1 million people live in the three states of the Yucatan Peninsula: Quintana Roo, Yucatan, and Campeche. Some 30 municipalities are in a coastal territory of almost 2,000 linear kilometers, from the oil fields of the Gulf of Mexico to the world-renowned beaches of Cancun, just...

In 2001, FYR Macedonia embarked on a new education policy agenda. One of the goals of this agenda was to improve the country's student assessment system. In order to gain a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of its existing assessment system, FYR Macedonia decided to benchmark...

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...

Tanzania's wealth per capita has declined because its rapid population growth has outpaced investment. This decline in wealth is almost entirely accounted for by its '*renewable natural capital'* loss, consisting of the country's agricultural land, cropland, forests, forest products, and...

The economic losses resulting from the environmental impacts considered in this report are equivalent to more than 4 percent o f Bangladesh's Gross Domestic Product. Among these impacts, three sources of environmental degradation stand out as currently receiving insufficient attention given...

Since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996, Guatemala has made substantial progress in consolidating peace and democracy. While progress in socioeconomic development has been uneven, there have been important gains in education and health coverage, sustained increases in social sector...